Chapter XVI: Gold-Digging

We had 98 tons of quartz to go through from the “Erratic Star,” and 185 tons from the “Wanderer”; and there was great excitement all over the field to know the result of the first crushing; for upon the success of a first crushing depends, in a great measure, the fate of a gold field.

Until you get used to the appearance of the stone you are working, it is very difficult to form an estimate beforehand of the yield. There was the greatest divergence of opinion as to the “Wanderer” stone, in which coarse gold showed freely, and wagers were laid that it would go anything up to twenty ounces to the ton.

Gibbard and I knew better, and we decided that we should be very much pleased if it went four ounces. After the stampers had been at work a few hours the amalgam began to show on the distributing plate, as the table next below the boxes is called. This was a good sign, as we had not expected to find very much fine gold in the stone.

There was no particular hurry, so we put the stone through slowly, in order to give it every chance. If the stone is pretty clean, ten head of stamps will crush about a ton an hour; but we only put through about sixteen hundredweight. I used to take the night shift of twelve hours, driving the engine and firing up. This last is pretty hard work, when round logs with the bark on are used for firewood. Iron-bark wood burns perfectly well when quite green, and a log a foot through and five feet long requires a little handling to plant it scientifically in a furnace without wasting any heat. The shareholders in a claim always take turns to watch the boxes and tables when a good crushing is going through, and never leave their post for an instant. Nothing is easier than for anyone working about the tables to remove some of the amalgam, and retort it at his leisure; and in order to prevent this there is always a shareholder on guard. Charlie Gibbard used to watch all night, armed with a revolver, and in the intervals of firing-up I used to sit and yarn and smoke with him, and speculate on the result of the crushing.

We went on crushing for eighteen days and nights, with Sundays interval, and at the end of that time the whole of the stone was through. We had collected about 100 ounces of amalgam off the plates, which would yield about thirty-five ounces of gold; but the important part of the plunder was, of course, inside the boxes.

When we opened them a very healthy sight was there. In the corners of the boxes the amalgam was piled like snow collected in the corners of a window-pane, and we saw at once that the crushing was fully as good as we had expected. The whole contents of the boxes were raked carefully out, and run through a sluice-box, to separate the amalgam from the quartz.

The amalgam thus collected was mixed with that already taken from the tables, and with the quicksilver from the ripples, and the whole of it strained through a piece of strong brown holland. The free quicksilver passes through this, leaving the amalgam behind, which is then retorted. The process of retorting is very simple. The amalgam is placed in an iron pot, fitted with a lid which is wedged on very tight, the joint being made up with a compound of ashes and clay. On the top of the lid is a long curved iron pipe. The retort is placed over a fire, and as it gets hot the quicksilver ascends in fumes into the iron pipe, over the lower portion of which a stream of cold water is kept constantly flowing. The quicksilver is condensed again, and flows down the pipe into a bucket placed at the end to receive it.

Quicksilver can be used over and over again in this way, and not above seven or eight per cent is lost in the retorting. Just after it has been retorted it is in the best possible order for amalgamating purposes. We got 1650 ounces of amalgam from the 185 tons of stone.

As a rule, amalgam does not retort more than a third of its own weight in gold, but the “Wanderer” gold was so coarse that we hoped for a much higher percentage. The event proved we were right, for the amalgam gave us 870 ounces of retorted gold. We had used two retorts, in order that the gold might be more conveniently packed for travelling, and it was turned out in two cakes about the size and shape of a beefsteak pudding. Retorted gold is curious-looking stuff, all porous and honeycombed where the quicksilver has left it.

This gave an average yield of 4 oz. 14 dwt. to the ton, which was very satisfactory, as it paid all the back expenses of the reef, and, after paying the mill 30s. a ton for crushing, left a very good dividend.

My brother, who was half shares with me in the mill and the reef too, came up just before the end of the crushing to help me bring the gold down to the bank in Mackay. Towards the last we had been running the stone from the “Erratic Star” through one of the batteries, and we cleaned up shortly after the “Wanderer.” The “Erratic Star” turned out a fraud. We had only run the pick of the stone through, and 98 tons only gave us 102 ounces of gold.

