Our First Half-Century: A Review of Queensland Progress Based Upon Official Information

by Queensland

Fifty years ago, when what is now Queensland, casting itself free from the parental skirts of New South Wales, began to walk alone, its mining industry did not exist. It would not be correct to say that gold—here, as elsewhere in Australia, the first to be sought and found of the numerous minerals that have since proved a source of so much wealth to the State—had not been then discovered upon our shores. Fifteen years before, men attached to an official establishment at Gladstone, Port Curtis, found "colours" of the yellow metal; and in 1858, the year preceding "Separation," occurred the Canoona "rush," which proved so disastrous to the 15,000 or 20,000 adventurers who then swarmed to the Rockhampton district in search of the "saint-seducing gold." But the so-called "colours" detected at picturesque Gladstone were nothing more than can to this day be traced in scores of places in Queensland; while the find at Canoona proved a fiasco so great as to spread abroad the impression that this part of Australia, as a prospective field for mining enterprise, was a delusion. But was it? Within a dozen miles or so of the scene of the Canoona disappointment was situated the "mountain of gold" that has since earned world-wide fame under the name of Mount Morgan; and by the end of Queensland's first half-century the Rockhampton (or Central) district has turned out gold to the sum of nearly 3,500,000 fine ounces, representing a money value of over £14,500,000—the bulk of it won within the last moiety of the half-century.

MOUNT MORGAN: COPPER WORKS, LOOKING NORTH

MOUNT MORGAN: GENERAL VIEW OF WORKS

Three years after the foundation of the colony of Queensland gold in payable quantities was discovered on the Peak Downs, inland from Rockhampton; but it was not till the finding of the Gympie field late in 1867—eight years after severance from New South Wales—that Queensland first definitely took rank as a gold producer. Within six months from the time when the wandering digger Nash, fossicking in the gullies running into the upper Mary River, found the promising specimens in his dish which made him hasten to Maryborough to report his discovery, 15,000 men had flocked to the spot from all parts of Australia. The place had hardly been heard of before. Pressmen in Brisbane did not even know how to spell the name "Gympie" when first the news arrived; but within a very few weeks its fame spread far and wide. The gullies in the vicinity of Nash's claim were rich and numerous. One nugget brought to light weighed nearly a thousand ounces, and was worth £3,675. Soon alluvial gave place to quartz mining, and within five years gold to the value of more than £1,500,000 had been won. Up to the end of 1908—that is, in forty-one years—the field had produced gold worth £10,350,000, and is still "going strong." Like all other fields, it has of course had its ups and downs, and just now is recovering its feet after one of its "downs." Last year Gympie produced gold to the value of nearly £270,000; the grade of its ore is improving, and its monthly yields are now showing comparative increases.

Since the discovery of the Gympie goldfield there has been no cessation in the progress of mining in Queensland. From one end of the territory to another the existence of gold and other minerals has from time to time been disclosed. For many years—

"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!

Bright and yellow, hard and cold—"

but still much to be desired—was the magnet which attracted the peripatetic prospector away from the comforts of civilisation into the rugged wilds of the coastal ranges and the gullies and stony stream-beds of the eastern watershed; and for a long while it was only the gold discoveries that attracted much attention. A year or so after the Gympie find, the Ravenswood goldfield, south-west from Townsville, "broke out," to use the phrase of the old-time digger. In 1869 the precious metal was found on the Gilbert River, and the Gilbert, Etheridge, and Woolgar fields were proclaimed. Then came Charters Towers, our premier goldfield, in 1872; the Palmer, inland from Cooktown (then the very far North), in 1873; the Hodgkinson, a little more to the south, in 1875; the great Mount Morgan in 1882; Croydon in 1886; and other discoveries, until Dickie, a veteran prospector, found the Hamilton and Alice River fields in the Peninsula—the former in 1899 and the latter as late as 1904.