A VISIT TO THE WESTERN GOLDFIELDS.
BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER
No. 27.
THE sun shines bright and glorious and, as the fleecy vapours sail across the clear blue
sky their shadows flit over hill and valley, and the fitful breeze in playful mood rushes
wildly through the forest tossing the withered leaves and branches to and fro and ever and
anon it sinks into a plaintive melancholy moan, as if lamenting the departing summer. On
such a day we loathe the house, let us to the bush the cheerful, exhilarating, boundless
bush. How we pity that poor wight whose life, like the poor beast in yonder pug mill, is
one dull, unchanging round. We parted at Jackson's Flat, and now we follow Long Creek
still further to the westward, although from this point it has been rooted and turned over
times in- numerable, and may be said to be exhausted. The busy crowds that once
thronged its banks have nearly all departed, and the wreck of mouldering huts and fallen
timber on the gross grown flats, and holes, and barren patches denuded of their surface,
are all that they have left behind.
A long continuance of drought has nearly dried up the stream, and what little water
remains, fearful lest the sun should lick it up, steals along its course in a subterranean
current. Crossing its dry channel, we make our way over piles of rocks and enter a green
valley that sweeps round to the west, and in which no gold worth working has been
discovered Half a mile brings us to its bend, when ascending a hill that connects the
ranges on either side we find ourselves at the head of Nugetty Gulley famed as having
been the richest diggings on the Meroo district. To the left you have a continuous range
separating long Creek, which winds along its southern base, about 500 feet below the
level of the head of the gulley, which pursues a parallel course for three miles, and finally
empties into the main watercourse, when it makes a sweep to the northward at a point
where the dividing range subsides into the flat, and to the right steep unbroken slopes
descend to the margin of the stream from the high ranges separating the basin of
Campbell's Creek, and forming a portion of the auriferous chain of mountains terminated
by the Dog-trap Ranges.
The first 300 or 400 yards from the head was unproductive, it then expands to the width
of about 200 yards, and from that point it was enormously rich, many of the claims
having yielded from thirty to forty ounces a day to a party of three or four, the heaviest
gold inclining to the left side. The sinking increased in depth as you ascended the
watercourse, and is through a bright argillaceous clay, resting upon a red gravel, and
beneath this a coarse red sandstone, or fine grained indurated schist. To the left, the lead
gave out in the sandstone, which here rose to the surface. Lower still, the bottom was a
pipeclay, intermixed with calcareous matter, and small pebbles, the debris of ancient
limestone conglomerates. One enterprising party of poor men endeavoured to reach the
solid rock by penetrating the pipeclay, but after sinking 110 feet, relinquished the design,
as they appeared as far off as ever. Somewhat lower down you find that immense quartz
reefs descending from the ranges to the right, cross the gulley in an oblique direction. The
gold has been followed up the hill on the same side, a short distance, wherever the
slightest indentation offered a spot favourable for its collection. As you descend, the
gulley becomes somewhat narrower, and two important watercourses fall into it from the
left, here, also, two large quartz veins crossing the stream ascend a declining spur
between the watercourses, both of which they have enriched, and which have been
apparently worked out. The main gulley was also exceedingly productive, immediately
below those reefs, which, coming from the Dog-trap range, pass onward through the
dividing lulls, and intersect Jackson's Flat, where gold of a similar description is
produced as previously stated. The diameter of the digging now undergoes a change -- a
light green fine schist, silicified, hard, and much fissured, rises to within two feet of the
surface, and the gulley is crossed by numerous parallel quartz reefs It was rich throughout
its entire length, has been frequently re-worked, and the rock has been extensively broken
up for the gold in the cleavage. Two or three men still hover about the old holes in the
expectation of being able to recover the lead lost about two years since, and they contrive
in their researches to find gold enough to clear their expenses. The hills on cither side are
auriferous, but water is scarce, and can only be found in the abandoned workings, as,
from the steepness of the gulley, it runs but a few hours after rain. After every shower
men prowl about the heaps of rubbish and headings, looking for washed-out gold, and
some have thus obtained two or three ounces in a few hours, which is often liquified in as
short a period. If water could be procured the whole of the detritus would pay well for
puddling, as the precious metal is very irregularly interspersed through the deep ground,
and it has been generally imperfectly washed. Moreover, the hills on each side are worth
prospecting in the line of the quartz reefs, as it is probable that surfacing would be
discovered rich enough to pay for carriage to the main stream. Although it is a matter of
uncertainty whether the deepest portion of this gully has been bottomed, it has produced
an incredible quantity of gold, all of which must have been supplied from a very small
portion of the reefs that cross it, and there is little doubt but some of them would pay for
crushing.
Retracing our path to Long Creek, and following it downwards, we pass Barney's Flat
and Point, both worked out. A mile further brings you to Doolan's public-house, a quarter
of a mile below which an old channel of the creek has been recently opened, from which
five to eight dwts. to the tub has been obtained. There was a slight rush to the spot, but
the majority of the men were shepherding their claims, as they had some suspicion that
the lucky prospectors had bottomed upon a mere patch which would soon run out you
now enter upon an open flat, and find a few huts sheltering families who continue to
subsist by rooting amongst the old works at the mouth of Nuggetty, where there are two
or three puddling machines. As you proceed, the stream follows the base of steep ridges
on the north bank, while the road on the southern side conducts you over a series of low
ridges. Descending from the hills, in the direction of the Devil s Hole Creek, you every
now and again pass over large quartz reefs, the debris of which is scattered over the
surface. You may now observe the wreck of extensive works, and large patches of
exhausted surfacing, particularly at Edwards Point, where two large puddling mills have
been erected, which are idle from the sarcity of water. The bed of the creek has also been
repeatedly worked over, and has always remunerated the digger. A few families are still
to be found located on the flats, at long intervals, and a small party of Chinese may be
seen occasionally taking advantage of the drought, and smashing away at the bed rock in
the dry channel. As you progress even these finally disappear, and for a long space the
solitude is undisturbed.