It was midday when we finished retorting, and my brother and I lost no time in getting ready for a start. We wrapped the gold up carefully in canvas, and then put it into two boxes, one of which we stowed away on each side of a packhorse in leathern packbags.

Gibbard came with us, and the three of us formed the first gold escort that ever left Mount Britten. We had a revolver apiece, in case of being stuck up on the road. Our own horses were good enough, but we had rather misgivings about the packhorse, which was an old crow-bait my brother had chartered from the station for the purpose of bringing down the gold.

The station was forty miles away, and we intended to get a feed and a change of horses there, and go on to Mackay the same night. For the first eighteen miles out of the diggings it was lovely travelling, over the downs country, without a stone or a ridge to stop one. But we made the pace rather too rough for the old packhorse, and when we got to Nebo Creek, twenty-two miles from Mount Spencer, he knocked up. My brother was a little way on ahead, and I sung out to him to stop.

“Hi, Sammy! this dying old hair-trunk is about bust. We’ll have to go steady or he’ll camp altogether.”

“Camp!” said my brother; “no fear. He’s only blown; he was all right when we started, and he simply _can’t_ have bust on seventeen miles. Here, let me get behind him with a stick, and see if we can’t scare a trot out of him.”

So far from raising a trot, neither threats nor persuasion could induce him to walk, and it was evident we should have to leave him.

“Deuce take the old brute for going back on us like this,” I said; “what are we going to do?”

“Why--walk, of course,” said my brother. “We can’t sling the plunder, and we certainly ain’t going to camp here.”

Walk! The day was sweltering hot, we were twenty-two miles from home, and the way lay over a succession of fiendish dry stony bare ridges. No one who has not been in the country can form any conception of the violent aversion which an Australian has to walking a yard if he can help it. It is an old saying that an Australian will walk a mile to catch a horse to ride half a mile, and there is a great deal of truth in it. In this instance there was nothing else for it. We were particularly anxious to get to Mackay the following morning early, and, of course, could not dream of parting with the gold for an instant.

Charlie offered to lend us his horse to pack the gold on, and walk home, but we would not hear of it, so we decided to pack the gold on one of our horses and take turns to run alongside. My brother took the first spell on foot, and accomplished three miles and a half over the ridges in excellent time. We managed to do the twenty-two miles in three hours and a half, which was very fair travelling considering the road and the weather.

When we got to the station it was dark, but the moon got up soon after, and we sent the black boy out to run up some fresh horses. Having had a feed and a smoke, we lay down and had a sleep, and about one o’clock in the morning started again on our journey down to Mackay, forty-five miles away. This time we took care to select a reliable packhorse, and we got safely to Mackay about eight in the morning. As soon as the bank opened, we took the gold round there. Great was the astonishment of everyone in Mackay when they saw the quantity of gold that we had brought down. The townspeople had never taken any interest in Mount Britten beyond trying to put me to all the inconvenience that they could in connection with my work there, and the first crushing had been such a long while coming they had all come to the conclusion that Mount Britten was a “duffer,” and that there was no gold there at all.

The manager of the bank especially had always had a great edge on the diggings, and been very active in circulating reports that it was a failure. His jaw dropped like a motherless calf’s when he saw nearly 1000 ounces of gold produced at the first start, and he barely retained sufficient presence of mind to offer me his congratulations, which I accepted for what they were worth, as I had not forgotten his flying visit to Mount Britten, and his subsequent report of the field. My brother and I finished what we had to do as quickly as possible, and got back to the station the same night.

I was back again at Mount Britten the next day at midday, and started to get down another crushing from the reefs as quickly as possible.

From the “Wanderer” the next crushing turned out over six ounces to the ton, and the one after that between seven and eight ounces; and still the reef looked splendid. But another hundred tons from the “Star” only gave a hundred ounces, and the reef got so poor after that, that it was no longer payable.

As a speculation the mill itself did not pay, as there was not nearly enough stone to keep it going.

There were some other very nice reefs opened up, but there was no capital available to work them, and they remained idle. I soon saw that to look after the mines properly I should have to give up my whole time to it, and make a profession of mining. This I was unwilling to do, so my brother and I agreed to try and float the whole property, comprising the Wanderer and Star Reefs and Sabbath Calm Mill, into a company down in Melbourne.

