A VISIT TO THE NORTHERN GOLD FIELDS.
FROM OUR SPECIAL REPORTER.
No. 13.
From Dundee, following the banks of the rocky little stream of the Severn, in its progress to the
westward, through an undulating country, monotonous in its beauty, eight miles brings you to the
margin of one of these wide rolling prairies so frequent on the high lands of New England,
and a mile further you reach the head station of Rangers Valley, one of the finest pastoral
properties in the district. The rich herbaceous verdure on the slopes and ridges on either bank
of the river is more suitable for sheep than that of the marshy plains further to the northward,
and has contributed to the celebrity of this station. Ihe formation here appears to be porphyritic,
and the pebbles forming the detritus in the river and minor watercourses consist of porphery, trap,
and ironstone. Small patches of granite are occasionally exhibited on the slopes of the higher
ranges near the main stream. There is no indication of gold in the vicinity, and I could not learn
that any had been discovered lower down worth notice, although the banks had been frequently
prospected by wandering parties of diggers. In fact, gold appears to be confined to a narrow
strip along the eastern descents, at an elevation at least 1000 feet below the heads of the
Severn.
An old road to the S.W., intersecting a succession of plains and ridges for five miles, now leads
you to the margin of the Beardy River, a short distance above its junction with the Severn; here
many traces of the stratified schistose formations present themselves, all porphyritic and giving
evidence of the close vicinity of the granites. You are gradually ascending small quartz veins,
and conglomerates occupy the summits of the highest ridges; when three miles from the last
stream you mount to an extensive level plain of extreme beauty and fertility, known as the
Murdering Flat. This plain expands east and west far as the eye can reach, and it sustains just
sufficient of the timber common to these elevated regions to relieve the sameness of a sea of
grass -- there are not more than four small trees to an acre. From the margin of this rich plain
you are travelling over an ironstone district, and, as you reach its southern extremity,
may observe long ridges of the same formation stretching to the eastward. Descending through a
gorge to the series of treeless levels that ramify in every direction round Wellingrove, the
conglomerates and porphyries again show themselves on the opposite slopes, and two miles
further you reach the village, consisting of a store, a regulation public house, and a few
scattered huts. The inhabitants, far removed from a market, cultivate no more than suffices
for their own consumption. Thtey are chiefly employed as carriers for the surrounding stations,
making periodical journeys to the head of navigation on the Clarence, and say that there is
no other means by which they can contrive to earn a subsistence. These people are entirely
dependent upon the pastoral interest for employment, and, although encompassed by alluvial plains,
devoid of tree or shrub, and capable of yielding rich harvests, the place has made no progress.
I was informed, of two or three families employed on the neighbouring stations, that had purchased
small farm allotments, but could not muster sufficient courage to relinquish their situations,
and exchange the stockman's whip for the plough and axe. Fertile, and capable of producing all
the necessaries of life as New England is, its distance from the coast, and the natural obstacles
that obstruct internal communication, will leave but one market open for its cereal productions,
until the iron horsre comes snorting over the Liverpool range, and that is the country to the
westward.
The court and police station have been recently removed from Wellingrove to Glen Innes, which,
being on the main road, and nearer the auriferous belt, is a more thriving locality. Here also sheep
have been replaced by cattle, the marshy plains and rich trippean alluvium being more suitable to
the latter.
A gentleman residing in the neighbourhood informed me that, about a year since, he had induced a
party of miners, en route from Bingara, to prospect Wellingrove Creek, a long tributary of the
Severn. Ihe second day, they reported that they had discovered gold and the third that they had
found a place where it was to he had in payable quantities. Determined to assure himself of the fact,
he accompanied them to the spot, and there from two separate places he saw them bring up prospects
on the point of a shovel which were washed in his presence, when each yielded several grains of
coarse gold. Heavy rains and floods came on in the midst of the rejoicings that ensued, and the
diggers departed, promising to return at a more propitious season. They have, however, never put
in an appearance since, and the inhahitants still hope for a return, which is to form in the
commencement of their millenium. On examiming the creek -- which I did like the man in the play bill,
"by particular desire" -- I could find no indications that would tempt a miner to soil his shovel. I
subsequently met with two men at Oban station who, in narrating their experience of the various
rushes on New England, told with considerable glee how they had victimised the good people at
Wellingrove by salting the creek: the operation cost thom 2dwts of gold. Their sole object appears
to have been to punish certain parties for entrapping them by false representations to undertake a job
which they were too indolent to perform themselves. I refer to this circumstance simply to show how
easily honest persons may be deceived, and induced to lend themselves to the propagation of an
untruth. At Timbarra I saw one of two brothers who got and sold the two ounces of gold near
Gloucester, about which there was a flourish of trumpets some few weeks since. That gold had been
long in their possession, and was the result of occasional gropings, extended over a long period at
a variety of places, and nowhere did the parties ever find much more than the colour. While on the
subject I may as well call attention to the fact that the first receipts of gold from a new field to
which there has been a multitudinous rush is for the most part the produce of other districts,
as the miners carry gold with them which they sell to meet their necessities on their arrivals.
