Historical Recordings

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I Welcome to Gold Rush. Today's story, Blackwood. About 9 miles in a southward direction from Trentham, Victoria, hidden in a valley of a long mountain chain which formed the Great Dividing Range, is the little township of Blackwood. Today, it consists of a hotel, a general store and post office, 3 churches, a hall, a camping ground, and about 90 permanent residents. However, in the holiday season, its population may raise to 2 or 300 people.

Although Blackwood has interests and associations for only a few people today, it was once a place of no small importance. Up to 1854, although the district was scarcely known and was rarely visited by either white man or Aborigine. The rough timbered ranges had no attraction for the settler, and they were too cold and inhospitable for the Aborigines. The country in 1853 was in the hands of the pastoralists, the site of Blackwood being in part of Sir John Lew Petter's Cut a Minute Run. 2 years later, it was acquired by Mr.

Thomas Hamilton and subsequently renamed Glen Petter. The area surrounding and including the present township of Blackwood was then known as Mount Blackwood. Mount Blackwood is in fact a prominent mountain approximately 6 miles southeast of Blackwood. Mount Blackwood was originally named Mount Solomon in 1835 by John Batman, after a friend of his who shared in the partition of the land bought by him from the natives. By 1838, it was changed to Clark's Big Hill after Mr.

Kenneth Clark, who was the first settler in the Bacchus Marsh Valley in 1836. It was later named Mount Blackwood after a Captain Blackwood, commander of the Fly, from 1843 to 1845. Blackwood must surely be one of the most beautiful spots in Australia, set in rugged bush country about 100 kilometres north of the great metropolis of Melbourne. Here at Blackwood, all is now peaceful, a police, a peace that was rudely broken by the discovery of gold. It's my pleasure today to talk with Margot Hitchcock, journalist, author, and historian.

She's co-author of a book called Aspects of Early Blackford. Margot has an immense knowledge of the Blackford Goldfield, where she's the local historian. I asked Margot when the first gold discoveries were made. Well, uh, the first discovery was made in 1854 by two drovers, uh, who were looking for some lost cattle, or lost bullocks actually who. Uh, had got away from them down Verdioog River, and they'd been out several Sundays looking for them.

It was in November of 1854, and the actual day that they were there was the 14th of November 1854. They'd stopped down at what is now known as Jackson's Creek, uh, to boiler Billy, and they found that the water was a bit mineralized and one of them went up a bit further. And found some water or some gold worn. Water worn gold in the creek, and they didn't find their bullets, they went straight back to land. And they told some other people, and they brought them back in with them to Blackwood.

One of the party was a man named Jackson, who the creek was named after Jackson's Creek. And Word got around that they'd found gold there and another party followed them in. Um, And they also found gold. They, the two drovers were stationed in Ban. Uh, one of them was Harry Aythorn, and the other one was Harry Hidder, and they had this bullock run from Ban, I think it was through to Kyneton, and, um, they happened to lose some of them in the area.

It was very inaccessible country, uh, it was even too cold for the Aboriginal. Well, what happened after that initial discovery? What happened next? Well, the two fellas, Athor and Heda, went back to the land to the traveller's. And they got up a party of men who agreed to go in with them, uh, Jackson and his other mate were going to search, do the main part of the gold digging, and the others were going to follow up with the, all the necessities, all the.

Uh, tools and the camping equipment and the food. Uh, they got a, a horse and dray, and they also had a bullet dray and they brought in, it was about 1 tonne of equipment between the rest of them. Um, they had trouble getting the drays in because the country was so rugged. Uh, it took them 3 weeks to cut their way through the undergrowth, uh, to get to where the party was, I could see the smoke. And they arrived there and Some other people had seen them leaving in Bland, and one in particular was a man named Edward Hill.

Uh, he had heard that there was gold in the area, and he had set about, he'd gone into Melbourne, he'd got a tracing of the area, and he, his idea was to go and find gold. He had heard about gold in Blackwood from a report in England. Uh, there was a lecturer over there. And um he got up a party of friends and he was said to have followed this track blazed by these people. Uh, he lost it when he was in about half a mile of Blackwood, so he stopped where he was and he dug for gold at what is now called Bland Camp, and he also found gold.

the one. Uh, but what this man did, what the others didn't do, he put in a reward for the gold. And this man Edward Hill was eventually awarded 300 pounds by the government for opening up the Blackwood gold field, because what he did, he let it be known, he had an article put in the Argus paper in April 1855 to say that he found gold in Blackwood in January of 1855. And he actually was the person who started the rush to Blackwood and made Blackwood, uh, one of the biggest gold field areas closest to Melbourne. Yes Well, was there much alluvial gold taken from Blackwood?

Uh, well, initially it was all alluvial gold. Uh, it was all found in the Lurdi Derg River and its tributaries, uh, and it was mainly done by, I think in those days you're only allowed to dig a 12 by 12 ft hole, and they sunk shafts, but a lot of it was just using the cradle and washing the dirt in the creeks, um, sluicing for gold. Blackwood's time of glory was short-lived. When the gold ran out, so did the population. Blackwood and Golden Point, Simmons Reef and Barry's Reef returned to its previous timeless silence.

By 1882, the hills and gullies were once more silent, almost as silent as they were since time began. How long did the big boom last in Blackwood? Uh. Well, In Barrier Reef, uh, the, the where the biggest boom was, uh, that started in 1869 with the opening of the big saltan mine, and that finished in 1880 when the saltan mine closed down. How do you explain the difference between the Blackwood field and most of the other gold fields?

Well, I'd say that because this area is so inaccessible, it's Lots of hills and gullies, it's in the wombet. Ranges, or it's in the Great Dividing Range, uh a lot of hills, a lot of gullies, uh, it's very hard to get into, and I think what got most of the miners was the weather in winter, um, it can get very cold, it can snow here, uh, we're up, uh, 2000 ft above sea level, and I think mainly the coal got the miners plus. Uh, typhoid and diphtheria and which you may, you know, dip with a lot of gold fields, but in this area it was, um, I'd say mainly the mountainous country that, uh, and, and the rocky terrain was very hard going for a lot of them. A lot of them left for the easier fields or if I heard about another field opening up, they moved out. Come on you sons of liberty and listen to my song.

I'll tell you my observations and it won't take very long. I've wondered. Round this continent 500 miles or more, and many's the time I might have died, but for the cheek I bore I've been on. Peak population was in September of 1855 when there was recorded to be 13,000 people living here. And it was recorded by the um registrar at the time, so we sort of, some people say there were 30,000 people.

Um we have different. I ideas of how many people, but I'd safely say that you can take it from the mining registrar, uh, his estimate would be more accurate. And that would have included Golden Point and Simmons Reef. Yes, the whole area was actually known as Mount Blackwood, even though Mount Blackwood is situated. Um, I think it's about, about 6 miles out of Blackwood, uh, but this whole area was named Mount Blackwood, uh, where gold was found at Golden Point, that they had their own little township there, they had their own hotels, um, they had their own shops, they had the even had their own police station, courthouse, and jail.

Um, Simmons Reef, which was opened up not long after they had their own township there and so did Barry's Reef, which opened up later still. That's. Oh yes, be jolly joker that's on the cross. Although we're turning me blue, we know I've swept as many a horse of the robby and sword of many an ounce of gold, and the traps that trailed upon my tail to. Um, Barry's Reef School in 1976 had over 300 children.

I've often admired the old Royal Mail Hotel building at Golden Point. Was that one of the original hotels in the area? Yes, this was one of the original hotels. It was, um, a Cobb and Co stopping station. Uh, we're not quite sure when it was built.

From some of the early records, we think it could have been in the 1850s, but from the official records, the first owner was recorded in 1863. And it was the Lawson. Um, uh, 1913. What has become of the hotel building? It's gone.

It's the two front walls are completely gone. The council unfortunately put a demolition order on it. Um, From looking inside, it was just a shell, there was no floor, uh, most of the inside walls are gone. The only things that were holding it up was some straining wires. Um, the council had cut away the road in the front so that you could not put any braces outside.

They said they had no option but to comply with the council's orders. Uh, could you tell us about some of the mine names around the area? Um, well, the biggest mines were in Barry's Reef. The big mine there was the Salton mine. Uh, there was the salt armour, uh, the North, North Sultans, the New Sultans.

Uh, there was one which I particularly liked because of its name, it's Foggerbola, um, Edgerton, uh, Poseidon. A lot of the names have changed as new owners. These are all part of the one reef, were they? Yes, it's all part of the Salton line of reef. Where, where does the Salton Line run from?

Well, it starts virtually up near Trentham and it runs down as far as. Uh, Simmons wrote Could you give us some idea of how much gold may have been taken from some of the mines? Uh, well, the biggest amount of gold was from the Sultan mine. Uh, they got 65,801 ounces to a depth of 900 ft. Actually this mine was only worked to about the 700 ft level.

Uh, and it was said to be one of the most profitable mines from the shareholders' point of view in Victoria's history. I they kept some good records and the records have all been uh checked over by the prison, prison mine manager Graham Ashworth, uh, who has opened up the area, he has a lease over the whole of the, the Barrier Reef and the Simmonds Reef areas, and, uh, I have a copy of his feasibility study and he's gone into it in quite a lot of detail, and uh he's unearthed a lot of information about the Salton mine. Ayola will crack out with like some, don't care what some say, and money will be home. Now on the 5 to 1000 miles away. The graph, we have to pass the routes I'm bound to tell where in 3 weeks the cattle get back as well.

Were there any serious accidents in any of the mines that you know of? Uh, well, from Graham's, uh, study. Uh, he actually has made a list of some of the accidents that have happened in the mine, uh, in between the period of 1869 to 1881. Uh, and looking at these records, I have found that there had been two deaths in that mine. That was in the Salton mine.

Salton Prob numerous other accidents too. Yes, yes, there was a lot of accidents unfortunately in the mine, miners getting out of cages before they should have and getting their fingers jammed and uh falling down shafts and not leaving the area before the explosion of dynamite took place and what have you. OK. All around the hillsides around Blackwood, Barrier Reef, you still see signs of water races. Why were those races built and who would have built them?

Uh, well, these were all dug for the purpose of sluicing. Uh, the water in them was carried for some people state that it was up to 100 miles of water races running around the hills. Uh, they were dug by miners who clubbed together and they'd build these races and then they'd lease off the water. Uh, I've heard that they charged 10. 10, uh, no, 1 shilling, uh, for so much water, what they'd do was, uh, they'd get all their, their pay, their dirt, and, uh, at the end of the day they'd slush it all in their sluosh boxes and, uh, see how much gold they'd find for their day's work.

To. Where would the water have come from? Uh, well, a, a lot of the water came from Shores Lake. Uh, Shores Lake is up above the Mineral Springs area that was built by the Shaw brothers. Uh, they built it with a pick and shovel and wheelbarrow, and they cut a lot of water races from this area, which still holds a lot of water, said to be about 30 ft deep in the middle, but, um, the person who.

Who's most notable for the water races is a woman by the name of Madame Pauline Beaufo. Uh, she was a French woman, she gave a lot of water races herself, and she leased them off to the miners, and she's buried in the Blackwood Cemetery, and she died in the 1860s, and it's said that a lot of miners went to their graves with the marks of her shovel on their backs. Or a 4 or 5 his spur, and 14 ft of green hide grip the shops that flame spur, all the others put a castle in a way that I declare will make the old but landers sit back in the saddle. across the open plain crack with thunderbolts. So actually people made a living by diggings for the miners.

Yes, yes, I did, and actually you can walk along. A lot of these water races, uh, there is a path that goes along the top of them. Um, there's one in particular, um, over the bridge from the mineral springs, uh, it's called Kardi's Race, and it's quite a pretty walk. The, um, Progress Association have opened it up and cleaned out the area, and it's quite a pretty walk with. on either side and it go for quite a while.

