GOLD DIGGINGS IN CREEK AND DESERT
I AM in Ballarat, the heart of what was once the chief mining district of this golden continent. Within a stone’s throw of me was found a lump of gold as big as a watermelon and from under the hotel where I stay fortunes in gold have been taken. Every bit of earth in sight has been run through a sieve again and again to wash out the precious dust it contained, and for miles about the valley of Yarrowee Creek has been honeycombed with diggings. It is even said that the water in some of the deepest mines contains gold. One story is told of how several barrels of water from here were hermetically sealed and sent off to Paris. They were kept there for years, and when opened were discovered to have precipitated several gold nuggets. I doubt the truth of this story!
Gold was known to exist in Australia long before 1851, when Hargraves, an Australian who had prospected in California, discovered it in paying quantities. Hargraves had gone to California in the gold rush of ’48 and had failed, but he was haunted by the idea that the gold country in California resembled a certain valley in the hills of New South Wales. This valley was that in which Ballarat lies. He decided to go back home and prospect. He did so and his discoveries threw all Australia into a fever. In a short time it was proved that every creek within a radius of seventy miles from here had gold in its sands, and in the placer mines opened at Ballarat gold was found in great lumps.
One of the first big nuggets weighed one hundred and one pounds, while the “Welcome” nugget weighed as much as a good-sized man, tipping the scales at one hundred and eighty-four pounds and nine ounces. I have seen models of the nuggets in the mining museums of Queensland, of New South Wales, and of Victoria, as well as in the different state mining schools. The “Welcome” nugget, which was the size of a big baby, was twenty inches long, twelve inches wide, and seven inches thick. It was sold in Melbourne for fifty thousand dollars. In 1858 a lump of gold worth twenty thousand dollars was found in New South Wales, and fourteen years later a mass of gold and quartz weighing six hundred and thirty-nine pounds was discovered at Hills End in the same state. An offer of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars for it was refused.
Some of the most remarkable mines of Victoria were at Bendigo, about a hundred miles from Melbourne, where in the height of their production the goldfields yielded more than a million dollars a year. The mines at Ballarat are now worked out, but quartz mining is still carried on at Bendigo Amalgamated, a consolidation of the mines in that region. The average yield is about one hundred and sixty-five thousand ounces a year. Since 1851 the mines of Victoria have produced upward of one and a half billion dollars’ worth of gold.
The Ballarat of to-day is not like the Ballarat of the great gold rush. Then it was a city of tents, which probably housed more people than the present population of twenty thousand. Now it is a well-built town, with many comfortable homes, and streets as wide and as well paved as those of Washington. The principal thoroughfare is lined with marble statues, and there are others scattered throughout the long park in the suburbs.
Ballarat has good stores and banks, and even a stock exchange, but there is not a mine-shaft house in sight. The people are especially proud of their theatre seating three thousand, an art gallery containing some fairly good paintings, and a mechanics’ institute with a library of twenty-two thousand volumes. It has four other free libraries, good public schools, and churches of every Christian denomination under the sun. It has flour mills, woollen mills, and iron factories. The town has become the commercial centre of a rich pastoral and agricultural region. It is seventy-five miles from Melbourne by rail, and on the main road from Melbourne to Adelaide.
The mining school at Ballarat is, I venture, as well equipped as any similar institution in the United States. I had letters to its superintendent from the director of the mint at Melbourne, and its president kindly showed me through. The college is built over a gold mine which it operates to give practical training to the students. The boys go down into the shafts and work the mine, thus learning by actual experience how gold is taken out of the earth. Connected with the school are all sorts of reduction works run by the students, including cyanide plants, a chlorination plant, and facilities for all the various methods of treating ore. There are large chemical laboratories, assay furnaces, and, in short, everything needed for such a college.
To-day Victoria and Western Australia are the leading gold-producing states of the Commonwealth. I have talked with miners from Western Australia, who tell me that much of the vast territory has not been touched. Said one mining expert:
“The gold we know of extends over an area of more than six hundred thousand square miles. You can take dirt from the road at any point along a thousand miles, wash it, and find colour.”