Having obtained offers of the other shareholders’ shares for a certain time, I left Holliman in charge of the whole swim, and, armed with specimens from the different reefs, and authentic reports of the crushings, I set off down to Melbourne.

I was very sorry to leave Mount Britten. Certainly the two happiest years of my life were spent there, and I knew very well that if I ever revisited it, it would not be to live there. In the intervals of working, and on Sundays, I had contrived to finish a very comfortable little house for myself on the opposite side of the creek from the mill, and there I had been living for some months. It was all built of Bush stuff; but I dressed it all myself, and put it up very carefully. The slabs were adzed as smooth as glass inside, laid horizontal, and bevilled and fitted with the utmost nicety. I bestowed infinite pains upon the roof, which was shingles; and the whole, when finished, was as weather-tight as a bottle.

It was twenty-four feet long and twelve feet wide, the whole of one end being blocked up by an enormous fireplace seven feet square inside. I always believe in a big fireplace. On a cold winter’s night you can get right in and sit at the side of the fire, and it is a first-rate place to hang clothes up to dry, and also to smoke beef in.

There was plenty of waste timber of all sorts from the mill, so I had no lack of material for doors, windows, tables, shelves, and other fixings. The floor was tongue and groove pine, which is a great luxury in the Bush, as it is always dry and easily kept clean. In one corner was a bed; but I always kept it for visitors, as I infinitely prefer the floor to sleep on. Anyone who has once acquired the habit of sleeping on the floor or on hard ground will always wake up much fresher, and feeling more rested, than if he takes to sleeping in a bed again.

A well-lined bookshelf and an enormous clock adorned the walls on one side; on the other were rows of shelves filled with pickles, jam, soap, matches, and other stores. The corner opposite the bed was turned into an office, fitted up with innumerable pigeon-holes, shelves of account-books, and a table with a copying-press, and writing material of every description.

One or two butter-tubs to sit on, a huge armchair near the fireplace, a meat-safe, and a cupboard full of tobacco, completed the furniture of the establishment.

All the time that I was in the Bush I made it my boast that although I might occasionally be found very indifferently clad, and sometimes very short of rations, I never was without a supply of excellent tobacco.

I had gone over the creek for a site for my hut, in the first place, to be away from the clatter of the mill, and, in the second place, because it was the most perfect situation for a house that could be imagined. Just at the junction of two running creeks, there was a never-failing supply of excellent water; and the soil, being the old bed of the creek, was all made ground, and admirably suited for a garden, which I intended to have had if I had remained there any time. The bed of the creek was full of timber, she-oaks, fig-trees, and Leichardt; and just opposite to my hut was a gigantic old flooded gum, with huge, spreading branches and a trunk at least forty feet round.

She-oaks are scraggy-looking poles of trees, rather like fir-trees; but both fig-trees and Leichardt are very handsome, and give a splendid shade. The latter is a very symmetrical tree, that grows to a height of about sixty feet, and has leaves rather like a big laurel.

Behind my hut towered the three mountains known as the Marling-Spikes; and a gap which I cut in the timber on the banks of the creek gave me a beautiful view right up to the head of the valley of Mount Britten.

At the back of my hut I put up a bark building, which served for a carpenter’s shop, and a kitchen; and beyond that was a small paddock with a sapling fence, into which I could turn my horses for the night. This was a great convenience. There was no paddock within four miles of Mount Britten, and, for some reason or other, no horse, even in hobbles, would ever stay a moment near the place. It is said that the grass in localities where minerals are found is always sour. Anyway, no cattle or horses would ever stay near the diggings, though the grass looked good enough.

I often used to get home in the middle of the night, and was always losing my horses, until I put up a paddock. When I first got to the diggings I brought four horses with me, and a black boy to look after them. They all cleared out the first night. I sent the black boy after them, but he was frightened of the other blacks, and went and planted instead of looking for them. I was lame myself at the time, and could not go out after them, but I got two of them back at the end of a fortnight. The other two broke their hobbles, and I never saw them again for nearly a year, when they turned up on a station about a hundred miles off, as fat as pigs.

