In the incredible early years of the Victorian gold rush, people were living and working under truly extraordinary circimstances. Thousands were flocking here in a frenzy with just one thing on their minds – gold! Their only objective was to pry their fortunes from the […]
Coppiced Trees
This is a great example of what trees can look like in areas which have been deforested a long time ago, and the trees have since grown back. This tree was cut down to a stump long ago, and has since regrown – but in […]
Surfacing or Paddocking
Does this barren red landscape look familiar? It’s a fairly common sight throughout the old goldfields of Victoria. During the gold rush, miners stripped large areas of shallow gold-rich ground down to the bedrock and processed all the earth they removed using equipment such as […]
Alluvial Workings
Diggings, gold workings, alluvial diggings, and alluvial workings all refer to areas where alluvial mining has occurred. It is often marked on maps by dotted areas. This includes surfacing, creek workings, and sinking shafts to reach buried leads. Men typically worked these alluvial areas alone, […]
Deep Leads
You may notice leads or deep leads marked on historical goldfields maps. Gold which has broken away from its original location in a reef gets washed away over time by water and gravity, and is eventually deposited into creeks and rivers. Many ancient gold-bearing creeks […]
Quartz Reefs
Quartz reefs are veins of quartz in the ground, sometimes gold-bearing. These can be marked on maps as reef, line of reef, quartz, quartz reef, and auriferous quartz reef. Auriferous means that the reef contains gold – but not all gold bearing reefs are marked […]
The Treacherous Black Forest
With its treacherous roads and constant threat of assault and robbery by bushrangers… travelers to the goldfields of Victoria during the 1850’s had every reason to fear the journey through the dreaded Black Forest! In the mid 19th century, Australia had been turned upside down […]
Dreadful murder at Alma diggings, 1858
During a drunken quarrel at the Alma Diggings, a man dragged the woman he lived with over to a nearby mine shaft. He held her by the legs over the sixty foot shaft, kicking her grasping hands away from the edges, then let her drop […]
Trompf’s Amalgamated Mine, Adelaide Lead VIC
The remains of Trompf’s Amalgamated Mine lie within the Paddys Ranges State Park near Maryborough VIC. Visitors can stop by for a look at the huge mullock heaps, machinery foundation rubble, and open stopes of the mine which operated there from the late 19th century. […]