There's races everywhere around Blackwood. There's a big one that comes out at O'Brien's Crossing. I've walked along that one that was built by the Byers Brothers and it's remarkable. It sort of goes along the face of a cliff at one stage and comes out near a water hole. So.

They were quite remarkable feats of engineering really, because they actually appear to make water run uphill, don't they? Yeah, it seems to be. on the field here? Yes, well, the most Chinese were recorded with 500. Uh, some people say there were more, but, uh, that is the official estimate.

Uh, the Chinese came in the 1850s and by the 1860s there were 500 living here. Uh, they were said to be Cantonese, and most of them walked from Castlemaine. Uh, they had their own camp down at Golden Point, uh, behind the swimming pool. There is an area down there where you can go today and you can see the remains of where they did their mining. They used the system of paddocking, which is they moved all the.

The topsoil that There's so many feet, they just moved the whole lot. Did they really? Yes, and in one place. It remains untouched and like the old identity stated that was where the Joss house was. Uh, they had their own, um, gambling houses and stores down there, and, um, there are some Chinese buried in the Blackwood Cemetery.

Uh, their graves are right down the back in the unconsecrated ground. Uh, unfortunately, some of the headstones have been removed. I've been told that they were used in rock gardens. No Yankee I ever go outside to sleep, sleep and freeze, no Yankee passes through such meat to eat and over sea as we send overseas, 1000 pounds they weighed on the farther. is actually part of the Blackwood field, isn't it?

That's right. But it's probably a lot more important than actually than Blackwood itself, I'd say so from the salt mine because it was such a, a big mine. It was a big mining venture. There was a lot of money put into it and there was a lot of gold got out of it, uh, according to the official records. There were 5 tonnes of gold got out of all of the Blackwood area which included Barrier Reef, uh, but the unofficial records say 9 tonnes of gold were got out of the Barrier Reef and the Simmons Reef area.

But according to Graham Ashworth, he said that he thinks there's still 30 tonnes of gold left. Yeah. There's a lot of activity at a shaft at Barry's Reef at the present moment. Is that where the gentleman is looking for the 30 tonnes of gold? That's right.

Um, that's at the Sultana shaft. Uh, actually what they've done, uh, they started at the Edgerton tunnel. Um, they've opened it all up. I've actually walked in there, uh, 1400 ft, it goes right under the road, uh, comes up on the left-hand side of the road at Barrier Reef, up on the hill there. Um, they were working at, uh, up until the summer of this year.

They have closed down at the moment, um, mainly because the price of gold has dropped, I believe, and, uh. Also the fact that They weren't getting the results that they required. The Sultana or the Sultana Group I suppose you'd call it, they were the most important areas, but was it the Sultan that had the most interesting story? Uh, well, the Sultan was the biggest mine, uh, the most money was originally put into the Sultan mine. Uh, it was quite a profitable mine for the day.

Uh, it kept a lot of people in work, and it kept the town going and. It did a lot of good for Blackwood. Concludes this week's episode of Gold Rush. My sincere thanks to Margot Hitchcock, the co-author of the book Aspects of Pearly Blackwood. Copies of

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And thank goodness that I'm back here in this wonderful country there. For the advice itinerary committee in your Blackwood that we have got quite a bit of functions on over the weekend. Uh, I'd like to thank the committee for their endeavours as well as it may be, especially to Elia McCall, uh, who has done or she would have been the top organiser with her. different. It, it is a pity, as I say, the weather has turned out the way it is, but, uh, at least in the hall here we're lucky that we have got some time.

And without further ado, uh, I think I've said really enough, uh, as I say, I can't emphasis enough on the, on our, uh, on our forebearers. And in the future because what a wonderful company is and how privileged we are to be here celebrating the 200. Good. And without further ado I can clearly The price of nations are back open and I hope you have all a pleasant afternoon with us as pleasant as it can be with the in terms of weather, uh, I guess the, the, uh. I would like you to join us some afternoon tea and the list of people you who are willing to have a look around and uh have a talk with us after the formal ceremonies are over.

Now I'd like to introduce you now our local historian who has uh a little, uh, something to say. It is regarding history the place it's appropriate that she's uh she does Margo. Thank you very much. I the Coming here and helping us make this weekend that we hope will be a big success. Especially like safe and.

And uh all you play. who Like this. As historian of the historical society, it's been a great pleasure for me to. of their final. And today I'd like to.

We launched this little booklet. Second edition, but it is enough. I Yeah I'm also doing along a lot of, uh, the research that I've been. Have written one book um and The place So you To be a more complete. It I lost.

to good. But the award. We have both So So Yeah That That the Oh. Yeah. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, just be free to uh.

and talk so sorry about the weather but but that's black. It That's right. He's one of your old boys. Yes. Uh, the only reason I did this probably because it's, it's better for what's going in here if you recall it rather than say the thing that I think so but I've still got to remember something.

Well, we're gonna try when you get to my age, you've gotta be really trying and trying. Mm. I got some good. Hm, the new salty. Yeah Sorry, hang on.

Well, uh, my father. I think it was my uncle Nick. Please Doctor please requested that they go up in the bush and with him to a Chinaman and old China prospect that died, yeah, and uh he was in a very difficult gully somewhere. Doctor had to go and recover the body and my father said. Get him out of there.

I don't worry, boys, he says. I've lightened him down. In other words, he's gutted him gutted him. How long ago was that? Oh, a long, long time ago.

Well, probably before my father was married and been a. of 1900. Uh I was the school in that uh they do Jewish Blues and they nicknamed Jewish Blues Doctor Blues Joy. George, please. Oh George, yeah, he's got to cancel my name.

No, I saw George fairly often, but I'm raised a lot of Augusta. You can get out of here. No. We've done very well. The Georgia still need that.

It's the big Thompson Thompson stadium. Well, it does, because that, that would be the original last place. And that's taken off the photo, but they've sort of softened it to granny. I used to take the milk there in my time. So while asleep.

Homestead and grannylo is uh. And she'd been almost in her 90s I think when she died. Mary saying they don't think that. There's another cousin, her name was Mary first too. That place said her mother that's Ada done it they for Northland down.

Still quite a few of the day you remember I know I know well yeah yeah I might try and get you. I try and clean up the story. Well, when my sister died. I think one of the greatest challenges of my life, uh. My sister died.

We, we were, uh, all around the area and this, uh, Perry tombstone was on the ground. There's only a small one about board, and I do consult now that's only gonna be broken up or something and I'll put it in there and close it out, yeah, so that it wouldn't get smashed or something. I went back to Melbourne that girl night and he's a relation in Perth from Queensland, wondering if I could enlighten them. Perry, she's yours and you didn't know you were related to the Perry's coincidence should get in touch with Melbourne. The headstone was in the corner of your family's put it there.

Bruce, I didn't see it last time I was up there. No, I wondered myself. I wonder whether some of those relations have come over from, but they on she kept for a while, she kept in touch with. She's good yeah thanks and find out what has happened to that but I don't think there's anyone probably no one in Victoria. Did you know anything about Thomas Perry?

Did she tell you anything? Uh, probably I did I pass the letter on to you, I think Neil got it. Neil Madison got it. I thought she wrote to me. How can I have the worst memory ever.

Did you know, did you be. Uh, which was his father. Hm. It's exciting, isn't it? Not many people in fact would have one of those.

No, no, that's probably why it's been removed, nobody would know. It was easy enough to lift up and I I know it had been. The date on it when he died and I can't look I can't even wouldn't be sure what relationship there was, but Perry would be cousins somewhere along the line on the cans side, I think it's all there and Cheryl was quite interested in. She was trying to work out where the yards fitted in. Yes, we were, I think Perry's and yards could have been I think Cheryl and I worked out one of the Terry Hi, she married twice.

She married maybe. Mhm. Pretty mind boggling, isn't it? Oh father. And what's your name.

Did you see that um that article I've got about when he was present at the dinner for Burke and Will when they went through Castlemaine, yes, yes, yeah, and it said what ship he came out of do you need that? How's it going? Good, good. In Northern Ireland where they all came from and before that France France and the origins of the suffering family at home I can find you as a bear. I love it.

Tell me about it. I'll send it to. It's just that this is the only copy I'm carrying with me you could give me in return a photocopy of the sawmill Have you written it in the book but I'll send it to you, Margot Hitchcock Historical Society, Blackwood. add anything to that. Unless you send it to my home address, which is um 18 Devon Avenue, D E V O N.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, peace. Avenue, he's not.

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The reason I came dressed up tonight was to show you what the pioneers wore in about the 1860s. Um, I belong to the Blackwood District Historical Society. I'm the historian, and part of our society dressed up and we are the reenactment team. Um, we do reenactments around Blackwood and around different areas, the Bland Arcadians Arts Festival. Uh, part of our group.

As policemen, part as bushrangers and part as miners, and we have a few ladies in our group who dress up like I do. Um, the dress. Was pointed, low-waisted in the front, um, the big sleeve and the hoop petticoat, uh, very hard to sit down on. Um, very awkward to go to the toilet. I don't know how they managed.

And, um, the hoop I've got to. Um, actually, they're cupboard runners. Um, they used to have steel or, um, band or wire or something. And I also had my pants on. Uh, and my little dilly bag used to carry the money and what have you in.

The purpose for my talk tonight is to give you some background material which I use for my book on the Blackwood Goldfields, and the book is Aspects of Early Blackwood. Uh, it deals with the goldfields, the landmarks, and the pioneers. Uh, I also want to give you some information on the surrounding gold mining towns of the central Goldfields. Most of you here are interested. Perhaps in researching your families of that area.

And a lot of you no doubt have some ancestors who spent some time on these gold fields. I shall present this talk with a view to give you some background material and the history on the places where your ancestors possibly could have settled, and in particular the original names of the gold towns. As in the case of Bendigo, which was originally called Sandhurst, uh, if you have a certificate, birth, death, or marriage certificate that states Sandhurst on it, and you're wondering where this is, this would be Bendigo. I shall also try to give you some idea of how they lived and the hardships these early pioneers had to put up with in their efforts to come out to this country and settle in the gold rush days. I shall begin my talk with a brief account of the background history of Blackwood, from a genealogical point of view, realising that this town has a limited interest to some of you, but I will, Then go on to the surrounding towns where I hope to be able to give you some detail of such towns as our ancestors might have lived in.

Um, I have a map here on the back wall. Some of you don't know where Blackwood is, you might have a look afterwards. It's a small town about an hour and a half drive from Melbourne. Uh, it's situated off the Ballarat Highway between Bacchus Marsh and Daylesford. The Lourdi Derg River runs through the Loodi D Gorge from Bacchus Marsh to Blackwood.

Uh, it's a delightful little town. There's only a pub and a general store, and there is a uh mineral springs have delightful mineral water, which, uh, I think it's better than Dale said, but I'm prejudiced, and, uh, it's situated in the. great dividing range and it's a delightful place to get away from Melbourne. I think there's not many places like it as close to Melbourne where you can get away. My grandfather built a holiday house there in the 1930s.

He bought a school that had been closed down that had been built for the miners. And out of that timber he built a holiday house and another house which he sold, but he kept our house for the family, it's been passed down. From my mother and now to my sister and myself. Uh, not many people have heard of Blackwood, uh, surprisingly enough, even though it's so close to Melbourne, but in its heyday, it was the biggest gold town closest to Melbourne. In 1855, when gold was first found there, the population reached an estimated 13,000 people.

Can you all hear me up the back? Bit louder, right? I'll try. I got over my nerves. But as with all gold mining towns, the population rose and fell, and as soon as the gold was extracted and they exhausted the field, they moved on to different areas.

