shoad

Loose fragments (often of metal ore) mixed with earth.

The earliest mining consisted simply in collecting shoads — a means of gaining a livelihood not yet totally discarded.

Eluvial wolfram was known from the Mount Carbine area 50 miles northwest from Cairns before 1895, but the black shoads were at first thought to be manganese (hence the name Manganese Creek for the little creek at the village).

To seek for a vein or mineral deposit by following a shode, or tracing them to whence they derived.

In shoading it is necessary to distinguish between heavy and light ores, and between friable and hard materials.

It is manifest from the position of the neck that the great mass of material removed by denudation in forming the hollow in which it is seen exposed, must have been washed down the stream in question, and had diamonds occurred in that mass it is highly improbable that none should have been left in the bed and banks of the stream where their existence would certainly have been discovered by the old diamond seekers in former generations, who would have “shoaded” up the stream and have inevitably reached the neck.

To be distributed as shoads.

Among the fragments shoaded down the sloping surface of the ground are pieces of edgewise intraformational conglomerate.

The discovery of davidite at Radium Hill was made in 1906, by Mr. A. J. Smith, who mistook the black shoaded mineral for tin ore.