Alaska Gold Rush Diary

The next day, after being washed by heavy rain, the wilderness was full of ravines.

Some dried-up streams have started flowing again.

The sky was a clear, deep blue, and a cool breeze was blowing, making it much cooler.

Not long after the rain stopped late last night, Zhou Xin went to check the place where the gold was buried. Only after finding that the wooden box was not exposed did he feel relieved and go back to sleep.

Without wasting any time, the two grabbed their equipment and set off.

They planned to make one last push in the final week, hoping for a miracle.

Aside from the temperature drop on the first day after the rain, the two of them worked during the day, but for the rest of the time they still chose to work at night.

Their ideals were lofty, but reality was cruel. For three nights in a row, they could only harvest less than two ounces each day.

Things took a turn for the better on the fourth day when Zhou Xin discovered some white, translucent quartz stones that smelled of gold.

In Australia, gold is brought out of the Earth's crust by magma, along with quartz.

For gold hunters, finding quartz sometimes means finding gold.

After he dug up the quartz, he indeed found many quartz crystals mixed with some gold.

However, since the gold and quartz are aggregated together, to separate them, the quartz must be broken up and then panned for gold.

There are quite a few quartz stones here, and there may be quartzite layers underneath.

Although extraction is quite troublesome, the gold-bearing quartz in this area is concentrated and is definitely worth mining.

He immediately returned to the camp to get tools and asked Edward for help.

When he was purchasing supplies, he had considered that some gold might be buried in the rock formations, so he prepared a small electric hammer.

They loaded the battery into the car, along with tools such as an electric hammer, a gold panning pan, and a hammer, and drove back to the quartz area.

After collecting the quartz fragments from the surface, and then digging away the topsoil at that location, they indeed found a layer of quartzite underneath.

Moreover, the quartzite layers shimmered with gold threads, clearly indicating that they contained a significant amount of gold.

"This is amazing! There's so much gold in here!" Edward shouted excitedly.

At that moment, the two divided the work: Edward was responsible for breaking the quartzite layer with an electric hammer, while Zhou Xin was responsible for hammering the gold-containing quartz fragments into smaller pieces.

Suddenly, a clanging sound rang out in the dark wilderness.

After a night of work, a large pile of quartz fragments had accumulated in front of Zhou Xin.

In order to complete the mining work here as soon as possible, the two only rested for about five hours during the hottest part of the day at noon before continuing to work.

They worked until after 2 a.m. before finally turning all the gold-containing quartz into powder.

Looking at the three high piles of quartz fragments in front of him, Zhou Xin announced, "Get the pans, let's start panning for gold!"

Fortunately, after the heavy rain a few days ago, several ponds appeared in the surrounding area, so water is no longer a problem for gold panning.

The two squatted down by the pool and began panning for gold.

After his previous gold panning training, Zhou Xin is now quite skilled at gold panning.

Edward was still a novice, but fortunately, with the guidance of his mentor Zhou Xin, he quickly mastered the skills.

Previously at Mount Katz, he was only responsible for equipment maintenance and repair, and had never personally handled gold panning.

Therefore, manual gold panning was a completely new experience for him, and he found it very novel.

The bright lights illuminated the area as if it were daytime, so the two men were not greatly affected even though they were panning for gold at night.

It took them three more nights to finish washing all the quartz sand.

The two were very excited as they looked at the half-full bottle of gold dust in the glass jar.

If they rely solely on digging for gold as before, unless they are incredibly lucky and find a nugget, they can only harvest less than a third of the gold in the bottle at most.

Zhou Xin carefully poured the gold from the bottle into the weighing pan for the final weighing of his gold-hunting trip to Western Australia.

21.2 ounces!

Five nights yielded 21.2 ounces, which is nothing compared to previous harvests.

But for this land that was once barren of gold, it was already a very satisfactory harvest.

Adding to the previous 348.5 ounces, their total haul from this gold-hunting trip in Western Australia is:

369.7 ounces.

We are only 30.3 ounces away from our annual target of 400 ounces.

Although they were slightly disappointed with the result, they were satisfied.

The day after tomorrow is Christmas Eve. If the two of them hurry, they might still be able to make it back to the United States for Christmas.

Although they had been busy all night, the two did not plan to rest, but instead intended to return to Kurgadi before resting.

They immediately began packing their things.

Once everything was loaded onto the vehicle and the camp's canopy was removed, the two knew their gold-hunting trip was truly over.

Because the Starlink equipment was damaged and they couldn't contact the container rental company, Zhou Xin had to drive back to the city first, while Edward stayed behind and returned with the vehicle that was collecting the containers.

Upon returning to Kurgadi, Zhou Xin immediately went to the gold buyer introduced by Chen Xiande.

Carrying so much gold on my person is very unsafe; I must liquidate it immediately.

The store was rather quiet at the time, with only one receptionist and one resident tax bureau employee.

Zhou Xin directly told the receptionist that he wanted to speak directly with their boss, Max, and that he was referred by a regular customer.

Soon, the boss, Max, came out from the back office.

"Hello, I was referred by Mr. Nord. I need to sell gold."

Nord is Chen Xiande's foreign name in Australia.

Upon hearing Nord's name, Max's body trembled, and he stared at him in shock.

"No...Nord? What's your relationship with him?"

Zhou Xin answered truthfully: "I once visited his gold mining factory. He told me that you are a very honest boss and that I should come to you when I need to sell gold."

Max's expression softened slightly after hearing this, but he still seemed somewhat uneasy.

"You also run a mine here? But I don't think I've ever seen you before."

Zhou Xin smiled and said, "I only came here a few months ago. I don't run a mine; I just use a detector and my partner to mine gold by hand."

Max nodded and said, "Digging for gold here is indeed a great pastime. How many grams of gold did you dig up?"

Since Nord referred you, I won't charge you a handling fee.

In his view, Zhou Xin was just like most people who came here to experience gold mining, purely for entertainment. For a newbie like him, it would be quite good if he could dig up a few dozen grams.

Zhou Xin looked around and, seeing no suspicious people, took out the wooden box from his backpack, held it firmly in his hand, and slightly opened the lid to show it to Max.