There this is one reason why it is so hard to trace your ancestors on the gold fields as they never stayed very long in one place, enough, long enough to register any information on their families. My job as historian for the Blackwood Historical Society brings me letters from genealogists who, when they find a birth, death, or marriage certificate with Blackwood on, they write and asking for more information. Probably some of you have done this to other historical societies. I've got a whole file for. Um, to help me with this, I have got a lot of records of the schools and pupils who lived in the area, which I got from the history section of the education department.

They've been very helpful. I have compiled histories of all the schools in the areas around Blackwood for me free of charge, which is really great, typed it all up. And I've also included photostat copies of lists of pupils that were at the school. Um, you don't get a full list of the pupils only if, um, there's been petitions that have gone backwards and forwards. They wanting the school made bigger and they tell you how many children there are.

Uh, and these are held now out at the Public Records Office at Laverton, but they will bring them up into the city office for you. I also have copied out items of interest as they appeared in the local papers around Blackwood, mainly, mainly the Bacchus Marsh Express paper. Uh, and I've put some of these on tape, uh, I have copies of some of these papers in at the Public Records Office. I've also collected early electoral rolls and post office directories of the area as well as, uh, cemetery index, which the Genealogical Society did here. And the archivist of our society.

Has copied off the birth, deaths and marriages of the Church of England register, and we both have started indexing early mining registers of the area. I don't want to get inundated with more requests, but if I can help you, I will. Over 8 years of recording and compiling information, I now have enough records to fill 4 big filing drawers, 2 cupboards under a bench with a desk open that my husband had to make because he got sick of seeing any boxes all around the place. But I still have a lot of history of the area to collect. My idea is to in future, uh, write another book, um.

Dealing more with the pioneers and photographs of the area, photographs of the mines as they were and as they are now. Um, the idea for this book that I did write in conjunction with another member of our society came after he had written to me and asked me would I help him. He had, um, written a book, uh, it was on accountancy. He was a teacher down at Bairnsdale, and because it was successful, he thought he might try and get his thesis published that he did for the Melbourne University when he was there in 1970. He wrote the thesis on the mining in Blackwood.

And he was told that he didn't have enough material. He needed some more, and so this is where I came in and I was able to Give him a lot of information. I said to him, Well, what's in it for me? And he said, Well, what do you think? And I said, can I be co-author?

So he said, All right, as long as my name comes first. And, uh, his name is Buckingham, so it starts with a B and it comes before H. So, And I did the photographs in the book. I bought a secondhand lens reflex camera and uh I copied off old photos and it's quite simple really. I just bought some extension tubes and uh just put them on your camera and with a bit of experimenting I found that they'd come up quite well.

I just sent them off to Pacific. They do nice black and white photos, glossy ones. And uh so I was able to have them in the book. I did the information on the pioneers and the landmarks and we did about half each, which worked out quite well. Luckily I had collected a lot of information on the history of the area, and it was just a matter of typing it up and putting it together.

Um, we had this book launched in the Blackwood Hotel, and, uh, I asked the executive director of the Central Highlands Regional Tourist Bureau, would he come down to Ballarat and launch it for me, and he said yes, he'd be quite willing to, and, uh, member of our society offered a dozen bottles of champagne, which I didn't knock back. And, uh, the hotel put on biscuits and cheese and uh. I did a bit of publicity around the local papers and we had a crowd in the pub and it was a great night, and the highlights of my life, it was really good. And uh I've had a lot of correspondence from the book and uh a lot of enquiries, a lot of old people have sent me photos and it's been a worthwhile experience. The first time a book has been written on the area.

And I am happy that I have had something to do with it, and I feel that it's preserved for future generations to be able to. See what that was like. Now I should go on to the rest of my talk about the central Goldfields area. The region of Victoria is located about the cities of Bendigo, Castlemaine, and Ballarat. I'm sure you've all heard of these towns.

Uh, contained in this area at one time, the majority of was the majority of the population of Victoria. Officials estimated that 30,000 adult men were on the goldfields in June in 1852 and 100,000 in 1855. It is in these areas that most of our ancestors came to in search of gold or to set up stores or other services and requirements for the diggers in the way of buildings, houses, schools, supplying machinery, tools, setting up hotels or sly grog shops. For those that found the gold, there are always those who would trade it for goods. Or even entertainment or pleasure, as one digger described it, gay women deluded, inebriated diggers into disreputable amusements.

Quite often the traders did better business than the gold miners. Most of the history of the central goldfields sprang from the search for the alluvial and deep shaft gold. After the city of Melbourne was almost brought to a standstill with a hurrying off to Bathurst in New South Wales, the mayor of Melbourne offered him a reward of 200 pounds in May 1851. For anybody who could find gold within a radius of 161 kilometres from Melbourne. Officially, the first gold found in Victoria was announced in the Geelong Advertiser on the 7th of July 1851 by James Esmond, who found gold at Clunes.

Some 2 weeks later, Michelle and Party made a discovery at Anderson's Creek near Warrandyte. This field proved to be so poor that it never attracted more than a few 100 people. The great bulk of Victoria's gold was to be found in the wild wide arc to the north and west between 50 and 150 miles from Melbourne. The next discovery was made by Charles Peters in late July 1851 near Mount Alexander, which is now called Castlemaine. Early in September they made their discovery public, and it is said That they gathered 50 pounds of gold in weight.

Soon the surrounding places of Forest Creek and Friars Creek were opened up. And one startling success. The next discovery was early in August 1851 at Bunningyong by Thomas Hiscock. I had hoped that he'd be related to me, but he spelt his name wrong. Later in August, uh, 10 miles away, the great riches of Ballarat was discovered.

By mid-October 1851, Ballarat was to reach its peak, a population of between 6 and 10,000. At the end of October, a rush to Castlemaine began bigger than Ballarat two months earlier, and by this time, thousands from South Australia and Van Diemen's land were beginning to arrive. By mid December, some 20,000 were in the area. Then gold was discovered in Bendigo and a new alluvial gold field was announced in the Argus on the 13th of December 1851. Esmond of Clunes, Michelle of Anderson's Creek, and Hiscock of Bunningyong each received 1000 pounds from the Victorian government for discovering gold near Melbourne.

Early in 1852, the whole of Europe was informed of the riches of Ballarat and Bendigo, and migrants boarded ships in thousands, prepared to endure 3 to 5 months at sea for a chance of independence. Mostly they were young men who never again saw their homelands. Hundreds never even reached the gold fields. They died and were buried at sea. Nearly half a million sailed from the British Isles to Australia in the in the 10 years following 1851.

In Melbourne there were so many new arrivals that it was impossible to find a room or a bed or even a bath at any price. Often travellers who had spent months in sailing ships from Europe arrived only to find that they had to sleep on the wharf. Later, the accommodation problem was solved partially by the government's building of two immigrants' homes. And this was followed by a larger building at South Yarra to hold 750 people. 1/3 of Being raised by public subscription, government, government also aided construction of a Wesleyan shelter and the Chisholm's reception centre.

The following year, more than 10,000 migrants sheltered in these five institutions, but all this was still inadequate. So government La Trobe set up Canvas Town on the west side of Saint Kilda Road, which could hold 7000 people. Most of the residents were the poverty-stricken families left behind by the diggers who had left them there while they. Tried their luck on the gold fields. Many a miner lost his wife or children here and never saw them again, owing to the fever and the poor conditions.

By winter, many thousands. Had moved across to the new houses built in Emerald Hill, South Melbourne, late in 1853, the canvas town was closed down. Most delayed as briefly as possible in Melbourne before taking off for the diggings, generally to Castlemaine or Bendigo. Old friends and shipboard acquaintances clubbed together and brought the necessary tools and supplies such as picks, shovels, axes, tin dishes, tents, clothing, blankets, firearms, lamps, pots and pans, and food supplies. There was a great rush from Melbourne and Geelong as people poured off ships and sent off, set off on the roads, closely followed by the ship's crews, leaving the ships in the bays almost deserted.

The ones who could afford it went by coach. Bulli drive or horseback. Many of the migrants spent their small capital within a few days on transport for themselves and their luggage and arrived on the goldfields penniless. Prevailing prices were bad enough, but few of the early migrants knew that Bank of England notes were not legal tender. In the colony and could be.

Cashed only at 15% discount. Many paid exorbitant sums for the landing of all their household chattels off the ships, and storage space was so limited and expensive. Some began to sell what they could by sitting near the wharf pathetically offering watches, clothes. Guns, books, furniture, etc. This gathering in front of the Customs house became, became known as Rag Fair and developed into a popular market as regular traders moved in.

Every kind of vehicle was in demand from horse and cart to the humble wheelbarrow. Long lines of men, bullock drays, and every other conveyance took to the rough roads out of Melbourne west to the distant ranges. Those who walked either pushed a wheelbarrow with their belongings in or carried packs on their backs like snails. It was a continuous procession over the bleak keel plains leaving Melbourne. The road no more than a track or a series of tracks.

Hundreds of yards wide had been churned up into liquid mud in winter. Which was knee-deep, those on foot crawled like flies across a plate of treacle, while those with bullock rays, it was a misery. It was, if it was not boggy and muddy in winter, it was foot deep in mud dust and pitted with deep ruts and holes in summer, making the journey almost intolerable. My own great great grandparents arrived in Melbourne from England in 1855 and went by bullock train to Bendigo. The only record of their trip is that my great grandmother, who was a small child at the time, had a bag of prunes for a pillow.

When she arrived there, they found she'd eaten the whole lot. Mrs. Charles Clay Clacy gives a vivid account of the journey from England to Bendigo in her book A Lady's Visit to the Gold diggings of Australia in 1852 to 19953. On arrival at the diggings, tents were set up everywhere with some means of identification. Scarves, anything out of the ordinary so they could find their own tent.

Stumps and packing cases were used as furniture, and a flower bag was prized as the basis of a rough rough stretcher. Most slept on the ground, sometimes on straw mattresses or leaves or bracken. And they even wore their clothes, all their clothes that they possessed. Thousands of people Digging, wheeling, carrying, and washing for gold with a constant sound of shouting, swearing, thudding of axes. Trees in summer water is scarce.

The heat was awful, and the dust from all the dugout holes choked the air. At night, men clustered around campfires or sly grog shops, talking, singing, drinking and fighting. Men often had to cart their earth 5 or 7 miles to wash for gold, owing to the lack of water in some places in summer. What water they had had become polluted, and bilious diarrhoea, generally known as dysentery, was common. Children were prone to this, and many a cemetery, as some of us will know.

Has filled with graves of these young children. By 1852, most husbands now sent for their families to join them. There were some 5000 women and children on the fields in January and by June about 10,000 were housed in primitive slab or stone huts as well as in tents. The official number of people rose from 19,000 in January to 3,030,000 in June. Nearly all new arrivals came from neighbouring colonies, some 30,000 by sea alone between July 1851 and April.

1852. Early in 1852, half of the new arrivals were from South Australia. They had left or were leaving for Victoria. Over 15,000 of these a year. Uh, had come by sea from South Australia carrying their swags, or they walked for 2 to 3 weeks.

The South Australian government fixed their price of gold some 10 shillings above the Melbourne price of gold to make sure that the gold came back into their territory. This proved successful, for over 1/5 of the first year's earnings at the Victorian mines were sent to Adelaide. Many South Australian diggers invested in land in their, in South Australia. A book I have brought with here to me tonight, uh, called Gold Escorts by Les Blake, gives a remarkable account of the Gold escort route from Mount Alexander, which is Castlemaine, to South Australia during the years 1852 to 1953. Miners on the field came from England, Scotland, Ireland, European countries, whites and negroes from America, Chinese from Canton.

