A VISIT TO THE WESTERN GOLDFIELDS.
BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER
No. 9.
AND now for the table lands on the north, bank of the Turon. Crossing the river below
Circus Point you are on the Escort Track, at the foot of the wearisome ascent of
Monkey-Hill, mountain piled on mountain; for two long miles the summit of one only places
you at the base of another still steeper. And such a day. No cloud floats through the wide
expanse; not a breath of air disturbs a single leaf; no sound breaks the universal stillness;
all nature seems prostrated by the overpowering heat; the sun pours his fierce rays upon
your head and on all sides a dazzling flood of light penetrates to the deepest recesses of
the mountains; no shadow relieves the aching sight. In vain you seek for shelter from the
stunted leafless gums; the crisp grass crackles under your feet, and the heated air dances
on the track as if you were walking over a limekiln. But there is an end to everything; and
so there is to this pile of mountains; at last you find yourself' panting and exhausted on
the top, and hasten to stretch yourself under the friendly shade of a green wattle which
now makes its appearance. The prospect from this spot in some degree compensates for
the toilsome ascent; fifteen hundred foot below, the Turon winds through the valley, his
green banks dotted with clusters of tents and small enclosures; behind these, hills swell
into mountains, clothed with sombre-looking forests, through which gigantic masses of
rock here and there burst into the sunlight.
Proceeding along the road you find that clay slate is the prevailing rock, slightly varying
in its character, with many quartz reefs, some of which are large; the watercourses are
few, and present no attractions to the gold-digger on the level land, but would, in all
probability, prove auriferous, if followed to the descents from the plateau. The country
undulates with a succession of low round-topped ridges, and occasional long flats,
portions of which are covered with rich black soil, and capable of cultivation; the larger
part is, however, hopelessly sterile and badly grassed. The timber now becomes more
healthy and less stunted in its growth, and green wattle is abundant.
Four miles from Monkey Hill you arrive at the frame-work of a deserted house, situated
in a clearing, and four miles further brings you to a public-house. Here are fields in
cultivation; the soil is suitable for agriculture, and the country becomes open, and
gradually falls to the northward towards the Pyramal, beyond which the high ranges of
the Meroo lift their heads.
Leaving the inn, as you advance along the road the aspect of the country changes, the
ridges become higher, and run parallel to each other, and several water-courses intersect
the path, all making in the direction of the Green Valley. The quartz reefs are both large
and numerous, and many knolls are to be seen on either side composed of that material;
there is no indication of trap or sandstone in the neighbourhood, but gold has been found
in small quantities in the gullies. This district is little prospected, and it appears to be
one well worthy of the attention of the miner.
Five miles from the public-house a wide valley, through which a creek takes its way,
descends gently to the northward; here the indications of gold are not to be mistaken, but
there is no trace of the prospectors. Passing between hills three miles further, you arrive
at a creek flanked by higher ranges having a north and south direction; it also discharges
into the Green Valley. At its source and along its course igneous rocks are everywhere
visible, boulders of serpentine, and, a fine conglomerate intermixed with an altered
sandstone and fragments of hornblende are to be found in the bed of the stream. These
must have been carried from the summits by the floods, as the clayslate predominates on
the lower levels, with vast masses of quartz.
The road now constantly ascends for three miles, and the debris of igneous rock still
everywhere present themselves. Having attained the highest point, you find that large
masses of trappean rocks, with a fine conglomerate, take the place of the clay-slate, and
granite rocks break through the surface in isolated bosses. Enormous quantities of a
quartz, differing in its character from that on the Turon, cover the ground. It contains less
veins and iron and is of a bluish cast. On reaching this summit. I felt convinced that that I
was in the centre of an extensive gold-field; the country had been becoming more and
more sterile in its appearance, and everything announced the vicinity of the
much-coveted metal. The ascent had been regular, and the descent now was as regular.
I had not proceeded 200 yards from the top when I saw that others were of my opinion, as
prospecting holes had been sunk on the roadside, and were continued at intervals down
the hill until reached its base, when I found myself scrambling amongst the shafts and
holes in the golden gully of Tambaroora. There were several comfortable cottages, with
large gardens, well stocked with vegetables; the gully is several hundred feet wide, and
takes a southerly direction amongst the mountains, through which it finds its way to the
Turon, where I did not follow it. Every position of this gulley has been worked several
times, and always yielded gold. The Celestials gave it the last raking a few months since.
