GOLD
Early Payable Gold discoveries
Halls Creek 1885
Yilgarn 188
Pilbarra Creek 1888
Geraldton (Nannine) 1890
Coolgardie 1892
The men who found the gold
The first find of gold reported in W.A. was near York in 1853 but nothing ever came of the find.
The population of Western Australia was increased substantially due to these discoveries and from 1890 to 1900 it leapt from 48,000 to 180,000.
An example of just one months gold production in May 1896 gives some indication of how much was being found:
A total of over 22,000 oz that would be worth around $11,000,000.00 US in today’s figures.
Rewards paid by the Government for gold discoveries.
Staking a claim.
The procedure for staking a mining claim has changed little from the early days.
First any prospective miner had to obtain a Miner’s Right and then (the hard part) find a bit of land that had not already been pegged and erect four posts (one at each corner of the claim).
The posts were to be no less than 3 feet tall and 4 inches in width. One of the posts had to have a plaque attached quoting the miners name, their Miner’s Right number and the date of the claim. (This was called the datum post.) The miner, or a companion, then had to travel to the nearest Mining Warden to have the claim officially recognised.
Tall tales & true: Golden road!
Some years ago (quite a few in fact) road works were being conducted in Guildford after the railway line had been constructed and quartz was being used as the road base.
After some heavy rain the lumps of quartz started to come through the road surface and one day when a cart wheel struck and dislodged a piece of quartz, a sharp eyed youngster spotted the glint of gold.
He decided to try and find the origin of the quartz and after an extensive search discovered that it was supposed to have come from a quarry near Greenmount.
Even after careful examination over the years, no seam of gold has ever been found at the quarry and the origin of the gold laden quartz remains a mystery.
Convict Gold
C.C. Hunt was responsible for opening up a track to what would become the goldfields and he had with him a party of convicts who were used as labourers for sinking wells.
The story is told that the convicts found some gold and hid it with a view to escaping and returning later to pick up their find.
From what we have read to date it appears as though there was an escape attempt but the convicts were re-captured and nothing more was heard about the gold. The government at the time was not at all keen on any gold discoveries as this would have led to people abandoning their work in settled areas and there was a shortage of labour as it was.
Is there buried, somewhere along Hunt's Track, a stash of convict gold? I suppose we will never know.
Gold Fields.
Ashburton, Coolgardie, Dundas, East Murchison, Gascoyne, Kimberley, Mount Magnet, Murchison, Peak Hill, Phillips River, Pilbara, Yalgoo, Yilgarn.
Gold production
32,000 kgs annually Over 2.5 million kgs have been produced since gold was first discovered.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