The hardworking Cornishmen from Cornwall and tin, a tin mining country at the south end of England added their knowledge to the field, as did the Californian miners from America. We can see the remains, remainders of these pioneers with such names of places as German Gully, California Flat, Yankee Gully, and Welshman's Reef, etc. To a remarkable extent, the diggers lived and worked together in national groups. Often whole gullies were occupied by Irish Scots, American, German, Cornish men, or Chinese. Large groups were often together from the same towns such as Liverpool, Bristol, Paisley, or Cork.

Many dispute about claims developed into national. Oh. Gradually the town grew and government headquarters at the major diggings were quickly made into solidly constructed camps. Wooden barracks from the military and police for the military and police, courthouses, storehouses, and a big jail with the Union Jack flying predominantly above. Government and private escorts would take deposits of gold to Melbourne and could be claimed on production of of.

If you produce the receipt. Uh, let's see if you didn't lose it. Then Nearly, sorry, nearby was a main street or commercial centre with dozens of stores and eating houses, doctors, barbers, blacksmiths, etc. Each had their own place of business distinguished by their own flag. The stores carried a vast range of goods whose prices varied according to the season and the cost of cartage.

Trees left standing near the central parts of the diggings were covered with notices such as, My wife Elizabeth Blinkinson, having gone away with Jim the Sawyer, I will not be responsible for your debts and have nothing more to say to you. The newspaper had long missing friends columns by means of which families and friends tried to reunite. Copies of these papers may be held at the La Trobe Library or in microfiche for the public to view. Seasonal factors also increased the digger's mobility. For example, Bendigo, a dry digging, was popular in winter, and Castlemaine in summer.

The great rushes of the early years involved up to 30,000 men and more to Mount Alexander, or Castlemaine it was known, and the end of 1851, Bendigo, about 18 May 1852 MacIvor, which is now called Heathcote. In the mid 1853s back to Ballarat and Tarragara, or as it's now known, Malden. At the start of 1854 to have opened Maryborough and later in 1854, Maliel and Inkerman and Fiery Creek, which is now known as Beaufort in 1855. Some of the more important minor rushes involving several 1000 men were at Mount Curong, now called Wedderburn. About September 1852, the ovens, which is now called Beechworth, at the close of 1852, several in 1853 at the Dunalley region of Tarangalla, King Gower, Sandy Creek, and Malligal.

And in 1953 again to Waranga, which is Beechworth and Ru area. To Ararat in 1954 and early 1955 to New Bendigo, it's now called Saint Arnold, and of course Blackwood. From 1851 through to 1856, the Castlemaine area remained constantly attractive. Bendigo held up well until late 1855, and Ballarat again became popular late in 1952, gradually built up to become the most important field of the mid-1950s. Then the rushes were shifted in 1856 to 1957, and three of the most spectacular rushes were to Dunully, Ararat and Stawell.

Preswick and Jim Crow, which is Dale Smith's diggings. Were among the first fields of 1851 and remained popular throughout. Because of all these different rushes to different gold fields, it is very difficult to trace the whereabouts of our ancestors. And often they did not stay long enough to register anything of importance. But Bendigo and Ballarat.

Deep shafts were driven hundreds of feet below looking for the reefs of gold. Parties of miners spent up to 9 months digging and sinking shafts, and this form of mining meant that such towns such as Ballarat and Bendigo. Uh, fairly, they were fairly permanent gold fields where the men remained for long periods. It also made the collection of taxes by sale of licences to dig much easier for the gold commissioner and his men. In spite of protests on the Bendigo diggings, the largest in Australia in 1953, the government fixed the licence fee at 30 shillings a month.

In December 1851, a mass refusal to pay an increased fee of £3 a month made the government back down. Heavy agitation over the collection of the licence fee led to public protest meetings. The unfairness of the licence tax, difficulties, and generally poor returns from the deep leads minings, together with the brutal and increased digger hunting for licences, led to the armed rebellion of Eureka at Ballarat in December 1854. Peter Lalor, a digger, was in charge of the men. 30 mounted soldiers, 152 infantry men, and 100 police attacked the camp.

It was over with within 15 minutes, leaving 6 soldiers and 22 diggers dead. This was the last of the diggers' hunts, for the hated licences were abolished, and miners' rights costing £1 a year were substituted. Bendigo was a leading central goldfield city and proclaimed a municipality in 1854, 1855, and renamed Sandhurst. Gold was found in 1851. Bendigo and the staggering Of 947 tonnes of gold is known to have been produced between 1851 and 1954 when the last mine closed.

The 9th Sandhurst was dropped and the original 9. A Bendigo was used against. After a vote by ratepayers in 1891. 1854 census of Bendigo was 15,480 and 4000 Chinese. The whole population of 1871 was 32,000.

Different books I have brought along with me tonight for you to see will give you. Uh, idea of the greatness of the field. The Mount Alexander, the Castlemaine Field became for a time the main digging and Victoria of Victoria overshadowing, overshadowing Ballarat, and by the end of 1851, 20,000 diggers were in the area. The big rush to Bendigo did not occur until May 1852. For administrative purposes, Bendigo was in the Mount Alexander Gold District until the end of 1852.

These rushes were followed by the MacIverr or Heathcote rushes in the middle of 1853, and Bryant's Ranges, Tarangarra Malden area rushes over Christmas of 1853 to 191954. Ballarat was claimed the richest of Victoria's major gold fields, and today many examples of the community's gains that came from the gold can be seen in the notable architect architecture that survives the gold period. Such as their buildings, the banks, hotels, and private dwellings. To get an idea. The great gold field was like a trip to Simon Hill would take you back in time and let you see or try to relive how your ancestors could have lived and worked on the field.

The world's largest nugget was the Welcome Stranger, which weighed 2,284 ounces. It was found at Malile in 1969. Ballarat's Welcome Nugget was the next in size, weighing 2,217 ounces. 14 mines on the Ballarat East Ports lead yielded 35 tonnes of gold. Mount Alexander and Cassamine fields are estimated to be the richest shallow alluvial gold field ever known.

In the 1st 10 years of mining, escorted conveys dispatched 3.5 million ounces of gold from the Mount Alexander fields. I have brought along tonight my own personal collection of Australiana books on the goldfields. If you care to read more of a particular area, you may have a look at these after, but please replace them as they're on my own personal collection, and I value them a lot, and I have used a lot of them to gain my knowledge for my talk tonight. Uh, I hope you have not found this too long. I thank you for listening to me, and I hope you have learned something of your ancestors.

Um, if I can answer any questions, I'm quite willing to try to do so. And, uh, you're quite welcome to have a look at my books out. Thank you very much.

This is an automatically generated transcript and may contain errors.

So for some time. Now a balanced reputation. Alan is a school teacher, he's come all the way from Bairst. It's wonderful that he's made the effort. Some of us have read a thesis that he wrote some years ago.

Ja. Armstrong asked me to mention that he also Mr. Uh, thank you, er, thank you very much. Um, what I intend to do today, uh, Is, um, the paper that I do intend um presenting is really the central part of this work that the, um, Is just spoken of that I did in 1970, so um it's just the uh central part of it, uh, and I've also got um some extracts from the Argus of 1855 which will perhaps um, Make it a little bit more vivid, um, what the Blackwood Goldfield was like, in that particular year, 1855 and 1856, also, um. I hope I don't spend too much of your time.

Margot tells me that um half an hour or 3/4 of an hour is normal. I I hope that's not too long for you. Um, And I'll be reading uh this work too. Well, in March of 1855. A fellow called Edward Hill, um.

Made public, or tried to make public, um, that that there was gold in the, uh, Blackwood, uh, ranges in the Lurdi Derg River. He tried to make it public because he was under the impression that he'd gain a 300, that that he would gain 1000 pounds reward as the discoverer of a new gold field. Now the saga of Ed Edward Hill is a very long one and uh, I won't go into into that, but that's, um, the starting point of the exercises. I'm shaking a bit. I might sit sit there, I think.

I don't know, um, is it, is it loud enough? Do. Um, where are we? Edward Hill's efforts to publicise his discovery and turn the Mount Blackwood Ranges into an established diggings were successful. At the beginning of April 1855, the Chief Commissioner of Goldfields, Mr.

Wright, sent Assistant Commissioner Standish to report on the new diggings, who then estimated the population to be upwards of 2000. By June 1855, the government had appointed a goldfields warden, a magistrate, and a police officer to the now Mount Blackwood goldfield, and the population was estimated by the warden to be 10,000. By September of that same year, the rush reached its climax when the population was estimated at 13,000. So the population went from zero in March to 13,000 and uh from then on it went down. This all happened in uh six months.

The diggings was one of the numerous small men's fields of those golden years of the 1850s. However, the diggings and the general aspect of the countryside was much different from that of the other western and northwestern gold fields. The ranges were densely wooded and higher and more precipitous in those than in those localities. In fact, the correspondent writing in the Argus in July 1855, had this to say about the diggings. Mount Blackwood beats all other diggings for mountains, ravines, and breakneck precipices.

Some of the roads are awful to ascend and it and would almost frighten the Highlander. The only consolation is that many of these mountains and all but perpendicular ranges contain enormous hidden wealth, which time and patience will fully develop. The goldfield was also an extremely difficult diggings to reach. Was situated only 55 miles from Melbourne, but from all accounts the journey there must have seemed more than twice that distance. Printed in 1855, a guide to the Goldfields of Victoria Road of Mount Blackwood.

Mount Blackwood is one of the nearest diggings to Melbourne, but being rather distant from both of the main roads is more difficult of approach. Many persons go by Gisborne striking through the black forest, but we think the majority prefer the nearest road by Bacchus Marsh, striking off several miles beyond the township on the Pentland Hills. The first portion of this road is tolerable. But the last 10 miles is, without exception, the worst we know. The distance is, however, 15 miles less by this road than by the Black Forest.

We have only in conclusion to add that the indefatigable Cobb and Co. have started a conveyance direct to these diggings, taking the route we have indicated by the Bush Inn and the Black Forest Hotel, where it strikes through the forest in a straight line for Blackwood. Any person whose pocket can afford it should go by this opportunity. Assistant Commissioner Standish had the same harsh words to say about the roads to Blackwood in his April report of 1855, and in fact expressed the opinion that the difficulty of access by the present roads seems to me to be the chief obstacle to the prosperity and development of the Mount Blackwood goldfield. Nevertheless, at its best it was a great field.

The ground first opened up for mining was very rich, and nuggets were found varying in weight from 1 penny weight up to 21 pounds. Almost the first speck uncovered was a piece of pure gold of over 6.5 pounds, which was kicked out of the grass on the side of a gully. John Drayton, writing in the Smith's Weekly in 1924, as a matter of fact, he had a couple of articles about Blackwood in 1924 and, uh, one was entitled Weighed in the Blackwood Balance, and, uh, this was the story that he that he told here. Probably the most unique situation from a prospector's point of view in the history of Australian mining cropped up when the second nugget was found on the Mount Blackwood field in 1855. The man who found it had not the slightest idea of its weight because there were no scales within 20 miles.

However, Shingle Splitter Bramby, who was said to have been a captain in the navy in his better days, helped him out. He guessed the weight of his twin children of 20 pounds for the pair. And raising the slug, reckoned it would balance them. A clean stick with a centre cord and slings at the ends was arranged to take the weight. And with the kids at one end and the nugget at the other, the balance was thrown slightly out of centre.

The weight of the slug on the scales of the bank in Melbourne was within 2 pennyweights of 21 pounds, so the story goes. The best nugget on the record of the diggings was this 21 pound lump found in 1855. It smelted for 167 ounces of good gold. It is said that a number of larger nuggets were found, but that they were never disclosed in order to prevent a larger rush rush from taking place. Which I guess is understandable.