You now discover that the mountain just crossed is a portion of an unbroken image on the
table land sketching away to the northward from the Turon, and that the creeks and flats
at the base of this range until it sinks in the green valley, have formed the once rich
diggings of Tambaroora. They have been found universally payable, only varied by
different degrees of richness. Of the many similar valleys to be found between the ranges
taking the same direction on the plateau, this alone has been prospected and worked.
Turning to the left, and following Golden Gully, it opens into Foreman's Flat, extending
from the base of the range across the valley. It has been worked over the entire surface,
and a cloud of Chinese have lately settled upon it, and gave it a most complete
overhauling. There are still a few parties endeavouring to make a subsistence on the flat,
but it gives them enough to do. An occasional old wall or pillar is now thought as much
of as the discovery of a lead in past times. Fortunately the original miners did their work
so carelessly, and with so little skill, that it has always paid to rework the old claims. As
you proceed, you pass through the largest Chinese encampment on the Western diggings
arranged in regular streets. Here they have butchers' shops and stores, containing all that
their celestial customers require. Many of the tents are large and handsome, the Chinese
here are evidently the most prosperous portion of the community, and the general order
and regularity of their conduct is calculated to create a strong feeling in their favour;
doubtless they have their black sheep, but the spirit of nationality is so strong amongst
them that it is only in extreme cases that their dissentions become known to us outer
barbarians.
A wedding was recently celebrated in the camp, with great pomp and feasting. The fair
bride was from Sofala, and I am told that the Chinese community presented her with fifty
pounds to furnish her tent. The pretty village of Tambaroora, compact and regularly-built,
forming one street, stands at the head of the flat, a little distance from the Chinese camp.
Here are a number of stores, and five or six public houses, and there is a church and
schoolhouse in the neighbourhood. A want of good water is the chief drawback to the
place, and this has been remedied in some degree by the formation of an artificial lagoon.
Passing the village on the left is the Commissioner's Hill, the sides of which have yielded
some good surfacing. As you proceed, you pass several snug cottages, each with its small
garden, the flat now narrows into a shallow, wide, creek along which you travel for a
mile slightly ascending when you reach a low ridge, on the opposite side of this ridge the
Dirt Hole Creek commences, and flowing in a northerly direction after a course of five or
six miles, discharges its waters into Green Valley Creek, which forms a junction with the
Pyramul the united streams falling into, the Macquarie. The Dirt Hole Creek has been
worked from its source, and a large quantity of gold has been taken from it: there are
several parties still employed on the banks near its head with varied success. There is no
portion of the Western Gold-fields that has been more regularly wrought, not a single
square foot appears to have escaped the digger. Numerous creeks and gullies in the
ranges on each bank are said to be payable in places; but have not yet been fairly proved.
This creek, although only two miles from Tambaroora in a direct line, and fed by the
same system of ranges, is considered by the diggers to be a separate gold-field; it boasts
of two good inns, both of which furnish supplies to the mining community settled round
them. In front of Dewdney's Inn is a small quartz crushing machine, which has not yet
been applied to any useful purpose; it is said to be too small, but it is large enough to
test any reef in the district.
About five miles from Tambaroora, to the southward over the Turon, are the Bald Hills;
here a narrow streak in a quartz vein has been discovered and worked for several months;
there are four or five rich claims on this lead, which have produced as much as £2000
worth of gold per week, and are still far from being exhausted.
The old workings round the village are nearly used up, but the country in the vicinity is
prolific and has not been even prospected; much of it is almost unknown the miners have
no confidence in themselves, and will continue to cluster round old workings, old stores,
and old rum shops so long as a crust is to be obtained, and every day by the exhaustion of
their means renders them less able to search out new fields of labour.
