Debunking the Glacier Myth in This Australian Goldfield

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Reedy Creek has become a name surrounded by gold, myth, and geological intrigue. Located in northeast Victoria, Australia, this historic goldfield has long been the subject of speculation — not just because of its alluvial richness, but because of a persistent claim that glaciers delivered the gold into the valley. In this in-depth video, we unpack that claim, test it against hard geological evidence, and tell the real story behind one of Australia’s most productive and misunderstood goldfields.

Many still believe that a glacier — perhaps during the Permian ice age — carved its way through Reedy Creek and dumped a load of gold, tin, and even diamonds into the valley. But when we examine the geological record, we find something much more interesting. Reedy Creek was never overridden by glacial ice. There are no striated pavements. The common reference to striated clasts observed by Dunn in 1887 at nearby Woorragee refers to glacially shaped pebbles, not bedrock, and does not prove glacial ice ever physically entered the Reedy Creek drainage. Instead, the valley is flanked by glaciomarine and fluvial sediments laid down in a Permian basin environment — shaped by meltwater and floating ice from distant glaciers, not by direct glacial advance. Reedy Creek is a landscape shaped by erosion, not by ice.

So where did the gold come from? Like most goldfields in Victoria, the gold in Reedy Creek originated deep underground during Devonian mountain-building events more than 370 million years ago. Hot, mineral-rich fluids, rising through faults and fractures in the Earth’s crust, deposited gold into quartz veins embedded in Ordovician metasedimentary rock. These quartz reefs were injected several kilometres below the surface — typically between 3 and 10 kilometres deep — and remained buried for hundreds of millions of years. Only through slow uplift and prolonged erosion during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic did the veins begin to surface. It was not until the last 20 to 30 million years that these deposits became subaerial, exposed to weathering and ready to release gold into nearby creeks through the actions of wind, water, and gravity.

By the late Miocene to early Pliocene, ancient rivers flowed through the Woolshed Valley, carving broad valleys and depositing rich gold-bearing gravels into what we now call deep leads. These paleorivers — which form the backbone of the Reedy Creek goldfield — are about 10 million years old. Miners of the 19th century capitalized on these leads, digging and dredging their way through ancient gravel beds that were both broad and consistent in gold grade. These were not patchy glacial dumps — they were long-sorted, water-winnowed placer systems that could only form through sustained alluvial processes. An estimated 27 million cubic metres of gravel were dredged from the Eldorado field alone, yielding not only gold, but also an extraordinary amount of tin ore.

Tin was the second secret of Reedy Creek. As gold was being panned and dredged, miners noticed heavy black sand building up in the same paystreaks. This was cassiterite — tin oxide — eroded from granitic intrusions in the surrounding highlands, particularly the Pilot Range. With over 9,900 tonnes of tin recovered from the field, Reedy Creek became the largest tin-producing alluvial goldfield in Victoria. And just like the gold, this tin was not transported by ice; it was released through normal weathering, carried by streams, and settled by gravity into the same gold-rich gravels.

But perhaps the most perplexing detail in the Reedy Creek story is the presence of diamonds. Small but real, diamonds were discovered during mining and dredging operations, particularly in the deep lead systems. Their origin remains one of the enduring geological mysteries of the region.

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