all that glisters is not gold, often have you heard that told, many a man his life hath sold, gilded tombs to worms enfold: Merchant of Venice, William Shakespear. Even the just may sin with an open chest of gold before them: Latin proverb
the origins of gold

Gold is one of the elements that occur naturally and make up our planet. As best we can tell, gold formed from a supernova that exploded scattering metal-containing dusts into our region of space where they later condensed into our solar system and the Earth.

Pure gold is very rare in nature. It mostly occurs as an alloy that contains around 10% of silver.

Gold is found in ores made up of rock with very small or microscopic particles of gold. This gold ore is often found together with quartz in a lode deposit.

Gold is also found in the form of free flakes, grains or larger nuggets that have been eroded from rocks and washed into waterways.

the value of gold

Gold is one of the first metals to have been used by humans and has been highly valued throughout history. Gold has long been considered the most desirable of precious metals.

It is seen across many cultures as a symbol for purity and royalty and hence is commonly used in ornaments to portray these values. One very special quality of gold that assists in its ornamental use is its ability to be rolled thin and shaped without cracking.

The value of gold has traditionally been used as the standard for many currencies (known as the gold standard) in history.

This has now been abandoned though by many national governments which have issued “fiat” currency in its place that avoids linking the amount of money that can exist to the amount of gold available.

Nature has been actively mining gold ever since water began flowing across the surface of the planet. Wherever outcrops of gold bearing reef occur, so too is natural weathering breaking down the rock surface and releasing the treasures it contains. Alluvial gold deposits can build up once gold is freed from its rocky casing. It is then typically washed into local waterways, where it collects in natural pockets on the river bed.

One of the simple beauties of washing out a pan of gravel along a creek bed is that while skill is essential, you need very little basic equipment to do it successfully.

For this reason panning has always had a place in the gold seeking lore.

Long after a field had been picked over and worked out, the locals could still drift back to fossick the creeks in search of a few colours, or perhaps even that elusive nugget that had managed to escape attention.

Opposite: Prospecting (Gippsland) 1902. Reproduced courtesy State Library of Victoria Image: pi001973
deep lead mining
Over millions of years, rivers can lay down many layers of gravels as their course changes and they build up thick layers of ancient sediments. Sometimes the best of the gold reserves were found not on the surface, but rather in the deep leads buried well below the present day ground surface. The first famous deep lead mining field in NSW was the Lachlan field at Forbes opened up in 1862. A decade later the Gulgong field came along to add a new chapter to this mining history.
Left: Mine Head with group of miners, Gulgong. Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. Call No: ON 4 Box 3 No18274
Right: Deep lead Mining in Victoria: Dora Meeson (Courtesy State Library of Tasmania AUTAS001124067588)
Below left: Puddling machine, Gulgong. Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. Call no: ON 4 Box 2 No 18198. Digital: a2822145.
Horse-powered puddling machines were commonly used separate out the gold from the ancient river gravels. Sometimes with deeper, more compacted sediments, they needed to be crushed first.
reef gold - mining the matrix

Reef mining operations typically started as small scale ventures between syndicates of two to six miners who would peg out their claim and start mining down the line of a quartz reef.

As reefs rarely went straight down, this work usually required a shaft to be sunk first up from where drives could be put in to work the reef at different levels.

As the work developed down to deeper ground, better winding equipment was needed to get materials and men in and out of the mine. As a result extra investment via company take-overs was often crucial to the longer term development of the mining venture.

This photo from Trunkey Creek shows a new steam powered system in operation. It would have replaced the horse powered circular whim still seen on the right of the shaft.

Below: Steam engine winch driving mining equipment, Trunkey Creek. Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. Call No:ON 4 Box 51 No 118. Digital: a2824864
crushing the ore and recovering the gold

One of the biggest challenges facing the development of reef mining was the problem of crushing the ore to extract the gold. Setting up a crushing plant in remote locations was an expensive undertaking well beyond the means of the average small scale miner. Accordingly these batteries were usually run as independent operations that crushed ore from a variety of mines in the surrounding region.

At Hill End for example in the early 1870s several major batteries were in operation around the clock – truly the town that never slept!

These included the Pullen and Rawsthorne battery (seen below) that crushed the famous gold specimen extracted from the Beyer and Holtermann claim in October 1872.

Perhaps the finest of the Hill End batteries though was Thomas Chappell’s, seen below alongside the dam which provided the water so essential for its operations.

For all their imposing stature however, these crushing plants were very rudimentary in how they recovered the gold from the pulverised ore. This meant that the tailings from the battery were often reworked in later years to win some of the gold missed the first time around.

Left: Pullen and Rawsthornes battery, Hill End. Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. Call No: ON 4 Box 71 No S. Digital: a2825334
Below: Chappells battery, Hill End.Reproduced courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. Call No: ON 4 Box 49 No 11. Digital: a2824809