Echoes from the past
A FORTUNATE FIND
Sydney Morning Herald
16th July, 1934
A family passing through Mudgee had a fortunate find. They camped on pipeclay, about four miles from Mudgee, and the father started prospecting among the old mining workings, with no results, until his little son, who had been playing on an old mullock heap, scratched the surface and picked up a gold nugget which was found to weight seven ounces. Can you imagine the scene. The boy probably called out, “Is this what you’re looking for Dad?”
WEDDERBURN GOLD RUSH
Sydney Morning Herald
22nd March, 1950
The new Wedderburn gold rush is on in earnest with prospectors coming from all parts of Victoria. After a meeting of the shire council this afternoon, the shire secretary, Mr A. E. Cooper, said: “We will grant as many claims as possible to people wanting to dig the streets, provided the earth is put back in its position. Gold is better out of the ground that in it. It has reached a stage where it is open go.” “We’ll dig up the whole town,” one resident said. Thirty claims have been pegged in Wilson Street – the main road through the town. Claims have also been pegged in Reef Street, off Wilson Street, by people who like the sound of the name. Backyard mining is also on in full swing today. The local publican, Mr R. Baker, and his barmen, spent more time in the mine at the back of the hotel than in the bar. No big find was reported today – only several pieces weighing two or three pennyweights and some specks.
SEARCH FOR A LOST REEF
Sydney Morning Herald
28th March, 1952
Mr Leslie Hall, 56, a bachelor, found a gold nugget valued at £500 six inches below the surface of Wilson Street, Wedderburn, today. He was sinking a shaft when his pick brought up the nugget. It weighed 27 ounces. The place is opposite the home of Mr David Butterick who has dug up a £10,000 fortune from his backyard gold mine. Mr Hall recently took over the claim of another prospector, former greengrocer Albert Smith, who dug up a £1,100 nugget from the spot two years ago, and retired six months ago. He hopes to find a gold reef which old residents of Wedderburn believe runs under Wilson Street. An Italian named Cerchi found the reef during the gold rush last century but it was lost.
FLOODED WITH SPECKS OF GOLD
Sydney Morning Herald
22nd June, 1952
This week’s floods caused an avalanche at Walhalla (population 400) ghost mining town 125 miles east of Melbourne, and poured tons of gold-flecked rock and mud into the streets. Disregarding their wrecked homes, some old prospectors are busy washing paydirt. They predict new prosperity for the township, through which, last century, £10,000,000 of gold passed. But Walhalla faces a new peril before it can think of gold. Waters from Stringer’s Creek are running wildly through the town. Melbourne is rushing pipes and other equipment and teams of men are trying to save Walhalla from its third swift flooding in a week. The first flood cut Walhalla off from the rest of Victoria early this week and no word of the township’s ordeal came to the outside world until yesterday. Water rushed down from the hills carrying a great mass of mullock that had been stacked outside old diggings. Then came an avalanche, a huge landslide from the soaked and crumbling hills. And the gold. There is a glint in the miners’ eyes as they pile up flood defences. They are dreaming of the old Walhalla and its 14 hotels, flashing wealth and thousands of people.
THE GOLD ESCORT ROBBERY
The Herald (Melbourne)
18th July, 1953
It was 100 years ago that a band of desperate bushrangers huddled beside dim lights on the Heathcote goldfields and planned the daring robbery that led three to the gallows of the old Melbourne gaol in Russell Street. The gold they stole was then worth £10,000 and most of it was never found. According to the legends of the hills, the treasure is still believed to be buried in the scrub near Heathcote, once known as McIvor. The weekly gold escort jogged out of this prosperous mining town for Kyneton and Melbourne about 9am on July 20, 1853. In the coach, behind the driver Thomas Fookes, were 46 packages containing 2,323 ounces of gold and nearly £1,000 in cash. Around the coach rode Superintendent Warner, Sergeant Duins and troopers Davis, Morton and Reiswetter. The troopers trotted about 14 miles from McIvor, came to a sharp bend in the road and slowed when they saw a strange palisade of gum tree trunks and branches on a rise beside the dusty track.
Before the suspicious troopers could fumble for their heavy pistols, “a murderous fire was poured on them from the palisade above.” Fookes fell from the coach with a bullet through his knee and a gash across his temple. Morton collapsed with a severe shoulder wound, Reiswetter with a ball in his leg, and Davis with another through his cheeks. Duins, his horse wounded twice, fired his pistol at the bushrangers and galloped off to McIvor for help as Warner rode into the scrub to try to attack the ambushers from a flank.
The wounded men were still groaning on the ground as six bushrangers, wearing heavy guernseys, rifled the coach and thundered into the bush to measure out the gold with powder flasks. By nightfall, when the wounded men had been rescued, about 400 miners and volunteer special constables were searching the bush. But while the searching continued, some of the bushrangers had reached Collingwood and other districts and were trying to board ships listed for Mauritius and other ports. By August 4, rewards offered for the capture of the bushrangers totalled £2,900, one of the biggest in Victorian history. Inquiries were at a dead end when one of the bushrangers, George Francis, suddenly turned informer and gave detectives information that led to the arrest of three men. Soon afterwards, he escaped from his escort and committed suicide. But by then the police were sure they still had two men to find. One – his name was Grey – was never traced. The other, when captured, said his name was John Francis, brother of the dead bushranger, and was willing to turn Queen’s evidence in return for a free pardon.
