KIANDRA.
FROM OUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONER
No. 4.
-- To-day’s escort takes 1411 oz. 10 dwts. 6 grs., and £900. I know it is very difficult to
convince persons at a distance that there are so few men working but my estimate of 1200,
instead of being under is, I am fully convinced, an over statement. This week men have
only been enabled to work three days, and while writing this the rain is still descending;
the changes here are so sudden that I should not surprised if to-morrow is a fine
summer’s day; but should such be the case, it will be several days before the river claims
will be enabled to work. With respect to the general idea that there was only a patch in
the river that was payable, every day proves the contrary; it is already taken up for
several miles, many parties going to great expense in blasting the rocks for the purpose of
turning the river, others working the first claims over for a third and in some instances a
fourth time and getting payable gold. With a few weeks fine weather our escorts will
soon improve, yet at the present time there is no gold-field in the colonies that is
producing the amount of gold, per man engaged, that Kiandra is. That it requires a little
capital I admit, but our present efforts prove that it pays for the outlay. Some excitement
was caused here at the commencement of the week, by reports of large find at
Wahgunyah, some seven or eight miles from the Murray, on the Victorian side and many
left without waiting to hear particulars, since which, many reports have been received, the
tenor of which are, that there is nothing as yet to encourage them to proceed there; the
sinking varies from 100 to 200 feet, and one report states the ground is taken up for miles,
and out of forty holes bottomed, in only three is there payable gold.
A petition us about to be presented to the Government from this place one paragraph
from which, will explain its purport.
a
prayer I think, few will be inclined to dispute. The establishment of a Court of Requests
for the recovery of small debts would be a very great boon, for at present all cases have to
be taken to Cooma, a distance of sixty miles, and there are a class of m individuals well
knowing the difficulty there is in bringing them to court do not forget to take advantage
of it.
-- Two or three persons were fined
for this offence at the Police Court on Wednesday, the proceedings reflect but little credit
on Mr. Sanderson. I do not wish to say anything to uphold grog selling, but if it is to be
put down a different system ought to be adopted. At the Four Mile there is not a single
public house, and all the police may do they cannot prevent it, for considering the
weather we have here sometimes it is not very surprising that men wet through should
wish for a glass of grog, and when they are obliged to send informers to live in the
neighbourhood in the disguise of diggers, who with difficulty are enabled to purchase a
couple of shillings' worth of grog -- the evil cannot be very great. If they mean putting it
down, let it be by other means than this spy system, it only brings the police into
contempt. For, if the evil is so great, they will have no difficulty in getting convictions
by what I may call fair means. If they are sincere in their intentions, there is a better field
in the township for them, where there is no excuse for sly grog selling, yet it exists to a
considerable extent, and they know it. How is it they do not interfere? -- a question Mr.
Sanderson is better enabled to answer than I am.
-- The sinking on this place is going ahead, and those who have
bottomed are well satisfied with the result. In one part of the hill they have come across a
very fine cement. It consists of rounded washed quartz stones, with small gravel and a
great quantity of mundic. I have seen several pieces, with gold interspersed through it.
We have no crushing machines that we could test it with, but I have little doubt the day is
not far distant when it will be crushed, and prove to be payable. The quantity of mundic
in it will, I am afraid, with our pre sent knowledge with respect to this mineral, be the
only drawback, for at present it seems that quartz or cement with a large proportion of
mundic in is very difficult to amalgamate. It is to be hoped the experiments about to be
tried at the Mint will solve this important question A fourth share in one of the claims on
this hill was sold this week for £100. One party I had some conversations with only
acknowledged to a tucker claim I afterwards heard on good authority their tucker claim
was producing between thirty and forty ounces per week On the flat between the creek
and this hill several men have commenced sinking, varying in depth from six to ten feet. I
saw one tub washed that produced about a pennyweight, and one from another claim
about two dwts.
-- The party at work here have been obliged to register their claim
for they have so much water to contend with at present the prospects they have been
enabled to try are most encouraging, from two to four dwts. to the dish.
- At this place, the population is already at work getting wages.
Preparations are being made to put up more puddling machines.
-- Population on the increase. The tunnelling party have not been
enabled to work for the last few days.
-- At this place, some seven miles distant, a party have commenced
sinking on a "made"
hill. They have not yet bottomed, but from the indications
expect to get gold.
1 sent you particulars on Thursday of another hill facing discovered I received the
information from one of the parties working the claim, and have but little doubt of its
correctness, but for reasons best known to himself the locality then indicated is not
correct I will endeavour to get the correct locality, and send you the particulars.
-- All the solid ground left on this gully is now being worked.
The two small rushes mentioned as taking place on the camp side of this gully, at present
are failures.
-- The party sinking on this hill for a quartz reef at a depth of sixty
feet have come across some stone, some of which I saw crushed; in each stone there was
a few specks of gold but nothing payable. They arc very sanguine that they will yet get a
payable reef. All the sluicing claims are at work on this hill with good results.