The largest is said to have been taken away secretly. The story is told that it was discovered by two Americans who fearful to make their discovery known, placed it in a sack and carried it through the bush to a road that led to Melbourne. The very rich alluvial gold of the early days was chiefly found in the Lurdi Derg River and its tributaries, and the Nuggety, Long, Yankee, Jackson's, Dead Horse, Whipstick, Back and Kangaroo Creeks. The sinking was very shallow, averaging about 20 ft. The old mining registers hold records of many large nuggets discovered.

In Long Gully, a nugget weighing 60 ounces was found. Shiaguli, several nuggets weighing 42 ounces, 46 ounces, and 61.5 ounces. Uh, the last being known as the Blackwood eagle, this was supposed to have been found in 1935. Um, someone here may be able to, uh, verify that. At Dead Horse Gully, the nugget weighing 21 pounds was discovered.

And so was another weighing 100 ounces. Up until 1938, mining operations were still being carried out in these localities, but very few men were earning a living. Just back to 1855 for a moment. In April of 1855, the population of the field numbered about 2000. The chief part of the diggings was on the banks of the Lurdi Derg River.

However, there were numerous parties at work, 4 or 5 miles, both above and below the principal workings. There were not more than 5 stores and 2 butcher shops, and provisions were very scarce and dear. Cartage being as high as 50 pounds a tonne, and with the rainy season yet to come, it's destined to rise even higher. The population, the greater part of which came from Castlemaine, was said to be exceedingly well conducted and orderly. Up to the time of Assistant Commissioner Standish's visit, there had been but one case of robbery when the offender was detected and summarily dealt with by immersion with the creek.

The field was very rich, but with the dis as with the discovery of any new field, even at this time in its life, many persons were returning from it unsuccessful and discouraged. Despite that though, the news of the large discoveries at Blackwood soon spread, and by the end of June 1855, it was computed that there was between 10,000 and 12,000 people on the field. However, by now the diggings were much scattered up and down the creeks and gullies for from 15 to 18 miles. So perhaps, so perhaps a correct estimation of the population could scarcely be formed. 10 to 12,000 people maybe a modest estimation by the warden as um you know, we've all or we've heard and we've read accounts that the that the population of the field was 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000.

The point is though, when any new gold field was established, the government was very, very keen that it would that it would succeed. So they immediately sent um government officials there. And it was their job to collect uh licences, miners' rights, and to make an estimate of the um population every week, so that the, the figures that I'm uh using here are from the estimates of the um, Mining warden of of Blackwood every week from 1855 through to uh, Around about 1900. The warden collected the miners' rights and business licences, and this is recognised by historians as a pretty reliable guide to the population of the gold field. In an incredibly short space of time, the whole of the river bed was riddled from end to end, and many rich patches of gold were found.

In June of 1855, uh Mr. Robert McKenzie was appointed the first warden of the Mount Blackwood Goldfield. And he, together with a magistrate and a police officer who had already been on the field for several months, represented the law at that time. Later on in the year, they were supported by a larger police force consisting of 4 mounted and 7 ft constables. Surprisingly, their job was very easy as it seems the diggers on this field were very well disposed to law and order.

A correspondent writing in the Argus at the time had this to say about the behaviour on the field. Mount Blackwood is not the noisy, turbulent place it gets the credit for. In fact, quiet and regularity prevails everywhere, and there is not the noise and fighting that one hears about. It is true that there is a good deal of singing and noise from the grog shops that abound here, but even that ceases between 11 and 12. Uh, The warden's job was um a very very difficult job in those days, um, he had a diary, it's um available in the um archives of Melbourne, um as to what he did do, what was a typical day and uh a typical day was something like this um.

As I say, the warden had little or no help until late in the year when a clerk was appointed to assist him with his paperwork. He spent most of his time inspecting applications for Creek claims, granting written authority for the same, and afterwards settling the disputes which occurred. He also settled the disputes of the quartz miners at Symonds Reef and other parts of the district. From the nature of the country, he was compelled to perform most of these duties on foot. Many of the places he had to visit were inaccessible on horseback.

He often returned after dark and had so much work to do that he could only attend to his office duties in the early hours of the morning. Consequently, before a clerk was appointed, the miners and storekeepers did not have sufficient facilities for taking out their rights and licences. Mr. Mackenzie was a much respected warden. When he was transferred to a more important field in 1856, the settlement presented him to a banquet dinner, um, such was their respect for him.

The most crowded localities of the field were within 1.5 mile of the main camp and were known as Golden Point, where a township was being surveyed in allotments, Tipperary Flat. Redhill, the Landcamp and Simmons Reef. The government officials were stationed at the main camp, which was at Golden Point. By 1856, Golden Point, Redhill and Simmons Reef were all small townships, with Golden Point being the main one. By 18 1856, Blackwood consisted of these small townships and outlying settlements, and had schools, churches, dance halls, and a cemetery in which some of their pioneers, Are believed to have slept beneath wooden headstones with what was known of their names carved on the board.

Long Collins, Scotty, Redbill and Sailor Jack were some of the inscriptions on these wooden um headstones. This is according to another article in 1924 by John Drayton. The field in 1855, in June, was in a very unfurnished state. All the miners lived in ragged tents and there were very few buildings. The Police barracks had just been completed, the stable and lockup for the same department were in the course of erection.

The stipendary magistrate and warden were sharing the police officer's tent. Which was also used as a police court, warden's office, and mess room. However, a tender had been sent in for the erection of a police court and quarters for the resident magistrate, and another had been sent in for the erection of a local court, warden's house, and stables. They were all soon built. By the end of July, the ragged tents were being gradually replaced by a large number of substantial buildings.

Conditions were ideal from the point of view of the digger. His miner's right gave him the freehold of a quarter acre of ground on which to build his humping and establish his garden, as hundreds of them did immediately after getting gold. Fuel was to be had for the cutting. Milk and mutton were supplied by the flocks of goats that roamed the hills and domesticated in the camp, and the gold was plentiful. The Roman Catholic and Wesleyan churches were already being built in the course of erection.

A daily coach called the Esta was being run between Melbourne and Mount Blackwood by Cobb and Co. and the price of the fare was 4 pounds. By September 1855, the population had reached 13,000. And over 20,000 people had passed through the area. This is sometimes where we get population dates uh population figures mixed up.

At least 20,000 people would have been to Mount Blackwood, but at any one time, the population was 13,000. Almost every nationality was represented on the field. In one week, Warden McKenzie issued 457 miners' rights and 95 business licences. The Roman Catholic chapel was a large tent and that was capable of holding 500 people. Archbishop Gould paid a visit to the field late in September and remarked in his diary how surprised he was to see such large numbers of children.

By October, there were over a dozen hotels capable of affording every possible convenience and the diggings had at last got its own post office. Not only alluvial mining, but quartz mining also looked extremely well. At the time in Victoria, um, mining was in a, in a depressed state. And the yields at Blackwood looked very, very good, and that's one of the reasons why so many people flocked here. Um, At Greendale, some of the finest farmland in the colony er was there which, Could supply the diggers with their butter, cheese, bacon, and other edibles at prices which were based on the earnings of the consumers.

In these good times, prices were high and the men paid without kicking. They had the money, and it might as well be spent on good food as on inferior grog, some of it anyway. Uh, people in Blackwood were very optimistic about their future and regular reports in the papers seemed to suggest that Blackwood was going to become another Ballarat. And this is true. The reports coming in from uh Blackford, they really did think in 1855 that it was going to be as big as Ballarat.

However, um Within a couple of months all that was gone. No very large fortunes had been made at alluvial mining, but the parties were frequently making as much as 500 pounds or 600 pounds in a few months. The tub and cradle method was cheaply used in the early days, and good gold was obtained. However, for various reasons, many people left the field disappointed and disillusioned, only to give it a bad name. The ground at Blackwood was was extremely tantalising.

As all the heavy deposits of gold were found in the in the bedrock, so it happened that thousands of holes were sunk almost touching the gold but without obtaining a colour owing to the unfavourable nature of the rock. Hence there was a great disappointment and many inexperienced miners left. And what really um des destroyed Blackwood as an alluvial mining field was the weather. In September 1855, it started raining and it continued raining right through October. The creeks flooded and all the miners were driven from their claims.

At times it was so wet that it was impossible to work at all, and even the quartz miners were affected. Parties then clubbed together and expended an incredible amount of labour, cutting races and and making dams to turn the creek. But in every instance, the races were not 1/10 large enough to carry floodwaters, and the races and dams were totally wrecked. This all but put an end to alluvial to alluvial sinking at Mount Blackwood. And it was realised that it would never be a good digging in the winter season.

It put severe financial stress on the alluvial miners, most of whom left for other and drier diggings. By January 1856, the population had been reduced to 7500 people. The court's claims didn't come up to the expectations. And during February and March, heavy rain fell. And in the fortnight ending March 15th, 1856, 3000 people left the field, leaving a mere 3500 remaining.

By 1857, the population was 1600. By 1858 it had fallen to 950. In 1864, it had risen to 1800 and it stayed at about that figure until 1869. Um, a little bit later I'll mention something about the saltan mine at Barry's Reef, and the, the date 1869 is important because, The Salton mine was such a great mine that Barry's Reef itself supported a population of 4000 people for 10 years, so um that is um, That's the story with the population of Blackwood up until those days. Um, what I thought I'd like to do, um, I've, I've got some extracts from the Argus here, I don't want to read them all out, but these all came from the Argus of 1855.

I, I wrote them out about, 77 years ago and I I I typed them up. The other day and they're just little extracts of what, Was written in the Argus about Blackwood in 1855, and if you piece the articles together, you get a history of the uh field, in those years, in in that year in any case. Just a couple that I'd like to um pluck out. July 7th. 1855.

A branch of the Bank of New South Wales is expected next week. At the moment there are 3 licenced hotels and a number of others are being built. There is 1 chapel, chapel. By July 30th, the feature which cannot but be remarked upon by anyone returning to Blackwood after a short absence is the number of substantial buildings which are gradually taking the place of the ragged tents in which we will want to live. RC and Wesleyan churches have already been built and it is rumoured that the Episcopalians are about to bestir themselves.

Several buildings have now been erected at the camp, and among them I am pleased to see a substantial lockup which should deter any evildoers. The place seems fairly glamorous at this stage but um it wasn't quite so glamorous um. As this little article points out, Golden Point, where the government camp is and where a township is being surveyed in allotments, is situated on a large sloping bank close upon the creek. On either side it is hemmed in by very steep ranges. Further up the main creek is the celebrated red hill where a considerable quantity of gold has been obtained.

Both at the Red Hill and Golden Point, from the want or utter absence of sanitary regulations or preconcerted arrangements for that important object, an intolerable stench salutes the nostrils and passersby. And from the same unfortunate cause, one can easily predicate that when summer comes on, death and the doctor will be the order of the day at those abominably muddy, filthy spots which are the headquarters of the mountain. It wasn't such a, a nice place after all. September the twenty-sixth there are a couple of things there which just, Illustrate what the the day to day life of the of the place must have been like, um. A man posing as a doctor treated a minor last week, and as a result, he died.

When a qualified doctor was appointed, it was found that the disease he was suffering from was easily curable, but the treatment that the fake doctor gave aggravated it and led to his death. The miner left a wife and a large family. A very amusing incident occurred last night. At the Red Hill, above the hotel where the telegraph coach starts daily from Melbourne, the ground rises considerably. And on the top of the rise, amidst a line of other tents and shops, is a blacksmith's shop.