John Francis received his pardon and was the chief Crown witness on Saturday, September 17, 1853, when George Melville, George Wilson and William Atkins appeared on charges of robbery under arms. The three prisoners were tried, found guilty and hanged but police admitted that they had recovered less than £1,000 worth of the gold. What happened to the bulk of the gold, which today would be worth about £35,000? (Ed. More than $5 million these days). Was it taken from a cache by Grey, the man who was never caught? Was it passed to friends of the condemned men before the police surprised them?
Or is it – as many old bushmen believe – still hidden in the earth near Heathcote from which it was mined 100 years ago?
GOLD BUYER DUPED
Bendigo Advertiser
18th January, 1906
Two men, William Sherwin and Benjamin Evans, were arrested today at Fremantle on a charge of false pretences. It is alleged that the two men are connected with a case of imposition reported recently to the Kalgoorlie detective office. About six months ago Sherwin arrived in Kalgoorlie, and, knowing something about his past activities, the police kept him under surveillance. Four months ago the other man, Evans, came to the district, and almost immediately started betting. Concurrently with the arrival of Evans in Kalgoorlie, Sherwin made the acquaintance of a Boulder resident, Oliver William Osmond, and, posing as a well- informed racing tipster, he occasionally gave his newly-found friend tips.
It is alleged that about a week ago, Sherwin told Osmond, as a great secret, that he (Sherwin) had a brother working as an assayer in one of the big mines, and that his brother had a large quantity of gold to dispose of. The upshot of the conversation was that Osmond agreed to buy the gold himself at a very attractive price. On Thursday last, Osmond met Sherwin and his alleged brother, who was none other than Evans, by appointment. At this interview another meeting was arranged for at 3 o’clock on the following day, when Sherwin and Evans stated that they would have bar gold to the value of £500 with them. The trio met at the appointed time, and Osmond then handed £250 in cash and a post-dated cheque for a smaller amount to Sherwin and Evans, and received what was apparently three 100oz bars of gold in exchange. The sellers of the gold bricks wanted Osmond to pay the full amount in cash, but Osmond declined to do so until he had the bricks assayed. The buyer and the sellers then parted.
Later in the day Osmond, suspecting that he had been duped, chopped one of the bars in two, and found to his sorrow that what he had bought for gold was only copper covered over with gold leaf. He at once communicated with the local detectives and they satisfied themselves as to the identity of the men wanted, and telegraphed the information to Perth, with the result that Sherwin and Evans were arrested at Fremantle today.
FLOGGED FOR FINDING GOLD
The World’s News (Sydney)
11th August, 1951
A convict was triced up for a flogging in Berrima gaol – back bare, hands lashed to rings in the wall above his head, feet manacled.
The lash fell – 60 strokes. And what was this convict’s crime? He had found gold, picked up grains of the precious metal and hidden them in his clothes. Maybe a mate gave him away, for to find gold was a crime in those days. The authorities believed if a gold rush came, every warder would go and leave the prisoners to escape. This was in 1825. The point arises. Why did the convict even look for gold? He must have heard about it being found, and he had.
As far back as 1814, when the road was being built across the Blue Mountains, a gang found large quantities of gold. This was reported to the engineer in charge. He ordered them to keep it secret on pain of being flogged. They had all been promised a pardon when the road was finished, so they kept quiet. The next report came in 1823 when assistant-surveyor James McBrian found gold on the Fish River, 15 miles from Bathurst. In his field book, now preserved in Sydney, he reported, “At eight chains 50 links to river and marked gum tree, found numerous particles of gold in the sand and in the hills convenient to the river.”
Again, in 1830, gold with pyrites, was found in Vale of Clywdd in the Blue Mountains. The discoverer was the Polish scientist Count Strezlecki, who later named Mount Kosciusko. At the urgent request of the Government, he did not make his find public. But 11 years later, an experienced geologist, Rev. W. B. Clarke found gold in the Macquarie Valley, and also at Vale of Clywdd.
Clarke had come to New South Wales “to take charge” of King’s School at Parramatta. His essays on science were the basis for study of such subjects in New South Wales. Without having heard of Strezlecki’s find at Vale of Clywdd, Clarke found gold there and later in the valley of the Macquarie River, near Bathurst. That was in 1844, when the State was reaching out in commerce and trade and barriers were being broken down. Clarke had been in Russia, then practically the only gold- producing country in the world. In 1847, comparing Australia with Russia, he said, “New South Wales will probably on some future day be found wonderfully rich in minerals.”
In the Maitland Mercury of January 31, 1849, he wrote, “It is well known that a gold mine is certain ruin to its first workers, and in the long run gold washing will be found more suitable for slaves than British freemen.”
Incidentally, at that time British freemen were swarming across the Pacific to the Californian fields. Among them was Edward Hammond Hargreaves, who in 1851, found gold at Summer Hill Creek near Bathurst. This was done on his hurried return, after observing that the country, where gold was won in California, resembled the land near Bathurst. He was right; but he was far from being the first man to find gold in Australia. Under any system but a convict one, Australia would have leaped ahead when the road was made over the mountains in 1814 and gold found there. But that is how history is made. The real discoverers never get the credit.