Gold History
In 1856 Capain Smith discovered gold at what is known as Smiths Gully. In 1859 and 1861 other little rushes took place, but in August 1869 Alexander Clelland sank a shallow shaft outside John Paddock and ran into a 40 ounce nugget and the government decided to award him one hundred pounds for his discovery for the discovery in the gold field.
In 1876 the rush in Berlin was renamed Rheola after a town in Wales. The Rheola region turned into a well known area because of its beds of large nuggets that were speckled through the gullies. These nuggets carried in appearance from one piece to the next, some of them were brilliant and pointed, and did not have a lot of indication of abrasion while there were others that were more flattened, others were more eroded and some had stains of iron on them.
The Chinese introduced a very efficient method of processing big tracts of particularly rich ground. They did what is known as surfaced or basically stripped all of the soil and rock was on top of the bedrock and took it to a puddler to be washed. A surfaced area shows that once the ground in this area used to be very rich.
The Californians used to be very skilled at building dams, diverting streams and building sluices. They had a superior water supply so they were able to process the wash and feed the crushers that divided the quartz or slate from the gold and broke up the conglomerate.
On a number of Victorian gold fields where the ground was to be precise a bed of big nuggets, the first miners just dug up a shovel full of ground and sprung it up and down. If they were not able to hear the clank of gold they threw the dirt on the side. In some cases the weight of the shovel full showed the presence of a nugget.
The gold fields located in western and central Australia and in the north of Queensland are some of the driest and farthest areas in Australia. Early miners must have gone through terrible adversities and a lot of them died in their efforts to endure the droughts and isolation. Unique techniques had to be implemented so that the rock and clay could be divided from the gold without the use of water. The dry blowers that were made in Mexico were used at length in Western Australia.
The biggest nuggets found were frequently within one meter from the surface. The Welcome Stranger, the biggest gold nugget ever found, was lying merely a few inches from the surface at Moliagul, Australia. It is said that the top was uncovered by the wheel track made by a cart. A number of the first discoveries made in each area were big nuggets just lying on the ground.
Deep leads are ancient river gravels or silt beds that received specks and nuggets of gold, washed down from nearby reefs a good many years ago. The riverbed was sooner or later silted over or covered by volcanic material. When repositioned under basalt or soil, these olds beds can be dug up and their gold extracted.
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