In all this distance the slopes and ridges falling from the broken ranges that separate the
Devil's Hole Creek to the southward present the strongest auriferous indications, and
numerous dry watercourses winding between the ridges are payable to a limited extent
but as yet unworked.
Gold is said to have been found here by Mr. Suttor's shepherds long before Mr.
Hargraves made his discoveries public. They confined their researches to the tops of the
ridges, and some of them were in possession of a considerable quantity of coarse
nuggetty gold without being aware of its value. One of these families still remain in the
district, and have risen and fallen with the gold field. They had not learned the old
proverb, "to make hay," &c.
And now you arrive at a ledge of rocks which cross the bed of the stream, causing a fall
of eight or nine feet, this rock is a fine grained indurated schist, in vertical strata, and a
few yards above the fall a slight outburst of a molten vesicular rock occurs, which has
flowed over granite rocks on either side for about three feet, when it terminates with a
round edge, forming a plate about six inches in thickness. I employed a Chinaman to
detach a small portion as a specimen, and such was its hardness that he spoiled two picks
in the operation. The under surface of the fragment had taken the impression of the rock
over which it flowed as perfectly as if it was wax or lead, and did not adhere to it. On the
north bank an eruption of the same rock may be traced for a considerable distance on the
crest of a ridge, where it is denuded by disintegration, and finally disappears under a
mass of contorted schists, through which it had not sufficent force to penetrate.
This is a remarkable evidence of the igneous action by which the ranges have been
upheaved, and by which the fissures in the sedimentary strata have been filled with quartz
or other igneous rocks in a state of fusion. It is probable that, instead of quartz being the
mother of gold, primitive granite may claim the maternity, and that its elements, in some
combination, would be found in that rock, if we could reach it in a natural state. Iron is
found in granite in the adjacent secondary formation, with all the fluxes or agents
necessary to its fusion by the aid of heat, and it is possible that may be generated by the
presence of water, which would supply the oxygen essential to combustion, and which
has, by re-combinations, set the gold at liberty, this, by its specific gravity, would
segregate and by the projectile force created by the expansion of the molten rocks, be
ejected into the fissures with the fused quartz, which remains in excess of other
combinations, and which, being of a less gravity than either of the other components of
the granitic rock, would float on the surface, and therefore be the first ejected.
The fissures in the sedimentary rocks would be caused at the same period, by the
expansion of the lower strata, by the intense heat, and the consequent disruption of the
whole mass. The polarity of these fissures have yet to be accounted for. Their direction in
the western districts is universally north and south. It may originate from magnetic
influence, as iron forms so important an element in the great subterranean laboratory of
nature. The casings of all auriferous reefs contain a large proportion of that metal either
in the form of a sulphuret or an oxide, which may sometimes be traced in innumerable
minute veins throughout the quartz, differing according to the conditions under which the
cooling or crystalisation took place. Where iron, is absent no gold is to be found. It has
further been proved that water is essential to volcanic action, and that where this has been
cut off the volcano became extinct.
I may here remark that on granitic gold-fields the formation of the granular particles of
that metal, usually differ from those found in a schistose district, or a country originally
covered with vast sheets of sedimentary rock, through which the igneous products have
forced their passage with difficulty by the power of an ascending force generated by
expansion.
On granitic formations gold is generally found in minute grains or particles, globular, and
seldom larger than the head of a pin, and sometimes not a fourth of that size: these being
flattened by fluviatile action become scales. It is more generally diffused, and is always
found in connection with black oxide of iron, and titaniferous pyrites. The gold on the
granite ranges of the Timbarra and at the source of M'Leod's Creek is of this character.
On schistose formations gold is discovered in comparatively large masses, sometimes of
many pounds weight, and always presenting evidence of its having been in a molten state,
and of its having cooled down with the quartz.
Crystals of gold have been rarely found, and might possibly be generated by the chemical
action of gases and vapours evolved by volcanic agency -- but it is well known by gold
miners that veins or agglomerations of quartz perfect in its crystallization, and abounding
in transparent crystals, are as a general rule barren, while their hopes never rise so high as
when they fall in with a reef opaque, streaked, and of a dull yellowish or bluish white,
and charged with sulphuret and oxide of iron.
This condition of the quartz rock is an evidence that the cooling has been rapid, as would
be the case with the product of a submarine eruption, and also that the mass has been
disturbed during the process of crystallization, either by the injection of fresh matter, or
the passage of gases through it, evolved by the decompositions and recombinations in
progress below, chiefly through the agency of oxygen, which appears to be essential to
the production of gold in the form in which it comes within our reach, always in
connection with the oxides of silicium (quartz) and the oxide and sulphuret of iron, and in
combination with silver or copper in proportions varying as often as the place of eruption.
Thus, the gold found in the Devil's-hole Creek is the purest in the district, that from Long
Creek ranks next in value, and that from come portions of Campbell's Creek, separated
by a single ridge or range, is much inferior to the other two, while so large is the
proportion of silver in alloy with the Louisa gold that its value is considerably below that
obtained on the Meroo, from the same reefs, but at a greater depth in the schistose
formation. This fact has given rise to a class of traders who purchase on one gold-field to
sell on another, and by mixing the product of different fields manage to elude the
vigilance of the most skilful buyer, whose prices range from 65s. to 75s. or 77s. 6d. there
is a wide margin for such operations.