From Wellingrove, leaving road and track, and pursuing the creek to its source through the Waterloo
Plains, which, swarming with cattle, stretch for twenty miles to the southward, and are flanked
with what appeared to be high ranges, but which afterwards proved to be a wide plateau, perfectly
level on the summit, and covered with forest interspersed with patches of scrub. The surface of both
plateau and valley was nodular ironstone, the latter covered with a rich alluvium. A few of the
highest projections of the table land were covered with masses of a trachytic trap broken into
large uregular fragments, which formed a rocky crest. In rare instances porphyritic formations,
seemingly metamorphosed sedimentary rocks, were exhibited in the lower parts of the valley, but
entirely disapproved as you approached its head.
Ascending to the tableland, vast treeless plains appear below you extending to the horizon, and
ramifying in every direction between the ranges. Their general aspect is that of the channels of
wide rivers, expanding here and there into lakes, all of which have been silted up. It is probable
that these rivers were never of greater volume than the present streams, but that a chain of wide,
shallow lakes was formed in the valleys, which have been partially silted up, and partially
drained, in consequence of the disintegration of the rocky barriers that dammed back their waters.
The water power collected by superficial drainage, with the assistance of periodical floods, and
the countless springs, seems to have been quite sufficient to effect the degradation that has
already taken place, and which has not yet reached the granites.
That this portion of the country was never elevated to any considerable height above Ben Lomond,
seems evident from the narrow base of the granites denuded, from the elevation at which they are
denuded, and from the wreck of metamorphosed carboniferous and silurian formations that can be
everywhere detected, even amidst the investing granites where they appear to have attained the
greatest altitude.
Ascending the table land, you descend from its opposite side into Graham's Valley (another series
of treeless plains), when the lofty range of Ben Lomond stands before you -- nothing grand or very
imposing, but a simple long fragment of table land, protected from degradation by its trappean
summit, the most elevated point of which is crested with a clump of timber, which seen from the
valley resembles one gigantic tree. This clump looks down upon all New England, and the short range
forms the watershed of important cross rivers that flow into oceans that lave the opposite shores
of our island continent.
Following an easterly course for ten miles, we cross a ridge, and descending below the trappean
and ironstone formations, reach the head ot Beardy Plains. The bright verdure of the vallies contrast
with the dark wooded heights, broken here and there by partially bald conical crests, amongst which
Mount Mitchell to the southward, distant fifteen miles, is the most conspicuous. As we journey
leisurely along, first a mob of cattle, and then a mob of horses, comes galloping up to inspect us
-- a pretty good evidence that these solitudes are seldom invaded by man.
In passing through Wellington Plains, our route was one continued levee for twenty miles,
as the cattle come galloping over the flats, mob after mob, to indulge their curiosity. The curiosity
of an old cow might pass into a proverb.
Directing our course to the eastward, and followmg the Beardy water down we arrive at the point where
the grey granites exhibit themselves iv vast eroded boulders in every variety of grotesque form and
at last reach the great South Road, fully satisfied that we have been travelling to the westward of
the auriferous formations.
Three miles further we arrive at Blairhill station, on the banks of
Man's River, an eastern water. About fifteen miles down this stream below Yarriford, on one of its
tributaries near the Bald Knob, several parties of diggers have been at work for some time, and are
said to be doing well. One party left Fairfield for that locality a few months since and are
supposed to have discovered a rich patch, which they are working in secret, and are reported
by their friends to have been fortunate. They have been frequently searched for without success.
There is every probability that a rich gold held will be opened between that point and Glen Elgin.
Gold in payable quantities has been obtained in various places in the neighbourhood, but it has
never been fairly worked, and the country is so rough and broken, the descents so precipitous
that men shrink from it. Twelve months would hardly suffice to prospect a circuit of ten miles.
