The last laugh at Charters Towers
By JL
The good citizens of Charters Towers thought Cornishman, Richard Craven, was mad. The shaft he had dug was the town joke. They called it Craven’s Folly because he’d been digging deeper and deeper, for three long, expensive years, with barely a sniff of gold. But the people of Charters Towers wouldn’t have laughed quite so hard and for quite so long if they’d realised the joke was on them. Self-confident and boastful, Craven was a well-known figure in the Towers. He had arrived during the first ‘rush’ in March 1872, just after gold was first discovered there by the aboriginal boy, Jupiter Mosman. In fact, while Mosman and party were jubilantly staking their claim, Craven was not far away, on the Mt Leyshon diggings, following the lure of the precious metal, as he had done since his arrival in the colony six years earlier.
As soon as he heard of the new find, he joined the rush of diggers to the new field. Fourteen years later, Craven was still on the field and still following the lure of gold. A mechanical engineer, he had acquired interests in a couple of mines and was director of one of the town’s 29 mills. But for 10 years he had been obsessed with the idea that a huge deposit would one day be found in the area where two rich reefs joined – the Queen reef to the east and the Day Dawn reef to the west. But other ‘junction’ mines had been tried before and all had failed. Everyone had given up on the area, everyone except Richard Craven who, in 1886, took up a lease of 25 acres in what the townspeople called “the barren ground”. But he could find no one who was prepared to risk money backing his dream. By chance however, an old friend, W. Ivers, who had already struck it rich with the fabulously wealthy Day Dawn PC mine (PC stood for Prospecting Claim), and had retired to live in London, returned to the Towers for a visit. Craven persuaded Ivers to invest £12,000 to finance the sinking of a vertical shaft on his lease. Thus, the Brilliant PC Gold Mining Company was formed, with Richard Craven the Chairman of Directors.
Digging got underway and continued for three years with no success and the futile progress of the shaft was watched with much interest and much derision by the townspeople.
Towards the end of 1889, the shaft was at 900 feet – already much deeper than Craven had originally thought necessary, and capital was running out. The directors met and refused to spend any more money digging any deeper.
However, they agreed to give Craven one last chance – not to go deeper but to go back and explore a slightly promising formation at the 700-foot level. Here, one of his miners had previously noticed a 6-inch quartz leader jagging off to the east but at the time it wasn’t promising enough to hold up the deep sinking of the shaft. Now it was Craven’s only hope.
The miners returned to the formation and had driven into it barely a few feet when, to everyone’s astonishment, this humble leader immediately opened out into a reef about three feet wide from wall to wall. The width of the reef increased to eight feet as the drive continued. The quartz in the reef was so heavily charged with gold that the drive was later described as looking like a jeweller’s shop. The rock face literally sparkled in the light of the candles.
This wasn’t the junction of the Queen and Day Dawn reefs which Craven had convinced himself was the root of all riches, but a fabulous new ore body, later called the Brilliant Reef.
The red flag of triumph appeared at the poppet head. Craven was jubilant! So elated was he with his luck, and so incensed by the derision long-levelled at his scheme, he immediately piled his buggy high with some of the rich stone and drove up Gill Street, the main street of Charters Towers, telling all the sceptics in no uncertain terms just what he thought of them. He and his friends then toasted the success of the Brilliant with immense quantities of the best champagne.
Richard Craven
Cables broadcasting the fabulous new mine flew all over the world and in the excitement that followed, the Charters Towers Stock Exchange opened for business in the new Royal Arcade. With each call of the board, the price of its shares rose.
Work commenced and in just three months of the reef being struck, the Brilliant had yielded 5,469 ounces of gold from 1,976 tons – nearly 30 ounces to the ton!
In two years the mine had become the biggest producer on the field averaging 2,500 ounces of gold every three weeks. Over the next 10 years the Brilliant Mine PC yielded £2 million worth of gold. It needs no stretch of the imagination to realise just what it would mean if such a discovery was made today at current gold prices.
