All that glitters..

Long before I arrived in Helmsdale, I was told that ‘’there’s gold in them there hills’’ The first gold was found by Robert Nelson Gilchrist in 1818 and consequently, two gold prospecting towns sprang up, Baille An Or at Kildonan Burn and Carn Na Buth at Suisgill Burn. The gold is of a high quality, 22 carats and quite soft.

I held fanciful ideas of laboriously panning for my own gold in the hope that perhaps if I panned every day, I might get enough to make some beautiful, little object.
These ideas were further fuelled when on my first day at Timespan, I met Yvonne Creedy who works in the coffee shop. I told her about my ideas and she held out her hand to me, there on her ring finger was a gold wedding band, made completely from Kildonan gold and panned for entirely by her husband, Brian, how romantic…it only took him 4 years!!! Well, I thought, I’m here for two years and Brian didn’t have a youth arts group working him, erm working with him.

Yvonne suggested that I go gold panning with Brian to learn the ropes. It took him four seasons to pan for her ring, a season lasting roughly April to September, weather permitting. It’s impossible to pan when the water is too high or too cold and of course there is the dreaded midge, which can turn any enjoyable, outdoor pursuit into a misery.

After several attempts to find a suitable day, I finally got gold panning a week ago with Brian. It was a beautiful day. We climbed up the hill that took us above the waterfall to a quiet stretch of water that Brian knows well. I had no idea that gold panning was so involved. We were joined by one of Brian’s gold panning friends, and together they moved rocks, dug trenches, split rocks and manipulated the flow of the water until they were able to find a gold source. Gold being the heaviest metal, means that gold panning is actually 95% preparation of the river bed to get deep enough and 5% panning, which as I found out, takes quite a bit of practice and skill.

With Brian’s help I was successful and found some tiny specks of gold at the bottom of my pan. With so much Mika in the water (fools gold) I was spotting gold all over the place, but as Brian told me, Gold doesn’t sparkle, it has a kind of matt shine and once you’ve seen it once, there is no mistaking it.



We spent several hours in the gorge, I mostly watched as they hacked away at rock and scoured the river bed with special underwater viewing devices, still it was fascinating and I totally lost all sense of time. I can see why some people get addicted to it. Maybe I would get lucky and find a nugget but I don’t think I would ever be able to find enough gold to make my own sculptures. I’m quite happy with my little souvenirs of the day. There’s something magical about having gold in them, there hills and I think that perhaps, that is where it should stay.