CORNER COUNTRY GOLD
By ALAN HASSELL ?
Copyright 1/1/1981 all rights reserved
Most good gold tales these days are generated in the bars of gold field hotels. In the past miner's would meet in knots around their tents after a hard days digging. They would discuss the finds of the day and newly discovered gold- fields. Apart from modern surroundings, nothing has changed it's all part of a common disease known as gold fever. n a visit to the Yunta Hotel, in South Australia, I met a salesman called Claude.
During the conversation Claude confided that during a week over Christmas last year he found $6000 in gold at a place called Tibooburra. Rushes by modern day prospector's are not unlike those of yesteryear. Having already won some gold on the Teetulpa gold field, I thought a change of scenery was in order.
Tibooburra lies in the top northwest corner of New South Wales not far from the Queensland and South Australian borders. It is about 320 km from Broken Hill, and the journey can take between 5 to 6 hours on a good dirt road. Petrol and a few provisions can be obtained at Pack- Saddle and Milparinka.
Tibooburra, is a small sleepy little town with a population of around 150 people. Gold was first discovered in the area during October 1880, when John Thompson and a friend found payable gold at Mt Poole. About five months later James Evans found about 14 ounces of alluvial gold at Mount Brown.
News of the find caused a rush to this remote location. As the country was opened up, rushes also occurred at Easter Monday, Good Friday, Nuggety Hill, The Granites and many other areas as gold was found. Reefs such as the Pioneer and Warratta Creek were found.
In a very short space of time as auriferous belt some 50 miles by 10 ad been opened up.
This became known as the Albert gold field with Milparinka as the main settlement. Milparinka is an aboriginal word meaning water can be found here.
As there was no water at Mt.Browne, the miner's chose to camp at Evelyn Creek, which later became known as Milparinka. For a time it could boast of three hotels, three boarding houses, four stores, a photographer, two butchers, a chemist, blacksmith, saddler as well as various government buildings.
Today apart from the one hotel still in operation the only remains are the old court house, police station and the cells. A township was started at Mt.Browne but never came to much owing to lack of water. The remains of the old hotel and a few other building lie scattered over field.
Most of the gold won at Mt.Browne was obtained either by surface dry blowing at the fig-tree diggings or sinking onto the deep leads at numerous other area's, such as the One Mile Diggings.
Dry blowers being the main method of recovery, was the order of the day. A great deal of gold was lost by miner's working the deep leads. Without proper crushing facilities much of the gold went unnoticed into the dry blowing heaps owing to the cement like material covering the gold. Had the old timers had the use of modern day metal detectors, they would have realized this.
Next time you get a hot rock, ask yourself, is anything inside? If in doubt break it open to make sure. A dolly pot is ideal for this. Upon my arrival at Tibooburra, I sought some inside information.
This was obtained quite readily at the Family Hotel, where the people are quite sociable and friendly.
Most helpful of all was Joss Davies, managers of the Family Hotel. One of the places Joss suggested trying out was the old specking patch behind the dam. The old racecourse was once covered with the old tailing heaps left behind by the miners and their dry blowers. It had been flattened by bulldozers to put the ground to much better use.
I had heard that Frank Pelling of Broken Hill had recovered several nice nuggets from this area and seemed a good enough place to start. Once I had the dry blower fired up I worked for about 1.5 hours before doing the customary clean up. Ye'p it was here all right and the colour in my pan was the proof. A fine camping site had been established by the rangers of the Sturt National Park. Fresh rain water is available from a tank.
Wood is provided for the campers and it's all for free. A remarkably display of old mining equipment, left behind by the miner's has been assembled mainly by John Gerritson near the camping area in Dead Horse gully. Sadly after the publication of this article some idiots went into the area and wrecked many of the artefacts. With the arrival of a couple of guys I has met on the Teetulpa gold field, Brian and Eddie Mcquire at Tibooburra we all decided to head for Mount Browne to try our luck. Travelling in convoy we made our way to Milparinga.
At the Hotel we were informed that Mt Poole had been closed off to prospectors, but could visit Sturt's grave. While we were there we met Stan Smyth a prospector from Merbein, Victoria. Stan was showing off some of his fine nuggets to Mrs. Garland, Licensee of the hotel.
When the gold was weighed on the post office scales it was realized Stan had 7.5 ounces. Although Stan would not divulge where he got the gold from, he did say he was looking at the Easter Monday field which is not very far from Tibooburra. Being stirred up by the sight of Stan's gold, we realized you don't find it sitting in the pub.
Off to Mount Browne we went. On our arrival we went to see the Station owner, Mr.George Parker. George gave us the O.K. to camp so set about looking for a suitable campsite. We had decided to try fig-tree diggings first. Anyone who has done any research into the area will know that it seldom rains in this neck of the woods. Droughts of five years have been known to have taken place before even a drop of the wet stuff fell from the sky.
When a geologist told us we had camped in an old dam, we not really concerned. Brian and Eddy started going over old dry blow heaps with their detectors. I was busy putting tailings through my dry blower. We all had gold that day and a great night was had by all around the campfire. Just as the old time miner's had gathered around theirs we were reliving history in many respects. It wasn't long before we were all busy munching on eddies damper.
Damper is a form of bush bread, made out of flour and water then put into a dutch over and covered in hot coals in the camp fire. 45 minutes later you have a bread that is more like a large scone. Add a bit of fruit and it's called Johnny cake, stuffed if I know why but it tastes great. After a few days we became a little more methodical about the way we worked. Eddie set about his labours in the most methodical manner using a wheel barrow he had bought in Broken Hill.