On Sundays I used generally to have a good many visitors after my hut was finished. It is said that there is no Sunday in the Bush, and certainly it does not mean much of a day of rest to a man who lives quite by himself, and works hard all the week. Sunday is always the day for a general overhaul and repairs. Clothes are washed and mended, the hut cleared and swept out, and a supply of firewood laid in for the coming week; and a man who is away at work every day of the week, from sunrise to sundown, will always find that a dozen little jobs will accumulate in the week, which can only be done on Sunday. I had very little time for cooking in the week, and it was always an occupation I disliked, so I used to do most of the week’s cooking on Sunday.

After the diggings had been open some time, the butcher used to kill a bullock nearly every day, and there was always fresh meat to be had. But the butcher’s shop was nearly a mile away from my house, and, besides, I never would touch fresh meat as long as I could get salt. So on Sunday I used to boil twelve or fourteen pounds of salt beef, and bake a damper about the size of a small cartwheel; and this used to last me, unless the beef went bad, until about Thursday. After which I used to get some fresh meat, or boil some more salt if I had time, until the next Sunday. Salt beef wants a lot of attention when it is boiling, for if the water boils too fast it turns as hard as a stone, and if it stops boiling it gets sodden.

My hut, being three quarters of a mile away from the township, possessed the great advantage of being perfectly quiet, and free from any disturbance of nocturnal revellers. From sundown to sunrise I never used to see a soul, or hear a sound except when the mill was at work. It was rather a lonely place, too, at night, when the wind was howling among the mountains, and the rain coming down in sheets, and the creek foaming and roaring bank-high before the door. Often I have gone up to the township after dark to get a supply of food, and had to swim the creek on the way home, with my supper in the form of a beefsteak in my mouth; and when I got home found the fire out, and nothing but a poisonous black spider sitting on the table to welcome me. But anyone who knocks about the Bush for a time, ceases to care a farthing whether he is wet or dry as long as the weather is warm; and as for being lonely, he soon comes to regard his own company, with a fire and a pipe, as quite sufficient.

As a speculation my mining had not been a success.

During the time that I was working the Mount Britten reefs, the receipts and expenditure were as follows:--

“Little Wanderer.”

Gross expenses £4967 18 5
Gold sold 8689 1 2

This left a balance of £3721:2:9 in favour of the claim.

“Erratic Star.”

Gross expenses £2275 5 10
Gold sold 688 19 1
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Leaving a deficit of £1586 6 9
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The “Sabbath Calm” machine cost about £9000, against which it received £1050 from the reefs for crushing stone.

The first cost of opening up a reef is always very great, and it is doubly so, of course, upon a new field.

Wages at Mount Britten were very high, ordinary miners getting £3 a week; carpenters, sawyers, and bricklayers from £4:10s. to £6.

The cost of carriage to Mackay was £15 per ton at first, but it afterwards fell to £8, at which figure it remained. My bill for carriage alone was over £600.

Had either the “Star” or the “Wanderer” continued for a year longer as good as they proved at first, we should have made a small fortune out of either of them, and the mill would have paid well as a separate speculation. On a new field where crushing is charged for at the rate of 30s or £2 a ton, the profits from a mill that can get sufficient stone to keep it constantly going are enormous.

Ten head of stampers will put through 120 tons a week with ease. At 30s. per ton this gives a return of £180 a week. The whole cost of driving a mill, including wages, firewood, quicksilver, and repairs, and allowing 7 per cent per annum for depreciation in value of the plant, should not exceed £55 a week, even on a new field where wages and carriage are high. This leaves a clear profit of £125 a week, or £6500 a year.

When we decided to try and float a company to work the reef the “Wanderer” was in full swing, and turning out seven ounces to the ton. But I know very well that all Queensland reefs are what is called “patchy.” The gold runs in “levels” and “shoots,” and is seldom evenly distributed throughout the whole line of reef, as is the case in Victoria. Consequently, anyone working a Queensland reef is liable at any moment to come upon a perfectly blank patch of stone; and the expenses of working through this, and looking for another level of gold, are far too heavy to be borne by a single individual.