Opposite the shop, the telegraph coach had been left for the night without the wheels being chopped. Early next morning, a man was about to mount his horse, and to do it more readily, put his foot on the hind wheel of the coach to get into the saddle. He found his footing was gone and was astonished to see the coach going down the hill at a rapid pace. Luckily the coach stopped after hitting a tent, wrecking the tent and all it contained, and no one was hurt. That was supposed to be funny.

Last week at a meeting to raise funds for the building of a Church of England, 60 pounds was raised. Since then, such has been the success of raising funds that the tenders have already been called for the erection of that building. Mr. G. Hamilton delights to placard himself the Australian Russell.

And he along with his friends Messr. Gibson, Shearcroft, CP Renaul and Miss E. Thorne have been been amusing the people of Mount Blackwood with concerts and a varied list of dramatic entertainments in the large entertainment room of mine host Gregory at Golden Point. Uh, this is, uh, fairly interesting because, uh, Margot was talking about the printing press. And uh the names are the same.

Additional signs of civilization have been lately seen by the arrival of Messrs. Kent and Scott. Enterprising printers, late of Melbourne and Collingwood, who have come here with a printing machine and types. No doubt with proper energy and management, which this correspondent believes these two gentlemen possess, a fortune lies before them. And they put out 1 or 2 copies, didn't they?

Um, October 2nd, the optimism of the place again. There is an immense amount of work to be done here in quartz, mining, and crushing in the next 20 years. At Simmond's Reef, for instance, I am, I am informed when first discovered, gold was seen lying on the top of the reef just as openly as you would see gold watches, trinkets, etc. in a jeweler's shop. The fortunate discoverer is is the fortunate discoverer is now likely to become a millionaire.

Well we haven't got too many millionaires either. Um October 9th. On the evening of the twenty-eighth, an 11 year old Irish orphan girl fell down a pit whilst playing with some other children. She was immediately carried into the Golden Age Restaurant on the red hill, and Doctor Bent was sent for, but he found that her life was extinct. The next day the magistrate held an inquest and wished a postmortem.

As it was presumed she had only died of apoplexy. But the girl's friends objected to this. It was stated that her mother and sister had died in a similar sudden manner. There is no lack of accommodation for anyone or his horse at Mount Blackwell. Besides numerous hotels already open, another.

Levy's Golden Point Hotel has just commenced business. It has a fine concert room which is handsomely fitted up and excellently attended. Roger's Hotel at Simmons Reef has just opened up, and another Acres or Yankees's Reeff is in the course of erection. The police have been very active here during the last week or so in search of sly grog sellers and have taken several. Kelly, Webber.

Armstrong, Murray, Smith and Keen were each fined £50. Paul Murray, the Frenchman, and Smith, the butcher could not pay their fine and were marched off to the locker. Sunday observance is a controversial topic at the moment, but to numerous storekeepers at Mount Blackwood, Sunday is not even on the calendar. November 6th. On Wednesday last at the Red Hill, there was a dreadful murder.

It occurred during a drunken squabble between two Swiss at the Italian independent store. The murdered party's name is Martino Christofanini and the murderer's name is Morelli. The murderer, during the confusion, escaped and there is no clue to his whereabouts. The squabble commenced by gross abuse on both sides when Morelli called his victim an ass. At this, Fernini caught hold of Morelli.

A severe struggle ensued when both fell to the ground. Morelli then stabbed Fernini 3 times, according to Doctor Owen's testimony, who made the postmortem for the inquest provided by presided over by Mr. Shooter, the magistrate. It appears that one of the stabs pierced Fernini's heart, who died almost immediately. Poor Fernini was a native of Switzerland and has left a wife and 3 children there to deplore his sudden death.

Such is another instance of the deplorable effects of the indulgence in gambling and strong drink. Now there are others there, I don't want to bore you with them, um, and you can read them at your leisure anyway. I'd like to uh finish off if I could just by speaking about um. The way in which mining was carried out in Blackwood for 30 years, it was mainly sluicing after. After 1855-1956 when the alluvial mine ran out, um, the professional mining men moved in and they made their living by sluicing gold.

Um, On page 6 there there is um a little bit about uh sluicing and um, What sort of success they had. Um, I'd like to just go on to the Chinese for a moment. Uh, because we do hear a lot about how many Chinese were here and what they did. Um The Chinese arrived in 1858 when 50 Chinamen arrived from Castlemaine. And before the year 1861, the numbers had increased to 200.

Contrary to what most people believe, the most Chinese had ever assembled on the field at any one time was 500 in 1864. The number tended to remain at that figure for a number of years, but it did fluctuate with the seasons, um. You know, we've heard 30,000, 10,000 Chinese, um, once again these figures were, The figures of the, of the water. And uh on his reports he had to give a a report um an an estimation of the population of the whites and the population of the Chinese, and they were done separately. Um, on their first arrival, the Chinamen pegged the main creek for many miles and except in a few cases, held possession of the creek workings for over 30 years.

During this period, thousands of tonnes of debris was sluiced into the main water channels, and when floods came it was spread throughout the river. The result was that places in the river that were previously barren of gold became enriched. This gave the Chinaman a splendid harvest. As they cut tail races and faced the creek properly, many Chinese miners made as much as 1000 pounds. A sum which would be considered a fortune in their native land, to which they invariably proceeded when they had amassed sufficient wealth.

The Chinese lived in their own camp at Golden Point, which covered 1 acre of ground. They had their own stores, their gambling houses, and their Masonic lodges. The Joss House was at a distance from the churches of the whites, and they lived as decent, law-abiding citizens of a little commonwealth whose regulations were made to meet meet circumstances as they developed. In 1888, there were only about 60 Chinese at Blackwood, most of whom were extremely poor. And the last Chinaman at Blackwood died there early this century.

Throughout their long history at Blackwood, the Chinese population were almost exclusively male men. Um, As I say, by 1880 the alluvial diggings at Mount Blackwood were just about exhausted. However, um, there were small numbers of population there getting a, a meagre living out of the place for the next 30 years. Approximately 300,000 pounds worth of gold, uh, that is, Alluvial gold has come from Blackford now that may not seem very much, but 300,000 pounds when the price of gold was er, 3 pounds an ounce, um, that's 100,000 ounces which er, works out to quite a number of tonnes of gold, and er, today, of course, uh it would be worth many, many millions of dollars. Um, Goldfields have A couple of stages, there is the alluvial mining where you just go and dig your, If you've been to Sovereign Hill, you can see they've got the um alluvial mining, the little er shanties and their digging holes, and you've got the quartz mining, and that's the that's what the um the the Sovereign Hill mine is and er, That was the other phase of mining at Blackwood, the quartz mine as well as the, the Louisville, and I I'd I'd like to finish just by saying something about quartz mining.

Um Quartz mining was initiated in the district by the discovery of S Simmond's Reef, named after its finder. This was shortly after the alluvial diggings opened, and by August 1855, quartz mining was in fact the leading feature of the field. Using very rude appliances, the yield in the first few months was something fantastic. As much as 100 weight of gold was obtained from the crop of the reef. Many claims were yielding 10 to 15 ounces to the tonne, and uh today if you want to run a quartz mine, if you get an ounce to the tonne, then it would be very profitable.

So that's, you know, that's the, the yardstick as to whether a mine is um a good one or not. If you can get an ounce of the tonne, then you're not doing too badly, and uh many claims early in Blackwood were yielding 10 to 15 ounces to the tonne. Court's claims became extremely valuable and were sold for as high as 600 pounds each. Many people would not sell at that price. However, as early as September 1855, would-be quartz miners received a sound warning from a correspondent writing in the Argus.

He said do not let glittering facts allow us to forget that all quartz miners are not all lucky. In many cases, 3 to 5 months may elapse before they obtain a decent supply of quartz from their reef, to say nothing of their hard, heavy work, involving in most cases from 60 to 100 pounds per man and even more. This is a warning to people inexperienced in quartz mining to not rush into quartz mining unless they have the money to do it. Many have and have failed and have then had to go somewhere else. Nevertheless, despite warnings such as these, the accounts of gold in quartz reefs sent diggers prospecting over the ranges.

And whenever a blow of quartz was discovered, a party was soon formed and a paddock sunk. But as a general rule, no gold found and many miners lost valuable time and money and then left Blackwood discouraged and disappointed by their non-success. Um However, you know, there were a couple of very, very good reefs found at Simmons Reef and Barry's Reef. The um Point about Blackwood, which was probably very unfortunate, was that the the shafts were only sunk to a very shallow depth because the people didn't have very much capital, so that most of the shafts were less than 200 ft. Uh, the shafts at Ballarat on the big mines go down to 2500 ft, so you can see that um, They did only uh scratch the surface in uh a lot of ways.

In the early days, the methods of gold extraction were of the most primitive. Quartz reefing was little known of, even in the late 1850s. But the common sense of the men at that time suggested methods of treatment from which results came. Um, on that should be page 8, but it's page 18 there, you can see, um. The Simmons Reef Group.

Um The various mines or the leading mines that worked at uh Simmons Reef. These figures are all after 1869. But um. There's 14 or 15,000 ounces of gold there from various companies at Simmond's Reef, Perhaps read that to yourselves later, I I won't go through it. Um, Someone might maybe be able to uh verify this or may know something about the Rogers Big Hill Mine.

This was um A striking example or this is, I've forgotten which article this came from, but a striking example of how a mine could succeed when well managed by people who understood their work was afforded by Roger's Big Hill load at S Simmons Reef. In that mine a halfpenny weight of gold for the tonne paid actual working expenses. And 3/4 of a penny weight of gold to the tonne paid actual uh made a profit. The natural conditions of the mine were very favourable. The hill rose very steeply from the river where the battery was located.

The ore was sent in chutes to the hopper of the battery, which was worked by a water wheel, and one boy managed the wilt the mill. Mr. Rogers is stated to have made a fortune out of ore that yielded 1.5 penny weights to the tonne. One would certainly believe that he did make a fortune. If we look across the road and saw the tomb of the Rogers family, um, the marble of which was imported from Italy.

To make one of the most costly memorials of a pioneer and his kin that has been erected on any gold field in the Commonwealth. That bit of information came from another article. Written by John Drayton. I don't know whether Anyone that uh. Agree or disagree with that.

Um Further north of Simmons Reef at Barry's Reef Township. Is the Sultan belt of reefs. Probably the greatest amount of work done on the Blackwood Belt was at the Sultan Company's mine, which was worked from 1869 to 1880. It had a shaft sunk to 914 ft but was not much work below 750 ft. It was an extremely well managed mine with the finest machinery of the times.

Valued at approximately 14,000 pounds. It's crushing machinery consisted of a 20 head battery driven by a 60 horsepower steam engine. Altogether it yielded 65,801 ounces of gold. Valued at approximately 264,000 pounds. And 58,562 Pound was paid in dividends.

Um, the Salton mine was as good as any of the mines in the, in the, In the, in the state, barring a couple of the really big ones at Ballarat. Um Once again, if you've been to Sovereign Hill, um, You'll notice that mine that they've got there, well, the Saltan mine. The operations for that would have been as big as that, except that the battery house at Ballarat only holds a 10 head battery. Well, the one at the Salton mine was twice as big as that, so that whole operation that you see at Sovereign Hill was right up there at Barry's Reef. Um I won't worry about going on any further.

A couple of other good mines I suppose, the Rip Van Winkle mine down at the caravan park, um, there's a little bit in there about it. The red, white and blue mine was another very good mine. And uh the Easter Monday mine is the most recent. Um, I might just leave it there, except to say that at the back of the. Thing here, I have written a list of the gold yields, Of the district Since 1869, you see there are no records really available up until, 1869, so that Actually the first part of this list comes from, That compiled by the mining registrar, Mr.

