It was extremely hard and very tiring. They worked long hours of the day and night. And they hardly ever found anything. They also had to deal with claim steamers that would try to dig for their gold.
Mining for gold was very hard work. This was because gold usually came in very small pieces and was hard to extract from the rock it was imbedded in .
Instead of doing prospecting and mining themselves or hiring themselves out to work in the mines, they sold good or services at inflated prices to those that did.
they work in the mining industry and the silver and Gold gets turned into Jewelry
It is Austalias biggest gold mine and employes a lot of people to work for them. It is in Australia and many people visit the site each year. The workers work hard on mining the gold.
It was hard work and very exhausting. Miners often felt resentment, towards the miners who found more gold than them.
Gold mining
it cleans beneath the ground for gold
it cleans beneath the ground for gold
Hydraulic mining used a water cannon (called a monitor) to wash the hillside down and into a huge sluice box which separated the Gold from the dirt and gravel.
Many miners use a gold pan and pan along streams and rivers that have a history of producing gold in the past. Others use a dredge. A dredge sucks up the gravel at the bottom of a stream or river and runs the gravel over a sluice box to separate the gold from the gravel Hard rock mining is another method but is very involved compared to other methods. Highbanking isn't very common but you do see it occasionally. "highbanking" is a mining process where you pump the water up to where you are working instead of bringing the gold bearing gravel to the water. The object is to work a "bench" of gravel up on a hillside as efficiently as possible. Another method of gold prospecting is to use a drywasher in the desert. This is a method where you look for gold without water in desert conditions. Yet another method is to use a metal detector. this is very popular in Australia and has produced some large nuggets. There are numerous other methods such as "heap leaching" but this covers most methods that quite a few miners use.
An artisanal or small-scale miner is, in effect, a subsistence miner, who often undertakes the activity of mining gold seasonally - for example crops are planted in the rainy season, and mining is pursued in the dry season. They are not officially employed by a mining company, but rather work independently, mining or panning for gold using their own resources. They tend to use primitive methods of mining, including the use of very toxic mercury to extact gold.
Getting rich from gold prospecting takes a mixture of hard work, skill, experience, money and luck. You must be willing to spend weeks, months , even years trying to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together that create the conditions for a big strike. Striking it rich does happen but most people quit long before they reach the level of experience they need to get rich. You may get lucky, but riches usually go to the prepared.