That brings back memories! I first went to Sovereign Hill some 25 years ago. The project is a credit to who-ever put it together. All the buildings, the old stampers and crushers are still there, there are horse-drawn wagons and carriages to ride in and models of all the huge gold nuggets found, in the gold museum. The shops sell old wares, the restaurants offer traditional food (mutton pie anyone?) and one day isn't long enough...but it's funny to watch the city folk try their hand at panning for gold in the stream, they have no idea how and simply manage to get wet and dirty...
Beautiful town and the photo of the working is excellent, makes me want to check the riffles and see what they caught.
Up in Oregon, there are giant piles of rocks, where they have come in with barges and panned the river on a large scale.
Looking at the mining photo, some one was knowledgeable and set that stream up with all kinds of traps in it.
Bill had a customer, who a spot that he made an average of $5,000 a year from.
He said he had found a small stream bed in Arizona and buried a sheepskin, not too deep, most on the surface and it caught the gold, every few months, he took up the skin and as I recall, burned it , but I could be wrong on that and got the gold out of it that it had trapped.
You would have to be real lucky on picking the spot.