Croaker in 1900. And the second part comes from um. Mr. Williamson, I've forgotten who he was or what he did, but um. I've totaled those up, there's there was 170,000 ounces of gold from all of the quartz reefs since 1869.

Valued at approximately 700,000 pounds, now of course before 1869, there were, there were lots of other, there were, there were lots of other yields as well, so um, That's really not an accurate figure. But it's an accurate figure from 1869 onwards. Yeah, I, I, I suppose I could just close by saying that most of them, most of Blackwood is under exploration licence by the mining companies at the, at the moment. In 1970, the Planet Mining Company, I don't know who they are, but um, they held um most of, most of Blackwood. um Western, Western Mining, the big American company, they've held various uh, tracts of land, just probably waiting for the price of gold to go up or um.

So that one day they might be able to move in. That's it. Sorry to have taken so long. Before we ask Margot the story. Thank you.

Right. observation Uh oh. Yeah, that's um an interesting thing, what. In those days, um. Anything that uh as when when a mine closed down, or even when people left the district, they didn't just sort of leave their houses, they got shifted away.

So you know the the whole thing was dismantled. So It could be, it could be true. On behalf of everybody here, I'd like to thank Helen for coming today.

This is an automatically generated transcript and may contain errors.

This is a talk by Mr. Rolf Baldwin of Geelong who has memories of. Yeah. Who has memory Rolf Baldwin of Geelong, who has memories of Blackwood between approximately 1920 and 1930. This was taped at Mrs.

Garnett's place, Simmons Reef, Blackwood, January 1978. 23 or 1924 maybe my brother and I with our mother and very often with our sister used to spend holidays with my great aunt Katie Kate Grant in Moong. She introduced us to one of the local identities, a man called George Allen. Who was considerably older than we were, probably the same age as our uncle we found out afterwards, and uh this man we found out to begin with was a bushman who understood bush work thoroughly, and our earliest journeys with him were into the bush for woodcutting. On these journeys we learned more about him, that he had been a a sergeant in the light horse during the war, and bit by bit he told us of his earlier days before the war when he was an unmarried man, and then followed much, Much the same routine that many, uh, many men of that type did, though he would during the summer, cut firewood for the mines or for local milk factories and so on in the bush, stack this, and that would be carted out and uh that gave him a ready.

Uh, a regular supply of money, and then in the winter when there was water available, uh, he and a mate used to work a claim on the Coojamanna Creek, uh, called the Garibaldi, or on the the claim was on a hill called the Garibaldi. During conversations, George told us of an old man whom he knew, called Mickey Nolan, who lived in a hut. Just a little way up Dale's Creek from Greendale. George told us that this old man, old to him. Uh, even, and of course doubly odd to us.

Uh, George told us that this old man. Had, uh, uh, had been a miner, and that that he still, uh still did a little fossicking around on the creek. This of course was enough for us, and we then walked across to Greendale and up Dale's Creek to the hut, a distance of about 5 miles, uh, introduced ourselves to this Mickey Nolan, and uh were made welcome. Uh, he evidently was very glad to have a receptive audience to talk to, and used to talk to us endlessly about various experiences of his, uh, and we would listen all ears, of course, and on the way home, we would repeat, uh, repeat these yarns that we had heard from Nolan and, uh. Uh, adjust various details, and then, on subsequent meetings we would ask him about the same yarns and uh these yarns would be told again, and we found that they never varied in essential detail at all.

That he He was a remarkable, uh, man, though of course there were several others of the same type that we knew, living in the bush. Um, old men then, probably, he was in his late seventies when we first knew him in 1925, and, or maybe 1924 we first met him, but he would, I should judge, be in his uh late seventies then. Uh, had followed most bush occupations, he'd, uh, cut wood at different times, had been, uh, a shearer for a short while, though not a regular shearer, I think he'd even been a shearer's cook, he'd worked in various capacities as a station hand, and had been, uh, an alluvial miner and had also worked. Uh, as a miner, many miners did work on the, uh, on the waterworks, uh, early in this century, and he had worked when they were putting in the various tunnels and other earthwork connected with, uh, with Pike's Weir, particularly on the tunnels, uh, that was, uh, a ready field for men with mining experience. Uh, in the course of, he'd always been a bachelor and um had.

Read prodigiously, naturally, uh, anything that came to hand at all, and out of this, had a strange bookish way of talking, or rather the choice of vocabulary was bookish, uh, and, showed that he had obviously read very widely, not only, uh, not only ephemeral stuff, but also had read uh. To read more considerable literary works because his uh his language showed that, although it could break into uh break into pure colloquial at any time quite easily as well. Uh, the, the voice, uh, my brother and I could mimic reasonably well, I, I think, and, uh, again, we used to practise because much of the flavour of these yarns came, uh, from the, uh, the voice and accent in which they were told, and, uh, from the vocabulary that was used, rather than in any particular point to the stories. Uh the accent we could never quite fathom. His father, he told us, had been a, a police constable in Collingwood in the early 50s, and I should imagine he, he'd come uh out from Ireland uh before the uh before the gold rushes, so that this uh this accent that Nolan.

Had or affected was uh partly uh partly Irish and uh partly an Australian admixture which gave uh, gave a somewhat uh comical effect. Uh, as a raconteur, he was, uh, unequal, he had no shyness, he had a tremendous flow of, uh, tremendous flow of language, and whenever he had a willing audience, was willing to, uh, was willing to talk, uh, endlessly about various experiences. The various yarns that we heard from him. had in them. The strange purple patches, and it was these that uh that that we remembered particularly, and uh, very often the yarns had no particular beginning and uh no particular end, but they, they had somewhere within them a uh a purple patch which made them, made them memorable to us anyway.

Uh, such a one concerned a claim that he showed us on the creek. Uh, as we wandered, uh, around the different places that he'd worked, he showed us the, the first shaft that he had sunk on the point where he lived. Over this one, he, I think that he had been um. Put on the track by Diviner who said that uh that there was gold in that particular place, and Mickey himself, uh did do a little divining, so he may have uh may have, hit on the, uh, hit on the particular place to put his shaft by that method. Uh, however, he, he showed us the shaft, and he said, I sank that shaft through very hard ground for something like 15 ft.

It would not be that deep now, because it has fallen in. And then I came to the bottom, and oh, what a bottom. It was her Smooth, flat as a billiard table and as smooth as glass, and no skerrick of gold could have stuck thereon. That was all to that particular yarn. And this led him on, the story of gold uh led him on to various anecdotes about the different miners who had worked over on the Ledberg.

This, uh, of course, was a great interest of ours, and he told us with a a rough map that he drew of various miners that he'd known of down in the Luberg. Who had been old men working there when he was a boy. We could never find at what stage he had come uh to the Blackwood diggings, but I think this must have been when he was uh when he was very young, and he'd probably grown up round about Blackwood. Uh, with his father maybe being a miner, I, I can't remember whether he ever told us, uh, told us about that or not, or maybe he'd even run away from home and lived around Blackwood, but as far as we could make out, he'd spent some years of his very early life in and around Blackwood and had then gone through to northern Victoria and New South Wales. Had then come back into Victoria, done more mining, worked on Pikes Weir, and then when he grew old enough for the pension, had set up his little hut in Dales Creek.

This seems to have been what happened and uh I I think uh that that summary of it is probably reasonably close to the facts. In any case, when he was young, he knew of these various men that worked in the Ledberg but uh did not um. But it did not know. Very much about them personally, because he had never worked down there, and probably what he had to say about them was largely, uh largely hearsay. Uh, the tracks down to the Lerberberg, which he mentioned to us, uh, began in the north, at least to the north of Mount Blackwood, uh, with Square Bottles track, which led down to the confluence of Whiskey Gully and, uh, the main, the main river.

This track, he said. belonged to a man called Square Bottle Bob Stewart, or more simply, Square Bottle Bob, owing to his fondness for the square bottle, or rather, the contents thereof. Then Just to the south of the mound, uh, running off the end of the existing lane, uh. The Were 2 tracks. The one which ran round to the northeast corner of the mound, so to speak, and ran and followed the spur down there, was known as Chadwick's track, and uh he had uh no-one had nothing to say about Chadwick, he didn't know about him at all.

Uh, then another track went from the. The southeast corner of the mountain followed down that spur, uh, and this was known as Berri's Track. Further down from the mount there there was a track that followed the main, uh, the main ridge of the Bearshead Range, and didn't uh run. Into the river direct, but went along the range for maybe 1 mile, and then down a, a very abrupt spur which was extremely steep on each side. Uh, this was named after a Chinaman or maybe the leader of a party, maybe a solitary, we could never make that out, but was named after a Chinaman named R.

Cow. But there were other camps on the river that Nolan told us of, there was a Cairns camp further up, presumably near what is now called Cairns Gully, on the, on the river. And there was one, I don't think he ever told us exactly where this was, but he'd evidently gone down to have a look at this, because this uh patch of ground uh was worked by, Uh, a man called Ted Austin, or Skeleton Ted, because he won so little gold that the man looked like a skeleton. And he had constructed with immense labour, a great drive into the side of the hill there. Oh man, it was huge, and when you went inside, it was not so much like a drive as like a damn great cathedral with its Gothic arches and huge chambers in which you could well nigh turn a team of bullocks, but all his labour won him nothing, for he could not find enough gold even to keep himself in food.

So much for Skeleton Ted and the miners of the L. Other yarns concerned that uh that that same locality, and one in particular, centred around uh Drury's Hotel, of which the ruins are still visible on the west side of the. Myong Blackwood Road that goes over Mount Blackwood, uh, before, on the south side of the mount, on the west side of the road on the south side of the mound, uh, a little below, uh, where Dev Devney's homestead. Now is whether this homestead is still owned by Debney or not, I don't know, but uh that in turn is almost opposite to where Landsborough House, the old school was. So that Drury's uh Drury's Hotel is a stone ruin some half mile to the, maybe less, quarter of a mile south of uh of those two localities.

Now at Drury's Hotel, uh, the miners from the Lederberg used to uh gather, and that probably there was a store there as well. This may have been mentioned, though I can't, uh, can't remember. And that was the scene of another long yarn of Micky Nolan's which concerned on the one. Side, a miner who had been walking out uh from Blackwood. Late at night, uh, with a parcel of gold which he was taking down to Bacchus Marsh, or Bacchus's Marsh, as Nolan always called it.

Uh, Alan, uh, this man, not Alan, I'm sorry, uh, this man. A miner was waylaid by 22 men who had been drinking in Drury's Pub, a little on the mount side of the pub, uh, close by a hawthorn hedge. He was killed, and these men took the body down into the bed of the Corkyparramo Creek, which is pretty deep down, steep down there, and there, uh I think um Nolan said they constructed a sort of pyre and burnt the body. I can't remember that, they may just have buried it. But at all events, whatever happened.

All of this was observed by a man called Alan, who had drunk himself almost into a stupor at Drury's Pub, and had then set to work to walk back towards the mount, but had lain down and fallen asleep underneath the hawthorn hedge. Some while later, he woke up and heard these two men discussing the slaying of the miner from Ballarat from Blackwood. Too frightened to say anything, or to show his presence, he saw the miner waylaid and saw him murdered, and then, when these two men had taken the body down the creek, he made off. He did not tell anyone of his black secret. But it weighed on his mind.

And some while later, his employer Came out and found Alan sitting at the door of his hut, weeping his heart out. Come, come, Alan, you seem distressed this morning. And there the the yarn went on through phraseology that I've quite forgotten. The employer questioned Alan and finally found uh uh finally hit on the whole story. Uh, he asked Alan why he had not told about it, and Alan replied to him, oh, how could I front a magistrate with a tail like that?