The success of the Brilliant proved the value of deep sinking on the Charters Towers goldfield. Speculation and investment, both local and overseas, followed quickly.
The “barren ground” suddenly became very busy with all adjacent ground taken up in leases. Soon there were many more shafts driven into the earth – deep, vertical shafts sunk on the boundary of each lease closest to the Brilliant PC reef, until its ore body was struck. It wasn’t long before the Brilliant PC was surrounded by sister mines.
By 1891 the Brilliant and St George, the Brilliant Freehold, and the Brilliant Central had all tapped into the reef. The Brilliant Block was next but it didn’t hit the reef until a depth of 1,090 feet. It was obvious that the reef was heading downwards.
In 1893 the Brilliant Extended cut the reef at 2,000 feet, while in 1896, the Brilliant Deeps struck the same reef at 2,558 feet, the deepest shaft at that time on the Charters Towers field.
The Brilliant lode, with all its mines, reigned supreme for many years. It was the most productive reef ever discovered in Charters Towers.
Total gold from all reefs, offshoots and crossovers of that lode accounted for approximately half of all the ounces mined on the field. Richard Craven and his Brilliant PC mine had started a new boom for the town, one that was to last for many years and act as the catalyst that turned the town into a city.
Wealth from the Brilliant mines also helped supplement the dwindling coffers of the State of Queensland. By the turn of the century, a disastrous drought plus labour problems had hit its primary production and the Government had run so short of funds it was even forced to retrench many senior civil servants. Profits from the Brilliant lode mines helped to prop up the ailing economy.
In October, 1904, seven miners were killed when a huge fire swept through the Brilliant and into the surrounding mines. Fanned by oxygen from the many tunnels connecting these sister mines for the purpose of cross ventilation, the fire raged for three days with noxious fumes, smoke and incredible heat issuing from the many shafts. Some of the victims were members of rescue parties who were killed by poisonous fumes as they tried to save their fellow workers. Charters Towers went into mourning and the Brilliant PC never re-opened.
A parade down Gill Street, Charters Towers in 1912. Richard Craven organised his own one-man parade driving a buggy full of gold ore down the same street more than 20 years before
Today, all that remains of Craven’s Folly is a jumble of concrete blocks near an overgrown and fenced-off shaft, barely noticeable now in the “barren ground” beside the railway yards. And Richard Craven, the man who helped transform Charters Towers into a city, is remembered only by a narrow laneway that bears his name.
Richard Craven left his mine and the city of Charters Towers in 1892 and retired to live in Sydney, but a long and prosperous life was denied him.
The following obituary appeared in The Sydney Mail, 28th January, 1899: Few men were better known or respected in Northern Queensland, where he resided for upward of a quarter of a century, than the late Mr Richard Craven, who died at his residence, Preston, Birrell Street, Waverley, on the 17th January.
A native of Preston, England, he came out to Queensland some 34 years ago, when the mining industry in that colony was practically in its infancy, and being possessed of indomitable energy, pluck, and perseverance, the essential qualities of the pioneer and prospector, he soon joined the great army of gold seekers that invaded Northern Queensland. He was the prospector of the celebrated Brilliant line of reef on the Charters Towers goldfield, eventually becoming interested in every mine on that lode. His sterling qualities und open-handed generosity were fully recognised by his fellow-citizens of the North, among whom be was deservedly popular. A born sportsman, he was one of the founders of the Charters Towers Jockey Club, of which he was one of the leading spirits during his long residence in the North, and when he came to reside in Sydney, some seven years ago, he quickly identified himself with the national sport, spending money with a liberal hand in the purchase of blood stock, but in neither colony was his success on the turf commensurate with the interest he took in the national sport.
Upright and honourable in his actions, he was greatly respected by all with whom be came in contact, and the esteem in which he was held in this city was manifested at his burial in the Waverley Cemetery on the 18th January, when the cortege included citizens of every grade, and floral tributes from his intercolonial and local friends were many and beautiful. Mr Craven died at the comparatively early age of 53, and left a widow and 10 children to mourn their loss.