indicator fault, page-7

"recryatallation" is not some obscure word but another example of my fumbling fingers. "recrystallisation" is what I was supposed to be writing.

Gold is a noble metal, one reason it is so valuable. It endures. It will dissolve though. Fast in aqua regia, a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids. Much more slowly in salty, oxygen laden water. Don't wear your wedding ring in a saltwater pool for this reason.

Hill End rocks started off as marine sediments. They formed in the sea and some of the sea is still there, trapped in the spaces between the grains. Groundwater contains a low level of chloride as a result. This allows it to dissolve minute amounts of gold and carry that gold through the broken rock of the fault.

Bacteria and fungi almost certainly cause gold to precipitate. Just as gold is hard to dissolve, dissolved gold is easy to precipitate. There will have been many locations along the indicator fault where bacterial colonies would have concentrated the gold. Some of them are still there, Holtermanning away.

Now I think I really have invented another word!!!