It has been proposed with the view of encouraging prospectors that the discoverer of a
new gold-field should be enabled to register his discovery, having its boundaries
correctly defined, and that he should be empowered to levy one pound sterling from each
miner coming to work on that ground, exclusive of his miner's right. This would entail no
additional expense upon the Government, and would hold out an inducement to those to
prospect who are not sufficiently patriotic to devote their labour and money to the public
service. The honest portion of the diggers would not object to such an arrangement, as
there are few amongst them who would not willingly pay £1 for the chance of a rich
claim. The rewards offered by the inhabitants of towns, storekeepers, find publicans, are
limited to discoveries in their own immediate neighbourhood, and are not sufficiently
diffusive to benefit the mining population. Under the present system, men will continue
to drag on a wretched existence on the old exhausted diggings, which have not been
extended since the first discoveries, or they will abandon the occupation. They will do
anything but prospect. When the presence of gold on the alluvial banks of the rivers of
this colony was first made public, people went forth in thousands with money in their
pockets, and picks and shovels in their hands; and the result was that nearly all the spots
that have been since worked were then discovered. From that period, but few discoveries
have been made, and those few have invariably been productive of loss to the discoverers.
Parties possessed of capital and education, have insensibly withdrawn from mining
pursuits; while those who remain are environed by temptations which are not permitted to
exist to the same extent in other portions of the colony, and which keeps many of them in
a constant state of destitution. There is no sight more mournful, more degrading, to our
common humanity than to see a man toil as a gold-digger only does toil, and then
regardless of the, claims of wife and children, in one short hour dissipate the produce of
the week's labour -- to stagger home and enhance the misery of his wretched dwelling
by all the brutality of drunkenness.
The present condition of the original gold-mining localities is such, that no man but one
who has worked on them for a long time has any reasonable prospect of obtaining
remuneration for his labour -- where the whole surface has been broken up, and all the
natural indications destroyed, he alone knows the history of each locality, of every
individual claim; he can tell where a piece of ground has been badly worked by
greenhorns, and where the probability is that the bulk of the gold is yet undisturbed, --
he knows where a claim now buried in rubbish has never been bottomed, and where rich
claims have been abandoned and massive walls and pillars left untouched, he knows all
this, and much more, which the new-comer cannot know, and must, consequently, serve
an apprenticeship on each of the old gold-fields to which he may remove before he can
expect to earn his rations. For this reason, many who visited the Western gold-fields after
the Fitzroy bubble had burst were disappointed, they confined themselves to the old
workings, amongst the old hands, who viewed the new arrivals with jealousy, and would
give them but little information; fresh ground has this advantage that every man is on the
same footing, the chances are equal.
Mr. Martin's really splendid oration has created a reaction in favour of State-aid on this
side of the mountains, and his happy quotations from the great Chalmers have been more
effective than his speech. It appeared as if one of the Fathers of the Church had been
recalled to earth to plead the cause of unborn generations. He was, however, unhappy in
his reference to the Mormon delusion, and betrayed little knowledge of the history of that
sect, as it is in reality one of the most cogent arguments in favour of the voluntary
principle. The infatuated disciples of that arch impostor Joseph Smith could find no
resting place amongst the American people: their cities were destroyed as soon as built,
and the inhabitants driven forth into the wilderness far from the haunts of the white man.
It is, to the immeasurable trackless wilds of an immense continent they are alone indebted
for existence as a people.
Long since the Mormon leaders discovered that any attempt to recruit their numbers in
the States of the Union was futile, and Brigham Young was compelled to announce as a
divine revelation
no missionaries were to be sent amongst them.
As the captive Israelite of old panted for the waters of Jordan, so does the Mormon long
for the promised day when his victorious legions shall again revisit the banks of his loved
Missouri.
In the year 1852 I travelled through the Utah territory, situated in the heart of the great
American desert, 1200 miles from the nearest abode of civilized men, and found a
population consisting, not of citizens of the United States, but almost entirely of Hamish
men and women, with a few Swedes and Germans, all imbued with such a detestation of
everything American that my being mistaken for a Yankee nearly cost me my life,
proving myself an Englishman saved it. It is from the credulity and besotted ignorance of
the flocks committed to the charge of the state supported priesthood of England that
Mormonism draws its victims, the fastnesses of an American desert alone shelter its
hellish rites, its miserable delusions.