The magistrate would only say, oh, this is just a dream or hallucination of a liquor-fuddled brain. What again was the end of that story, I have no idea, but the dream or hallucination stayed as a as a catchword with us for a very long time. The one. Of Nolan's stories that we remembered best of all, I think, was one which concerned a visit of his to the man that he called the register at Bacchus Marsh. I think he had to go down to see the the register.

On some matter of a disputed estate or or something of that sort, I I can't remember what the uh uh what the. And what the purpose was for the visit, but I it may, may have been something of this sort, uh, at all events, when he uh when he reached Bacchus' Marsh, he fronted the register, who sat at his desk with pen and paper and closely examined me. Now, how many relations have you, Nolan? And I told him one brother, sir, residing at Bacchus's Marsh. And he wrote busily on the paper.

The questioning continued, and he continued writing down my answers. After a while, I mentioned some other relation, a cousin maybe, or something of that sort. And the register said to me, Nolan, I thought you said you had only one brother. And I said, yes sir, when you mentioned relations, I thought you meant close our blood relations. Oh, tut tut tut man, and with that he threw down the pen.

You might well have spared me the trouble of writing all this. So the yarns went on. For hour after hour of all sorts, and I shall only mention. One or two more, because they, they would become tedious. These both concerned New New South Wales and different things that had happened to him up there.

At one stage he must have been a surveyor's assistant, I think it probably was, and he, uh, travelled the country fairly extensively with his, uh, with his boss in a buggy, presumably, and. The, he told us about this boss and his, his powers, and amongst the powers was a blue document, which he carried. And I remember him going up to some property owner who objected to him trespassing on his land. Uh. Taking the document from his pocket and saying, by virtue of this document, I may go in and over your land wherever and however I like.

The other New South Wales story that I can remember uh concerned the the coach journey from, Uh, Mosgill down the hay. Uh, and I remember well the, the run of names Mosgol, Booligal, the One Tree, and Hay. They paused at at the one tree, as coaches did in those days, and, Nolan described the passengers, I I forget what led into that, but he described the the the passengers. Looking Like so many, so many spectres with great glaring eyes because of the dust which so thickly covered them. That the same story mentioned the uh the the horses.

Um, Which he said were sturdy medium drop horses. And they travelled so fast that no winner of the Melbourne Cup ever put hoof to turf more speedily than they did. So much for Nolan and his yarns. that there were many of those and At that particular time in 1925 or 19924, uh, there was one other man living, um, living further up the uh the creek from Nolan, and he used to come in from Greendale more than from, uh, more than from the. The south past Nolan's little track, so that uh we only met him once or twice.

His name was Charlie Faukes, and uh to us he was of no great interest. He too followed the same occupations as uh as Mickey Nolan, something of mining and something. Of timber cutting and so on, but by the time we knew of him, he was uh he was just a pensioner too, and lived in the same sort of little hut that uh that that Mickey inhabited. Built, uh, partly of logs, partly of, uh, Two scraps of galvanised iron that they had, but both uh both cosy roofed with um uh with galvanised iron and quite uh quite weatherproof. Uh, both huts, in fact, all the huts that were built through the bush, uh, in those days followed roughly the same pattern, with the, uh, chimney and door at one end, a window at the other end, the bunk probably under the window or along one side, uh, a table in the middle and maybe a few stools, and another little movable table, uh, over near the uh near the fireplace.

The I, I can recollect at the moment no more, uh, stories about uh Mickey Nolan or his doings. He died, uh, as far as I can remember, just before the war, or it may have been just after the war began, but he had moved out of, uh, out of Dales Creek by, I should think, 1936 or 1937. I remember going to visit him. Uh, again, after I'd, after I had left the university, I went to visit the old man and had a long arm with him, but I think it was soon afterwards that he, uh, uh, that he went to live in Ballarat with a niece. I think then went into the benevolent home and died, as far as I can remember about the, uh, about the beginning of the war.

Uh, at that time, in the, or going back further than that, in the twenties, uh. We knew many people in the district and maybe the names of a few of them would be would be interesting without my going into any detail because most of them were. Not much more than acquaintances, and we didn't know very much about them. George Allen and I have already mentioned he was a heroic figure, the boys, of course. Uh, another man who was, uh, as an uncle, I, I suppose an uncle by marriage to George Allen, uh, was one Willie Fowler, who was a dairy farmer up above Pike's Weir.

And One of his sisters, I think, had married a man, white, who had also had a dairy farm just down. Uh, um below Uh, below Fowler's on the Corrabeet Creek, I'd imagine, at all events where the, uh, where the road from Mooneyong to Greendale, uh, goes down across the, uh, across the creek in its first dip before going north to Shooter's Place. Uh, Willie Fowler, uh, had been a great horseman in his days, something of a rifle shot, too old for the first war, so he'd never been a, a soldier, and he used to bring us into, uh, into Blackwood in the early days, I think probably our first journey into Blackwood was in 1924, under his tutelage, and he introduced us to many Blackwood figures whom I will mention lately, uh, later on. Uh Another figure from that particular area was Willie Linsdall, who lived. On the uh on the hilltop, where the, the Ballarat Road at that day, now bypassed, uh, dipped down towards Pike's Weir.

There was the old stone building, which had been George Grant's Mornyong store. The name Mornyong took in more than the modern Myrnyong and went further to the west along the road. But this was called the Monyong store, and it was family, uh, family law. How, uh, George Grant, who was my mother's grandfather, had set up this store in the very early digging days, and done very well at it, but worked himself to death in a few years and left his, uh, widow to bring up the large Grant family. Uh, Willie Linstall was, uh, a, a close friend of ours because he had taken over the Grant property, probably bought it, maybe he wasn't the first.

Uh, after that, but all events, he after the passing of the Grants, but at all events he was the owner of the, of what had been the Grant property in our day. Uh, he used to take us into Ban and, uh, also on several memorable occasions, took us into Ballarat, which had long been a land of dreams for us. Another place which we used to visit, uh, now, I speak more of the early 30s, maybe the late 20s and the 30s, when uh we had, Uh, when we were older, who could walk walk further, and had a, consequently a, a wider sphere of operation and uh. Not to begin with, but uh by the early 30s, of course, uh we had bikes too, and that that uh greatly, greatly widened our range. But in uh in those days, uh beginning in 1929, I think that's when I first had a bicycle, uh, I began the building of the hut here at um.

At Simmons Reef and uh in between building activities and after the hut had been uh had been completed, of course um I uh, came to know the Blackwood residents pretty well, some of whom we had met 10 years earlier or Not 10, 5 years earlier when Willie Fowlers first brought us into place, uh, of those, I, I can remember quite well. category. Those that I knew well belonged to two categories. First of all, People who were just miners by chance, really. These were people on sustenance who at that stage were working all over the old field trying to pick up a little gold, and their camps were dotted over all the old localities which had been worked in the 50s and 60s.

Uh, their names, uh, I, I. I, I shan't mention many of their names because they were but birds of passage. Those that I knew best were were Jack Graham, a man who was very interesting to us, as he had been, uh, worked on the railways as a fireman and had then gone into house building before the depression caught him, and when that that did come onto mining pursuits. Uh, and, uh, his two friends, the, the Gorn brothers, who were much younger, and who had both, as far as I can remember, had their apprenticeships, interrupted by the depression and had come again to, uh, To see what they could do in gold mining up at Blackwood. Uh, these, uh, at that stage were working in the bottom of the Lederberg.

The two boys, after a year or two, went back to Melbourne, but Jack Graham stayed around the area for some time and worked on many of the old mines, or old claims rather. Uh, such as the Albion, uh, the new Sultan, which had a, a drive running into the side of the hill, uh, just north of Simmons Reef on the north bank of the Leother Derg, and I think he also worked for a while on the Easter Monday, though that I'm not sure. And that that is enough for the uh. Sustenance men, as they were called, uh, the locals that we knew well were, firstly, Herbert Cairn, uh, and his brother Willie Cairn, who used, in, in the twenties to um, Keep the hotel, but who uh later gave, gave up the licence in favour of one Ernie Morgan, who was the publican, as far as I can remember, right through the thirties, I think from about 1928 or 1929 until the outbreak of the war. Uh, then, uh, there were Ernie Tyrrell, uh, we knew him quite well and used to hear a good deal about the early days from him, and another of the same vintage, uh, Was Billy Gribble, who used to live uh in the place which I think is still called Gribble's fruit garden, although the old home in which he lived has been subsequently burnt down.

Billy Gribble was a miner too, and I remember being taken by him up to above Shaw's Dam, to have a look at a uh claim that they were working up there called the Bill's Birthday. Uh, I think 3 were in that party, and they had what was a novelty to us. We'd seen whims at work before, but this was, uh, a horse whip that they used for their, uh, for their haulage. Uh, Herb Cairn at that time was still occupied with mining, and he used to take us sometimes up to the Trojan Mine at the top of Yankee Gully, and we used to watch operations there. And I think at one stage, I, I'm not sure at this point whether it was Herbert Tan or or somebody else, but a small, small party were working in the Easter Monday, and we also went through, uh, through those workings.

Uh, others that, uh, we knew, uh, were the Matheson brothers. Though we were never so familiar with them. For some reason, I don't know why we knew them reasonably well, uh, and Mick Hayden, who was a a fairly old man and was a prominent local identity at that time. Our greatest friends uh among the locals were probably uh the Williamsons and the Libby's. Uh, the two brothers, Williamson.

Um, Were Norman and Magnus, they'd been born, uh in Barry's Reef, as far as I know, at all events, lived there, in their early days, and, Uh, had They've been in the district all their lives, except that in the, in the depression of the nineties, they, they both went to other states. Uh, Magnus over to the west, uh, where he was on some of the big rushes, and Norman Williamson down to Tasmania, where he worked in the bush for the Mount Lyell and other companies round there, mostly on the construction of timber trams, which was his particular mate yeah, he had never, Uh, followed mining but was more inclined, uh, for working in the bush on timber in one, in one way or another. Uh, in the time when we knew them, Magnus was working with his brother-in-law, Fred Libby, out at, uh, Greenhill, and, uh, Green Hills, and Norman Williamson lived part of his time in Barry's Reef, or up at uh Blue Mountain properpper, and, In the end, He, through the, I think it must have been right through the 30s, he was uh acting as one of the first bushfire lookouts for the uh Forest Commission, had a hut up on the very top of Blue Mountain, and uh had up there a little, A stone dammed lake and a tower which he built for himself, of of saplings and so on, a man who was completely at home in the bush and uh loved, Loved a life for its own, for its own sake, I think, rather than for any money that they ever made out of it just because he liked uh living in that way. Uh, he often too would be out at Green Hills, and we spent many a happy hour yarning there with the two brothers and their sister, who was Mrs. Libby, and old Fred Libby, who was the same age as the others, but always called old for some reason, and uh.

Sometimes, uh, going with them on long walks through the bush. These to us were a delight for all three of them, as well as being very knowledgeable bushmen, were keen naturalists, keen readers, and. A great quotas of poetry, something that seems strange in modern times, but these men had read so widely that it was evidently quite Uh quite usual for them to, um, uh, to talk of what they'd read and to quote from what they'd read, and particularly of poetry, they all seemed keen on, on that, uh, poetry and music, and all of them, as well as being good singers, and Mrs. Libby was particularly, um, uh, a good musician, as well as being keen singers, um. Wrote, uh, wrote poetry, and sometimes would would quote their own, their own poetry quite unaffectedly.

At this stage I think I had better stop. Because although that there is much more that I could say about these men and about others whom I knew through this uh through this country, I feel that at the moment I'm becoming rather random in uh in what I choose, and I would like to give the matter some thought and uh, think more carefully of what I should say about the uh about the locality and of what, people