The “Wanderer” was what is called a first-rate show; that is to say, the surrounding country, the formation of the reef, the work done, and the yields already obtained, gave every indication of its being permanent reef carrying heavy gold. More than this no one can ever say. The extraordinary vagaries of gold, especially in Queensland reefs, make mining the purest gambling, and any practical miner who has been long at his trade comes to disbelieve entirely in the “nostrums” of theoretical geologists and scientific miners for discovering gold, and subscribes to the Cornishman’s maxim of “Where it be, there it be.”

When a man has been working a particular reef for a length of time, he may come to know from certain indications in the stone that he is in the neighbourhood of a heavy patch of gold; but on a new field, where the character of the country remains still untried, no man can see farther than the point of his own pick. Indications that on one field point with almost an absolute certainty to the vicinity of gold, may mean nothing at all on a field fifty miles away.

For instance, on Gympie the presence of black slate is invariably accompanied by rich deposits of gold in the adjacent reef. When a claim strikes black slate, the shareholders go about the streets brandishing samples of it, and the shares go up just as if they had struck gold.

There is certainly some mysterious affinity between gold and black slate on Gympie. I have seen a reef there, in black-slate country, carrying heavy gold all along, until a thin vein of gray rock came between the reef and the slate. At the exact spot where this happened the reef became perfectly blank, and not a colour of gold was seen until the gray rock was cut out, and the reef touched the slate again, when it carried as heavy gold as ever.

On Mount Britten the presence of black slate meant apparently nothing at all. There was no slate in the vicinity of the “Wanderer” at all, and the “Star” lost her gold at a depth of ninety feet, just when she got into the most magnificent black-slate country I ever saw.

Again, on Charters Towers, when mundic is struck in a claim, the fortune of everyone connected with it is considered to be made; but on Ravenswood, sixty miles away, if they strike mundic they shut up the claim at once, for the Ravenswood mundic has hitherto proved too much for any appliances available in Australia for extracting the gold from it.

The Gympie reefs are very patchy, and some of them are marvellously rich. I never saw a more wonderful sight than a “patch” in No. 2 North Lady Mary claim. The reef, which was about eight inches thick, was of milk-white quartz, in slate country as black as coal; and as I stood back and held a candle over my head, the whole face of the reef, eight feet high, was literally blazing with gold. It was sticking out in bright, glittering masses, and even the slate walls of the reef were thickly spotted over with the precious metal.

Gold, when it is first broken down in a reef, bears no sort of resemblance to the dull-coloured compound that is worked up into jewellery and the coin of the realm. It is about the colour of brass, or rock sulphur, and breaks into crystal cubes which glitter and shine with dazzling brilliancy.

This patch in the Lady Mary yielded 1470 ounces from twenty tons of quartz. About the best paying claim on Gympie, when I was there, was the No. 1 North Phœnix. A party of men had bought it about ten months before for £100, and were considered to be perfect fools for their pains. However, they set to work and sunk a shaft 320 feet, and struck the reef carrying heavy gold.

While I was there they crushed 700 tons for an average yield of over eleven ounces to the ton. In eighteen months the claim had paid over £100,000 in dividends, and the shareholders refused an offer of £150,000 for the claim from a Sydney syndicate. The shares, of which there were 24,000 in the original company, were selling at £7:10s. and £8.

In Victoria some of the big reefs there can pay a dividend with a yield of four pennyweights to the ton; but in Queensland the reefs are smaller as a rule, and it is seldom that anything less than one ounce to the ton pays well. Were more capital available, this would not be the case; and there is no doubt that in the future great numbers of Queensland reefs that have been abandoned will be taken up and worked again profitably.

Gold-mining in Queensland is still in its infancy. The best geologists declared that no gold would ever be found on Gympie below the second bed of slate; but a few enthusiasts persisted in going down to see for themselves, and experience proved that the surface-gold that had been obtained was insignificant compared with the yield below the second and third beds of slate.

