Currawong
Gold Member
- Joined
- May 19, 2012
- Messages
- 2,258
I live in one of the big gold rush areas of south eastern Australia. From the 1850s there were thousands of people wandering the landscape digging it up and looking for gold. There is some pretty wild country here and it is amazing where you can find old gold diggings. These guys used to ride horses if they were lucky, and pushed a wheelbarrow filled with all their possessions and mining gear if they weren’t. How they got into some of these remote wilderness areas before there were roads by pushing a wheelbarrow is beyond me.
The old workings and alluvial mining areas are known to fossickers but I’ve been exploring the less known areas, panning creeks, trying to find somewhere with gold that no one knows about. My strategy is to go to the most remote and impossible locations on the theory that no one would be crazy enough to go there so they might have been missed.
I know there are some ‘lost’ gold areas remaining, as there are stories locally about people who used to go bush for days or weeks and come back with large amounts of gold - but they wouldn’t tell anyone where they went. An older guy I know knew a very old lady whose husband had disappeared some time ago; she assumed he had run off with another lady, but didn't actually know what had happened to him. Before he disappeared he left her many jars full of gold and a mud map showing his secret location. She never let anyone look at it and I guess took it with her to the grave.
A waterhole on the edge of Jinden…
This trip I went out to the back of Jinden, home of the Clarke Brothers - ‘Australia’s bloodiest bushrangers' - responsible for 71 robberies. Not far from where this photo was taken they ambushed and killed four policemen, leading to a police hunting party and a long shootout at a remote bush hut where they were eventually captured.
The drive into the mountains behind Jinden
A swamp wallaby on the edge of the road
Off in the bush looking for old gold workings I found someone had pitched a tent in a creek. This is not a creek that looks like it dries up (I think it was a permanent waterhole), so someone actually pitched the tent in the water. Why?! There wasn’t anyone in it as far as I could tell.
An old mining race
A shaft
BB13, used to chop away fallen branches and other vegetation covering various workings I wanted to have a look at
Continued....
The old workings and alluvial mining areas are known to fossickers but I’ve been exploring the less known areas, panning creeks, trying to find somewhere with gold that no one knows about. My strategy is to go to the most remote and impossible locations on the theory that no one would be crazy enough to go there so they might have been missed.
I know there are some ‘lost’ gold areas remaining, as there are stories locally about people who used to go bush for days or weeks and come back with large amounts of gold - but they wouldn’t tell anyone where they went. An older guy I know knew a very old lady whose husband had disappeared some time ago; she assumed he had run off with another lady, but didn't actually know what had happened to him. Before he disappeared he left her many jars full of gold and a mud map showing his secret location. She never let anyone look at it and I guess took it with her to the grave.
A waterhole on the edge of Jinden…
This trip I went out to the back of Jinden, home of the Clarke Brothers - ‘Australia’s bloodiest bushrangers' - responsible for 71 robberies. Not far from where this photo was taken they ambushed and killed four policemen, leading to a police hunting party and a long shootout at a remote bush hut where they were eventually captured.
The drive into the mountains behind Jinden
A swamp wallaby on the edge of the road
Off in the bush looking for old gold workings I found someone had pitched a tent in a creek. This is not a creek that looks like it dries up (I think it was a permanent waterhole), so someone actually pitched the tent in the water. Why?! There wasn’t anyone in it as far as I could tell.
An old mining race
A shaft
BB13, used to chop away fallen branches and other vegetation covering various workings I wanted to have a look at
Continued....
