Always dreaming of an El Dorado

John Campbell Miles (Cam to his mates) was a dreamer. He dreamed he would make his fortune from gold. Like hundreds of miners, he dreamt that the next prospecting journey he went on would produce that elusive bounty. He was also a man of great courage and strength but, sadly, there is little recorded of the man who stumbled across a mineral field that made him famous and gave Queensland its richest mining city and thousands of people a living. Miles was the eighth of nine children born to a Victorian compositer and gold miner, Thomas Miles, and his wife Fanny Louisa (nee Chancellor) so “gold” was in his blood. Little is known of his childhood or education but stories from his father and swagmen who panned the creeks in the rainy season and only got a few ounces of dust, kept his dream alive. As he got older, he was lured time and again into the virgin bush, seeking his dream – a fabulous gold mine. In 1908, after having worked underground at Broken Hill for several months, he and a companion set out for The Oaks Goldfield in North Queensland, riding bicycles more than 2,490 kilometres through dust, mud, heat and desert to find that gold mine. It took them six weeks, and when they arrived, Miles became disillusioned. Two thousand gold diggers were already sweating away on a virtually worthless two square miles. The pair then decided to try their luck on the Etheridge field, and after selling their bikes for enough money to buy essential supplies, they set off to make their fortunes. After five weeks of back-breaking sweat and toil, all they found was three pennyweights of gold, and so fine it was like flour. This was not John Miles’s El Dorado and the two men parted company. Over the course of the next 10 years, Miles worked on stations, cutting sugar cane and prospecting. The dream of finding his golden fortune never left him. He had heard dozens of times an old stockman’s tale of the “richest run ofgold in the world” – a reef of gold and quartz which supposedly lay not far from the infamous Murranji Track, the Northern Territory cattle trail blazed in the 1880s. It was reputed to have claimed the lives of many men and cattle, and stretched across hundreds of miles of scrub and waterless plains.

In 1923, Miles set out once again and headed into the north-west area of Queensland. He was alone on this journey, except for his trusty stallion “Hard Times”, two foals, a mare and a pack horse. He paused beside the Leichhardt River after chasing the pack horse which had bolted on him suddenly. It had taken less than a minute to catch it, but it was crucial to do so as it had all his food and water on its back, and to lose it would have almost certainly meant death in this most inhospitable part of Australia. As he looked up at the surrounding low-lying hills, a glint caught his eye. Picking up his ferrier’s hammer, he walked towards the silver shaft of light. Upon reaching the overhanging rock, he brought his hammer down hard, and the rock smashed into a honeycombed pattern of black and grey. It was heavy too, and he realised he had unearthed a secret that the Earth had held for millions of years. He had learnt to recognise galena years earlier when he had worked at Broken Hill but this rock was different. After spending days collecting samples of the rock, he headed three miles east to the Native Bee, where four men were working the unprofitable mine. From here he sent 10 samples which he wrapped up and left beside the bush track for the mailman to collect on one of his infrequent trips to that area of the outback. They were on their way to the Government assayer in Cloncurry, 70 miles away. Miles waited patiently. Weeks later he received a letter to say that the samples, when analysed, showed that the poorest contained 49.3% lead and the richest 78.3%. The letter also said that he would be able to make a living out of mining this field.

John Campbell Miles, prospector and discoverer of Mount Isa, in August 1962, three years before his death

He then wrote a letter to his uncle in Melbourne, urging him to head north and help him mine this new field. He never received a reply. Miles was then joined by a red-bearded bushman, Bill Simpson, one of the miners at the Native Bee. It was these two men who pegged out the first leases on the Mt Isa field, and from which the milling city of Mt Isa came to be. Miles and Simpson pegged three areas of forty-two acres (17ha) around the original outcrops, soon known as the Black Star and Racecourse leases. Six months later the name, Mount Isa, was conferred on Miles’s find, by which time several consignments had been sent to Cloncurry, and much of the new field taken up. Already, however, the field’s future had passed into the hands of William Corbould who, with Douglas MacGilvray, had options over most of the leases, including those of Miles and Simpson. Mount Isa Mines Ltd was floated in January 1924; 12,250 shares of £20 each were allotted to the promoters to secure the optioned leases. Miles received 500 shares, nominally worth £10,000, some of which he sold over the following 20 months to sustain his prospecting at Lawn Hills. In December 1925, Miles still held 8,680 £1 shares; that had dwindled to 2,900 by 1929.

In 1930 he still had some money left and bought a “newfangled motor car” and once again set out on the Murranji Track to find the lost gold reef. But once again it was not to be. Nature intervened and sent torrents of tropical rain down, making the journey impossible. In 1933 he sold his last 400 shares. He returned to Mt Isa but stayed only a short time before returning to Victoria. Here he spent years fossicking for gold in the Gippsland area but all he ever found was enough colour to barely fill a small essence bottle. He spent the years up to 1957, wandering the goldfields searching for his El Dorado. The only two visits to Mt Isa after his discovery of the field in 1923, were in 1957 when he was invited to inspect the company’s huge mining and metallurigical operation, and 1962. It was probably characteristic of the wiry, weatherhardened prospector, whose only admitted vice was pipe-smoking, that he should return to the north-west overland by car, camping under the stars, and then accept accommodation only in the workers’ barracks. He never did regard his discovery as anything more than a stroke of good luck and was very pleased that it provided thousands of people with work, and a secure way of life. Miles never found his El Dorado. When he died on the 4th of December, 1965, at the age of 82, his ashes were taken back to Mt Isa and buried under the clock tower. Maybe, some day somebody will find that gold reef beside the Murranji Track, and John Campbell Miles will look down and smile upon them and know that at least for someone, his El Dorado dream came true.