So far, the rule seems to be that the deeper you go the more gold you get; but the deepest working in Queensland is only 600 feet, which is mere scratching compared to some of the southern workings, which are down nearly 3000 feet. The ordinary history of a Queensland gold field is this, and it is repeated with monotonous regularity:--First of all, alluvial gold is discovered, which brings a rush to the place. Reefs are discovered, the surface of some of them proves tremendously rich; a second reefing rush sets in, and the surface levels of gold are worked out with a very small outlay of capital. The place is then declared to be a “duffer,” and abandoned, except by a few fanatics, who stick there for months and years, and by incredible patience and perseverance manage to strike a fresh level of gold at a greater depth. This brings capital to the field, the reefs are opened up and worked systematically, and the place becomes a permanent gold field.

Up to the present time Gympie, Charters Towers, the Etheridge, and the Hodgkinson are the only diggings that have passed through the transition changes, and assumed a permanent aspect. Of these Charters Towers is far the best, and Gympie the next, but the other two are developing quickly. But all through Queensland, inside the coast range, runs a vast belt of gold-bearing quartz, and innumerable diggings have been discovered, from which heavy surface yields were obtained, but which have been partly deserted for want of capital to develop them.

Mount Wheeler, Clermont, the Cape River, the Normanby, the Mulgrave, Ravenswood, Cloncurry, and the Palmer have all as good prospects as ever Gympie or Charters Towers had, but they are at present in a state of suspended animation, waiting for capital to work their lower levels. Of these Ravenswood and the Palmer are the most promising. On the Palmer the richness of the reefs is beyond dispute, and it is simply the heavy expense of keeping down the water in the claims that prevents their being worked. On Ravenswood the prospects are still better. The only difficulty to contend with there is the complicated nature of the mundic in which the gold is found. The richness of the stone is surprising, and the samples of mundic which have been sent home to Swansea to be treated yield as high as twenty ounces to the ton.

Undoubtedly in the future the gold-mining of Queensland will develop into vast dimensions, and already it has contributed largely to the prosperity of the colony. Gympie broke out at a time when the Queensland exchequer was nearly empty, and the revival that took place was undoubtedly due entirely to the discovery of gold.

The annual yield of Gympie is now nearly 100,000 ounces, and that of Charters Towers is considerably over. In 1879 the estimated value of gold produced throughout the colony was £1,010,000, but since then a large increase has taken place. The Day Dawn claim on Charters Towers is about the best claim in Queensland at the present time. Four or five separate companies were ruined in trying to make her pay, but in 1881 a party of four or five Germans struck gold there. In eighteen months they had taken £135,000 out of the claim, and apparently were only just beginning to find out what it was worth, for when last I heard of them, in July 1883, they had a reef nineteen feet thick crushing regularly three ounces to the ton.

By far the greater portion of gold raised in Queensland up to the present time has been got by parties of working men, who have just gone down as deep as they could without winding machinery, and then slung the claim, having perhaps been flooded out, or come upon a blank patch of stone. Scores of reefs are now lying idle in Queensland from which tremendous yields were obtained near the surface, but which have been abandoned for want of capital. It is only very lately that it has been considered worth while to erect winding gear, and work the reefs at a depth, but the results have been so eminently satisfactory that a vast increase in the annual yield of gold may be looked for during the next few years.

Besides this, fresh fields are constantly being discovered. The Government offers a reward of £1000 to anyone who discovers a gold field upon which, six months after it is opened, there shall be upwards of 200 men at work; and though experience shows that they avail themselves of every possible technical or legal quibble to cheat the prospector out of his reward, the pursuit of gold is quite sufficient to keep up a constant supply of prospectors without any other inducement. Money may be the root of all evil, but, if so, it is like the root of a potato, the best part of it, and the Government need not trouble themselves to offer rewards for the discovery of gold.

They would do very much more to advance the good of the colony if they were to prospect the lower levels of the fields already discovered, by means of a diamond drill, at the public expense. Gold is of all mistresses the most exacting, and as long as it maintains its market value there will always be plenty of people to look for it. Experience proves that gold-mining, as a rule, does not pay, but the pursuit of gold is indeed the triumph of hope over experience. When once a man takes to it he is unfit for anything else, and, whether it make or mar him, he will pursue it to the end of the chapter. The noble army of mining martyrs stick steadily to their post, and the gaps that time and ruin make in their ranks are quickly filled up by an ever-increasing supply of recruits.

“Servitus crescit nova, nec priores
Impiæ tectum dominæ relinquunt
Sæpe minati.”