His method was to spread out a heap over a clean piece of ground about 5 meters square. Having done this he would go over it with his metal detector. As explained earlier much of this gold was lost because of the cement like coating Eddie recovered some good gold specimens this way, His best find was a pear shaped nugget weighing 2 ounces.
News came onto the field that Stan had been onto the field again and this time had found a ten ounce nugget and sixteen others of about one ounce each. We knew Stan was not on the Mount Browne field at the time otherwise we would have seen him come onto the field from our advantage point. Stan was making news for himself in the newspapers and on the radio, but what puzzled us was the fact he claimed it came from Mount Browne.
This practice has been going on for ages, laying a false scent, and had happened on many a gold field. Poor old George Parker the station owner upon hearing the news on the radio fearing a rush to the area, acted swiftly. George had placed an advertisement in the Barrier Mail to the effect that Mount Browne would now be closed off to fossikers.
Well Stan I hope your proud of yourself. As a result of your actions many would be prospectors are now being turned away from Mount Browne. Our luck at Mount Browne ran out when it started to rain unexpectedly.
Now for the funny part- you guessed it- the dam started to fill during the night. We were having the same 4 inches of rain that fell on Townsville in Queensland a day or so ago. By morning we had 6 to 8 inches were in it. We had all moved our cars out to higher ground during the night, I was the only one with a 4 wheel drive and it would be up to me to drag Brians car out in the morning.
It seemed like the old devil had finally driven that wedge of discouragement in a little too far this time, cold wet and miserable, I decided to pack up my tent and gear and head back to Teetulpa in South Australia.
With the worst yet to come I got the four wheel drive bogged on the way out and was stranded for two days trying to dig myself out. It appears that a couple of guys in a caravan had travelled through here earlier and cut deep tracks in the now muddy road. One of them got bogged in the same spot but was able to get a tow out from his mate.
I had no mates around when I got stuck and had to dig my way out of it. Once free of the mud I headed for Tibooburra where supplies of petrol were available. Here I met Tim Goodswell and his wife from Harvey Bay, Queensland.
like myself they were travelling around prospecting. Tim showed me a really magnificent specimen of quartz studded in a lace pattern with gold. Tim told me it came from Warratta Creek, gold is in the area and it's up to you to find it, and Tim did just that. I always try to get those fortunate enough to show their gold around. It stimulates certain individuals and gets the adrenaline going and encourages others to get out there and look for it.
Far too many people sit in front of the tele with a tinny in one hand detector in the other waiting for nuggets to fall from the sky. My most unusual find for the trip was found when a party of guys from an Adelaide Metal detector Club turned up on my mining claim at Teetulpa. I'd been dry blowing for about an hour in Brady's Gully South with them all up above watching me slave away with a pick and shovel, throwing dirt up to the dry blower
.
I decided I had enough and decided to do a clean up. I had a sheet of plastic in a hole I had dug and had filled it with water. this is what you have to resort to if you intend panning in dry area's. Showing the guys a few specks of the yellow stuff at the bottom of the pan I left them to it while I took my detector over to the dry blower. Moving it to one side, I detected the spoil heap and got a signal. It turned out to be a very rare crystal of gold almost dead square.
It caused great excitement amongst the members of the club, it was the first crystal I had ever found or seen come to that.
Although only small 3 grams it's rarity increased it's value 20 times to a collector. A short time later, I needed to return to Melbourne to see my kids. Several months earlier my marriage fell apart and the wife took the kids to Queensland.
Now they were back in Melbourne and the Kids wanted to see me. Overjoyed at the prospect I pulled the pegs and started the long journey to Melbourne. Colin Kingsland was a great mate of mine, he sold metal detectors and had a shop called ColMar metal detectors, a joint venture between his and his wife COLin and MARgaret, hence the name.
During a visit to his shop numerous individuals would float in and out showing off their finds and discussing what else but gold. This one guy had this nice 29 gram nugget, not quite an ounce but a nice piece. He took a liking to my crystal, which because under a magnifying glass you could make out 1992, the year it was found and was a natural occurrence made the specimen a real conversation piece. So overcome with what he had in his hands that he offered me the 29 gram nugget for the crystal.
When you get an offer like that you don't knock it back I was in effect getting almost ten times more gold for the little bit that he held in his hand so why not. Later that day I popped in to renew my acquaintance with my old mate Don Mahoney at the Miner's Den in Blackburn. Don had a great new white's machine hanging up on the wall, it was the First 6000D with visual discrimination indication on it and it looked the bee's knee's.
Showing Don the 29 gram nugget we started to talk turkey and it wasn't long before I walked out of his shop with a brand new detector under my arm, Whilst Don, had in his possession the nugget only a few hours ago I had swapped for my crystal.
Crazy things like this go on all the time, and even to this day Colin cant get over the swap that took place in his shop under his own eyes. About nine months later I bumped in Eddie at Finlay, New South Wales, He'd been around Australia by then and had about $30,000 worth of the yellow metal.
This is just another little adventure in the many I had chasing gold around Australia, hope you liked it HAPPY HUNTING.
Oh if I ever find thaq pic of that gem of a gold crystal i ill put it up for you because it had 82 on it the same years as i found it and it was a natural occurance.
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