xenith: (Railway)
The Central Deborah Mine in Bendigo.

Central Deborah Gold Mine is a quartz-reef gold mine located on the Bendigo Flat near the Bendigo Creek. The mine operated from 1939 to 1954 and was the last commercial mine to operate in the wealthy Bendigo goldfields.

During this time miners extracted almost one tonne of gold (929kg) from the ground, which would be worth around $37 million in today's prices!
From

First

Tour starts here.

The tour group consisted of the tour guide, an extra body from the archive room(?) because they need to send an extra person if there's just one person in tour group-- Hang on. One person in the tour group = me. By myself. OK....

So the whole group of one is taken over to the change rooms and outfitted with overalls (which were not going to go around me, unless they were too big elsewhere, obviously I'm not miner shape), boots, hard hat and a lamp (which is on the hat, but attached to battery thing at the waist).

Going down )
xenith: (Railway)
A sequel to my Maldon post earlier today :)

Chimney

Founded in the late 1850s, all the early work was carried out in an open cutting, between where the main shaft and the engine house stood. Miners were granted claims 30 feet square, and out of these claims much gold must have been taken, but the amount will never be known. ... The method of hauling dirt and stone was by means of a windlass. This was slow and hard work so it was decided to call a meeting of the claim holders to pool resources.

The outcome of the meeting was to form a company and to purchase a winding machine. A new shaft was sunk while the engine, engine house and poppet legs were being erected. With installation of the machinery, the ground was worked, with varying returns for about 3 years. Then at the 300 feet level a heavy flow of water was met. The plant was not capable of dealing with it so another meeting was held to form a more powerful company. This was called the "New Beehive Company" and comprised 30,000 shares. New engines, boilers, large pumping plant and quartz crushing battery were purchased.


Extract from "The New Beehive Mine, based on a brief history of the Beehive Mine by Garnet Pearce of Maldon", a leaflet I picked up. The mine closed in 1918.

More )
xenith: (Railway)
So this is my first view of Maldon, nice and dreary it looks.

First

It's also bigger than I expected. The population as of the last census was 1600.

The usual gold town story: gold was discovered nearby in the 1850s, and thousands of diggers turned up to work the field, eventually their numbers dwindled and the town... didn't do anything.

More )
xenith: (Railway)
Part I

Town Hall

The morning tour was the Ned Kelly Tour, which I would have preferred in the afternoon, having had enough of the that the day before and at the courthouse. But such is life I'm tough, I can handle it. There's a whole three people in the group, not counting the guide, and for our first stop he takes us down behind the town hall.

You know the drill )
xenith: (Default)
A story of gold, and what people will do to get it. Mostly though, it's a story of numbers.

In writing this, I've relied on extracts from two books: Town With A History, by Coultman Smith, first published 1978 and Beaconsfield Gold, by Janet Kerrison, first published in 1963. (From now on, I'll refer to these as TWH & BG)

Beaconsfield - museum, mine

Boiler house

Early attempts at mining in the district were for iron, in the 1870s there were a number of small companies extracting iron. The quality wasn't sufficient to make it a viable long term proposition though. It's still there of course, and with modern methods, probably profitable but it doesn't have the same allure as that other metal.

Read more... )

Profile

xenith: (Default)
xenith

Most Popular Tags

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags