A VISIT TO THE WESTERN GOLDFIELDS.
ANOTHER SPLENDID NUGGET FROM THE LOUISA.
BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER
No. 17.
On the 24th ultimo a German digger obtained a fine specimen from a claim within a few
yards of the spot where Turner found his nugget, containing 197 ounces. The gold was, as
in the previous instance, mixed with quartz, and has evidently been detached from the
main reef, now worked by Dr. Street and his party. The specimen was, if possible, more
beautiful than that procured by Turner; and, upon being broken up, produced gold to the
value of £385, which was immediately purchased by the agent of the Bank of New South
Wales. By some unaccountable fatality, the old company omitted to work the western
side of the reef, which has already yielded within a few weeks two nuggets, worth nearly
£800, and it is now anticipated that a large quantity of gold will be found in, the same
locality, as these repeated successes have attracted diggers to the lucky spot.
At the head of the flat mining operations have been attended with considerable success,
and the diggings are now gradually extending to the higher, parts of the plateau,
particularly round the base of the hill from which most of the streams fall into the basin
of the Louisa, where some good surfacing has recently been discovered, and is now being,
quietly worked. This district simply requires a few energetic men to push their researches
to the south- ward and westward, where it is almost certain that their labours will be
richly rewarded. Miners keep coming in to the Louisa from Burrendong and elsewhere,
and within the last few weeks the population has been considerably augmented.
I am informed that Mr. Price, the Government surveyor, is now in the district, and will
commence operations forthwith, with the intention of bringing the public lands into the
market as speedily as possible; His first work will be to lay out the township of the
Louisa, and his next to survey suburban lots, for which the surrounding flats and ridges
are particularly adapted, and which will be most acceptable to the diggers.
Fortune has not been unmindful of the miners on the Upper Meroo, some few of whom,
are doing well in the neighbourhood of Richardson's Point. At the junction of Campbell's
with Long Creek, Quinn and his party procured, on the 23rd ultimo, £50 worth of fine
gold by means of puddling; and Dengate and Coy, at Pine Point, are equally fortunate;
the yield from their ground is steady and remunerative, and promises to hold out for years.
Puddling is only in its infancy in this part of the Meroo and its tributaries; and when it is
more extensively introduced, the yield from this quarter will be immensely increased; add
to this an improved system of draining by means of simple machinery, worked by horse-power,
and the richest portion of the district now unworked will become available.
The Devil's Hole Creek, once so famous for the immense auriferous deposits discovered
on its banks and in the adjacent flats, has proved itself not yet bankrupt; and I would now
prefer to have the gold remaining in it, to what has been taken from it. A digger procured
a handsome nugget from his claim, near Tucker's, this week; it weighed between ten and
eleven ounces of pure gold, and this was in addition to others of a smaller size. At Eagle
hawk gully, a branch of the same creek recently opened, about thirty men are doing well;
and at Ryan's Flat, near Long Creek, a rich lead, which was lost some five years since,
has been recovered by Mr. Arnold and his party, from Port Phillip. Here a large number
of men are making good wages; some parties averaging from £7 to £10 a-week to the
hand. Unfortunately, Arnold has shared the fate of all prospectors, and got the worst
claim on the flat, and those, who came last have fared best.
Notwithstanding all this, if you were to believe the Meroo diggers, they are in a state of
destitution, and can hardly make out a subsistence. The man who gets ten ounces to-day
will be horribly dissatisfied if he only gets half-an-ounce to-morrow and will abandon the
claim if it continues to be so niggardly in its yield. The ten ounces has done him positive
injury, and created an avaricious craving for gold that nothing will satisfy.
But the largest nugget of all falls to the share of the banks, who are exchanging, not their
lead for gold like Paul Clifford, but their paper, which thus obtain an extensive
circulation. I expect a goodly proportion of our gold finds its way to the East Indies. It is
much to be regretted that no means has been devised by which our revenue could be
benefited by the exchange of paper for the precious metals, "of the substance for the
shadow,"
of which English corporations at present receive the whole advantage, A
colonial bank, with a colonial issue, based upon colonial securities, might help forward
our railways, and enable us to retain a profit which we now permit to pass from our
shores.
Merrendee is still the El Dorado of the diggers on the Meroo, and a few of them, attracted
by the recent reports from Fairfield, are about to proceed to that district. I know of one
man who sold a good house and a well stocked garden for twenty-five shillings, gave
away his tools, and is off: although he was, as the diggers say "getting a bit of gold,"
and had no cause to complain. This man, certainly, cannot have been one of the
Rockhampton unfortunates, or experience would have taught him better. If, as is
currently reported, from 1200 to 1500 men are congregated on the gold-field, he will
either have to turn out and prospect new country, or find himself exhausted and travel
worn in a worse position than the one he has abandoned. It is a fatality attending gold
diggers -- they are never satisfied. Fortune, like a will-o'-the-wisp is ever looming in the
distance, and leads them through toil and suffering to some bleak swamp or mountain
side to encounter nothing but disappointment and vain regrets.
The geological formation at Fairfield differs from that on the Western Gold-fields; it is a
granite country, the strata is horizontal and smooth, and the gold travels. Here we are in a
schistose country; the strata is vertical, full of irregularity and fissures, and the gold does
not travel, but is usually found in patches at no great distance from the spot where it was
disengaged from the quartz matrix. It is subject to the action of a different system in its
distribution so that the western digger has much to forget, and everything to learn, before
he can pursue his avocation with success. When will the gold-miner learn the truth of the
old adage -- Saxum volubile non obducitur musco?
To no person does it come home closer than to himself -- half the labour, half the
suffering, and half the cost, inseparable from such a journey, expended in the rich district
by which he is surrounded, would ensure a rich reward. There is gold at the heads of the
Meroo, as yet unsought for in the hundred streams issuing from the volcanic formations
on the upper part of Campbell's Creek, and descending through the inferior quartziferous
schists to the plains, gold has been proved to exist in large quantities, and they require
nothing but a little engineering ingenuity, so as to bring the water under control, to render
them workable, when they would find employment for 2000 men; as it is, these beautiful
and fertile valleys, pregnant with mineral treasure are unpeopled and unknown to all save
the Rob Roys who infest the district.
The magnates in the little Peddlingtons and Eaton swills scattered around are trying to get
up the steam for an election; their stokers are bad, and the public in general appear to be
very apathetic, and take little interest in the affair.
Blight in every abominable form is raging in the district; nearly every other person you
meet either is or has been suffering from this fearful scourge; in towns scarlatina is
prevalent, and many children have been its victims -- notwithstanding the many
thunder-storms, the season has been anything but healthy.