The storekeepers and publicans are beginning to get alive to their interests. Last night a
meeting was held for the purpose of collecting a prospecting fund, and in a very short
time between £200 und £300 was collected.
<21st October> -- Raining hard since the morning of the 19th; another flood in the river.
The weather very much against the miners.
-- Sly Grog-Selling -- On the 16th Sarah Fleet, Mary Moore,
William Campbell, and Samuel Turnbull, were, each convicted of sly grog selling, and
sentenced to pay a fine of £30, or three months imprisonment.
-- Daniel M'Gillivray pleaded guilty to some parties, without his knowledge,
having played cards in his licensed house, and was fined 40s. Thomas Daly was also
indicted for sly grog selling, but escaped from the insufficiency of the evidence.
On the 19th William Castles for stealing a shovel from William Kidde's store, was
sentenced to four months hard labour in Goulburn gaol.
-- A.C. Croy, publican, at the Nine Mile, for the above offence,
and to pay 40s, and Thomas Pedott for unlawfully detaining a horse belonging to Charles
Wilson, was ordered to deliver up the same.
-- A meeting was held on Friday night at Benjamin s Hotel, for the
purpose of raising a fund to aid in the development of these gold fields Notwithstanding
the inclemency of the weather a very good muster was made, and upwards of £200
subscribed. A committee was formed, under whose supervision it is to bo hoped the hill
round about the township will be thoroughly tried. The great point will be to get a
thoroughly practical and honest overseer -- for in the majority of these cases paid
prospecting parties do but very little in consequence of the difficulty in superintending
them. Let this mining party be confined to within a radius of two or three miles from
town, and this stumbling block will surely be avoided.
-- The first concert attempted at Kiandra will be given at Reilly’s Hotel, in aid
of the Hospital fund, on Monday evening next. We heartily wish it success, and hope it
may lead to a series of public concerts, which, if well conducted, would tend most
beneficially and pleasantly to wile away the evening hours, and afford to many an
opportunity of passing their time more agreeably and much more economically than at
present. A brass band of some merit has enlivened our streets within the last week.
-- Much has been said lately of the regulations, as at present
existing, with regard to extended claims. Some blame the regulations, others the
Commissioners. The Alpine Pioneer is full of complaints, which, in many instances, can
be traced to parties against whom decisions have been given. They feel themselves
aggrieved - take a one-sided view of the matter -- rush into print, -- and seem to vie
with each other in the use of abusive expressions against the ruling powers. Surely this
intemperate course is not the one best calculated to redress their grievances. Is the
Commissioner in charge so inaccessible as not to listen to the complaints of a respectable
body of miners? And if the regulations present his acceding to any reasonable demands,
is he likely to object to their being revised. Again if peculiar laws and regulations are
requisite for this gold field, why have the miners not availed themselves of their power to
start the Local Court about which to great an outcry was raised the other day, and then to
have framed and submitted an efficient code. They can now have only themselves to
blame. The cry is that the claims are too small, whereas on unworked ground they are in
fact larger than any given on the Victoria fields.
-- Notwithstanding the heavy rain last Sun day, and the damage done to
many of the river claims which disabled them from working_ until Wednesday, we have
an escort nearly equal to that of last week, viz., 1411 ozs. 10 dwts. 6 grs., and £900 in
notes, and this notwithstanding, the alarming reports of diggers leaving by hundreds. We
see no reason whatever for all this outcry, and have no doubt but that with an increase of
population, and with anything like settled weather, our weekly escort will gradually
increase, and in a few months surpass the largest that has been pent from these fields.
-- The abolition of the gold duty should either have been carried
through without hesitation, or as soon as proposed it should have been officialy notified
that nothing would be done in the matter until next year. Now, by postponing the
question from week to week, consignees and banks are kept in suspense, and en attendant
very little gold will be coined. With the exception of 340 ozs. 8 dwts. the whole of the
gold by this escort is kept back and forwarded deliverable to order.
-- We have had another extraordinary find of as much as 2 ozs. 7 dwts. to the
dish. The locality was said to be not far from the camp on the Saw-pit Gully. It created a
great deal of excitement, and the country has been scoured but without finding the
slightest trace of the fortunate spot. It is either pure fiction, or the discoverers have
succeeded in keeping it more than usually dark.
-- Undeterred by the ever-recurring floods, new parties are setting in to turn
the river bed. All seem to look for a handsome reward if they can only succeed in so
doing.
-- A party has just arrived in town, and reports having found very good
prospects. This is the more to be depended on, as he merely came in to get an extended
prospecting claim, and returns immediately.
-- They say that upwards of 400 men have left this for Wagunyah rush.
The streets certainly look quite deserted, even the public-houses are no longer busy and
well filled, but I do not imagine it anything but a temporary lull.
-- Many drays have come in, and there are some twenty between this
and Denison. Several tons of flour have arrived; present price £75 to £80 per ton; maize,
23s. per bushel; eggs, 4s. a dozen; hay, £50 per ton.