We have now reached the eastern descents from the point where the plateau of New England has
attained its greatest altitude and the varied formations exhibit themselves in regular sequence
as we descend from the trappean summits through the wreck of the carboniferous formations to the
porpheries and granites; and even still lower to the older silurian rocks, which the granite appears
to have burst through and overwhelmed. These latter are exhibited on the lower hills, and at the
bottom of the tremendous gulfs (as they are called in the neighbourhood) about twelve miles further
to the eastward, where they may be traced under the granitic overflow, and where it is probable
that gold will be found at some future period in quantities of which we have had no example.
Three miles from the last stream a long beautifully wooded slope declines to the margin of the main
branch of Man's River, which here flows over a deep granitic drift, between huge boulders and rocks
of the same formation. On the opposite side, the ascent of a similar slope conducts us to a broad
table land, which stretches like a peninsula to the eastward. As we approach the southern extremity
of this elevntion it becomes broken and everything denotes a rapid degradation. Enormous masses of
hard granite with their sharp angles weathered off, rise to a height of from 50 to 150 feet on the
slopes of the ridges -- a single block, in some fantastic shape, often overtopping the most lofty
trees; sometimes they rise in a nest or like another Stonehenge, from the centre of a triangular
bog or swamp. These marshes, fed by the thousand springs that trickle from the base of the nude
granite ranges, are each the source of one of those countless streams which uniting as they descend,
form the head waters of the Mitchell, or south arm of the Clarence River.
To enumerate and describe these streams would fill a volume; suffice it to say that they all contain
gold in some portion of their course -- that those basins so common in the channels of streams through
granitic formations are frequent -- that the drift is sometimes deep, with a soft granite bottom, and
sometimes a hard rock is exposed, forming bars and precipitous falls -- and that on two occasions when
holes were sunk in the channel of one of these streams, to the depth of six feet, through a white
drift (an exact counterpart of that on the table land at the Timbarra), the parties bottomed upon
a layer of quartz fragments and pebbles resting upon a soft granite, although no quartz was visible
on the surface; from both of these holes they obtained a little shotty gold. The distnct has
seldom been traversed, and has not been prospected.
Returning to the road which crosses the table land, you pass a sheep station upon a stream which
rises at the base of Ben Lomond and is auriferous below a quartz reef, which stretches from north
to south about two miles above the shepherds hut; this creek is a tributary of the Man, and has not
been worked. Three miles further you arrive at Barker's head station situated on the slope of a
nodular ironstone ridge at the base of Mount Mitchell. Gold was obtained in sinking post holes
at the stockyard, and also in several places in the river Sarah, which flows through a narrow
plain, separating the buildings on the station from the mountain. This neighbourhood has also never
been fairly prospected.
At the S.E. base of Ben Lomond (already noticed as the culminating point of New England) are
extensive lagoons and marshes. These give rise to three streams, which flowing down the eastern descents
from the plateau, become aunferous when they enter the granite formations. That to the northward
is named the Henry, the middle and most important is the Sarah, and the southern is the Ann,
upon which the Obon diggings are situated in a line directly south of Mount Mitchell, distant about
ten miles. These three streams flowing due east and swollen with the tribute of many creeks and
rivulets, unite as they approach the more precipitous descents, when entering vast chasms the walls
of which are several hundred feet in perpendicular height, the river leaps from rock to rock
until it reaches the lower levels; here it holds a southern course for many miles until meeting
the great ranges which form the rim of the Clarence basin, it sweeps round to the north-east, and
after a long course through an unknown region, ultimately mingles its waters with those of the
main river, about fifty miles above Grafton. All these water courses, particularly the Sarah abound
in gems; they also contain vast quantities of stream tin and graphite. These all possess an economic
value, and will hereafter prove to be a source of wealth and call a new branch of industry
into existence.
These small rivers do not appear to be auriferous until they descend to a line drawn below the base
of Mount Mitchell. At this point the western edge of the golden belt may be traced from stream to
stream, for many miles north and south.
This district, so little known, is one of contrasts. Here nature is all smiles or frowns;
the climate is as unstable as a woman. Green slopes, picturesque woodlands, and placid streams
meandering through grassy plains, all bathed in a flood of sunlight, are suddenly succeeded by
rugged precipices clad with abominable scrubs, naked cliffs, and roaring cascades and cataracts,
enveloped in thick drizzling mists that veil every beauty and magnify every horror.