I agree that round shafts are generally stronger overall. e.g. Tunnels like the ones under the river in Brisbane under river rail tunnel and the road tunnels are all round tunnels.
The Chinese, How hard did they work!!
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Maybe the round hole bases it's same strength as the physics of the egg..
I do a rectangle because it's the shape that suits my dig style,
E.g... with my back against the short wall I want the centre to be a comfortable pick swing distance and I dig towards the other end, empty out, turn around and I have a bench to dig/ split going back the other way.
My reason for keeping walls really straight is to detect a bulge before a cave in..
I do a rectangle because it's the shape that suits my dig style,
E.g... with my back against the short wall I want the centre to be a comfortable pick swing distance and I dig towards the other end, empty out, turn around and I have a bench to dig/ split going back the other way.
My reason for keeping walls really straight is to detect a bulge before a cave in..
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Jaros said:
Yes I have been told it's due to strength, I have bothered researching it though.
As for tunnels, I'm inclined to think it's due to the way the tunnel borers are engineered with a circular cutting head.
From my perspective, Westerners thought in straight lines & right angles, leases were mostly square or rectangle plots, housing in cities were planned with right angles, squares & rectangles, that was the mindset. Chinese, on the other hand, were around thinking stuff up when our ancestors were grubbing around in caves & found that anything 'round' was structurally stronger than a 'right angle', round wells come to mind, the ground you dig in could also have a bearing on what shape is used, the plot thickens.
So the gold total from 3 15lt buckets of dirt taken from the bedrock around the edges of that tunnel would not have bought enough rice to make a rice cracker let alone something to smoke and dream of returning home to china a rich man.
They may have grown vegatables or tabacco to supplement their income/ diet as the top soil is very rich dark mountain loam. They also seemed to have washed all the dirt that was taken out of the shafts and tunnels as there are no piles of mullock around the edges of the shafts.
They may have grown vegatables or tabacco to supplement their income/ diet as the top soil is very rich dark mountain loam. They also seemed to have washed all the dirt that was taken out of the shafts and tunnels as there are no piles of mullock around the edges of the shafts.
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I remember as a Kid, late fifties, we were told that if the Chinese had been in that area - pickings would be very very slim indeed...and you never went through diggings after a Chinaman had been through, because there was no point. There thoroughness was well known.
Everybody spends time going over and all around all old timer diggings knowing that we have technology on our side.However that doesnt mean Im filling my jar every trip. The rock walls the Chinese built up the palmer river to store there dirt behind and sweep the creek down to bedrock attest to there hard work and diligence . Amazing what people will do without social security?
I reckon they worked their arses off to get some money for their families. I don't know what happened when they got home when it came to the gold.
I read recently that to avoid gold tax, the chinese would put gold into the body cavities of their dead prior to shipping the body home to their families for burial.
Mackka
Mackka
That's a good idea. I wouldn't put it past them in those or even nowadays.
Moneybox said:
China had restricted trade to a few ports, principally Canton (Guangzhou) until it lost the First Opium War against Britain in 1842 (Britain had been flooding China with opium that it grew in Bengal and Afghanistan and the Chinese Emperor objected to the resulting moral decay of the Chines population, with huge levels of addiction.). When China lost the war it had to open many other ports (and cede Hong Kong permanently to Britain). This resulted in mass unemployment around Canton, because now trade was going through many Chinese ports. Chinese then went to the USA (railroad building, the 1849 California gold rushes) followed by Australia with the 1851 gold discoveries. They were mostly experienced to some degree, and were sent here on contract by Chinese businessmen around Canton armed with printed phrase books - the puddling, hydraulic sluicing and some dredging were in use in China and imported here (and from California's 1849 rush, although it also had Chinese influence). They were more experienced than Europeans in working large volumes of low-grade gold ore, so would go onto goldfields as European activity declined, and bulk-mine the low-grade ore left behind by the Europeans. Most ultimately returned to China (at one stage 23% of Victorian diggers were Chinese). The Europeans used to criticize them for working too hard, much harder than any "decent white man". The government of Victoria introduced a heavy tax on ships arriving in Victoria, so ships would unload in Robe (SA) and the Chinese would walk across country to Bendigo (discovering Ararat goldfield en route and working it for 6 months until the Europeans woke up and kicked them out). The Eureka rebellion included freedom for all men (including Afro-American and Jamaican diggers, who were four of the better-known leaders but excluding Chinese). However after Peter Lalor became a politician and businessman, he tried employing Chinese miners on his Port Phillip Co mine at Clunes, causing the Clunes race riot (a bit of a non-event). However Chinese were killed in other race riots on Australian goldfields.
China has not forgotten - the 1st and later 2nd opium wars sent it into economic decline for more than a century, from being formerly a rich trading nation.
Although I have never seen it recorded in our history, I have often wondered if the Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60 were one reason for antagonism towards the Chinese in particular.
Popular history is often a bit selective and inaccurate (the aborigines also worked their own gold claims successfully on some goldfields, but you don't find much mention of that in history books before 1980 or so). They also showed whites some gold occurrences and credit was then given to those whites - they used to carry large gold nuggets some distance prior to the European arrival (eg the nuggets at Watchem and Boort) - eg the Watchem nugget was found with gold in quartz at an aboriginal campsite, far from any possible gold source.
The winner writes the history....
Sorry Goldirocks, my bad. I am trying to find the reference which describes penalties for large amounts of undeclared gold in the Palmer River area Qld. In the 1800s. It included lengthy jail terms.
Mackka
Mackka
ive heard this been said before and could have truth to it. Rounded vertical shafts subject to the soil stability mostly would be only shallow up to 3 meters. But if the ground is unstable and has reason to sink deeper than a square or rectangle has its benefits of shoring with timber to strengthen the walls for longer periods and safety.Nightjar said:
Most circular Chinese shafts are in alluvial ground, which like soil is unstable, They were sinking to get to the gravel of old river beds, and these were commonly overlain by thick clay. Circular shafts are definitely more stable because the stresses on the walls are evenly distributed all the way around the shaft, whereas with a rectangular shaft, stresses concentrate at the right-angle corners.Bakesy said:
However human cross-sections are more round than rectangular. So if your main aim is to get to the required depth while having to raise the least earth, circular cross-section shafts require less removing (and hauling to surface) of material.
I've always been a bit suspicious of the devil in the corners story - have to be very small and invisible devils to hide there. Shafts were dug with short-handled miners picks, so the extra length of a rectangular shafts would be of no great advantage (if you look at the rectangular shafts of the Europeans, there was still hardly room to swing a cat - the aim was simply to get down to the wash while having to haul minimum waste to surface while getting down there.
"When gold was discovered in Australia, the volume of Chinese immigration significantly increased. The highest number of arrivals in any one year was 12,396 in 1856.
In 1861, 38,258 people, or 3.3 per cent of the Australian population, had been born in China. This number was not to be equalled until the late 1980s. The majority of Chinese immigrants to Australia during the gold rush were indentured or contract labourers. However, many made the voyage under the credit-ticket system managed by brokers and emigration agents. Only a small minority of Chinese people were able to pay for their own voyage and migrate to Australia free of debt"
There were only 11 Chinese women among these tens of thousands of men. Women were therefore a source of friction with European diggers (in Ballarat the girls would make a few extra bob in the Chinese camp). Almost all returned to China once they ended their contracts. "Between 1852 and 1889, there were 40,721 arrivals and 36,049 departures".
I think the Chinese diggers and their expertise were a bit underestimated in our mining history.
I got an email from the State Library Vic just now and thought I’d share the link.
Fascinating
Fascinating
