1851

[bogfrog]

Hi,
Maybe there are enthusiasts of history. I'm checking on how the original gold-fields appeared in 1851. There's a mythical image of nuggets scattered over the bushland and being scooped up. However, people had walked over Ballarat and Bendigo regions for 14 years and at Buninyong village the discoverer had searched for 2 years. Maybe some spots did have loose nuggets above ground and which got into newspaper stories. But it seems on the evidence that colours were not obvious to prospectors in 1851. Could you comment?

 

[Mackka]

Wasn’t Kingower know for the Potato Patch as blokes were bouncing dirt on their shovels and picking off the nuggets?
Mackka

 

[grubstake]

Hi,
Maybe there are enthusiasts of history. I'm checking on how the original gold-fields appeared in 1851. There's a mythical image of nuggets scattered over the bushland and being scooped up. However, people had walked over Ballarat and Bendigo regions for 14 years and at Buninyong village the discoverer had searched for 2 years. Maybe some spots did have loose nuggets above ground and which got into newspaper stories. But it seems on the evidence that colours were not obvious to prospectors in 1851. Could you comment?

"Mythical" is right, I've never heard that stated. Where did you read it?

 

[bogfrog]

'It is reported that in 1851, when the first miners arrived on the Mount Alexander goldfield, near Castlemaine, nuggets could be picked up without digging'. wikipedia Victorian gold rush.
With my swag all on my shoulder. 'When first I left Old England’s shore, Such yarns as we were told, As how folks in Australia Could pick up lumps of gold'. Old Bush Songs: Composed and Sung in the Bushranging, Digging, and Overlanding Days (8th edition, 1932), edited by Banjo Paterson. It was a Seekers disc in 1964.

 

[grubstake]

"It is reported" with no verifiable reference is pretty much meaningless, as are the lyrics of a song.

I've only found surface nuggets in or around worked or disturbed ground in Victoria and I doubt that it was on the surface prior to the ground being worked or disturbed.

Back in the 1850's, specimen gold (ie. gold still encased in quartz or other rock), was certainly found on the surface by those who knew what they were looking for, although such people would have been few in number at the start of the gold rushes. To my knowledge, it was still around in the Victorian Golden Triangle until at least the 1980's, when metal detectors made spotting it very much easier.

 

[bogfrog]

Right, so a 'mythical image' is continued on the wiki page and folk memory in the song. It's credible that in places, shallow gold would be on the surface. An old fallen tree could lift a piece by its upturned roots. The first nugget at Bendigo was visible in the creek. These seem to confirm that in general, it was elusive and abundant amounts were near the surface but hidden from view.

 

[geof_junk]

The first one was sitting in plain sight.
The dark one was in the shade and you can see the moss growing on it.


This spread was south of a large reef area and digging hole sloping down to the north. The area in the circle is sloping southwards. About 40 nuggets were found and about half were sitting in the sun having a tan.Most were about 2 or 3 grams in weight. The circle is 300 mt across.

 

[grubstake]

The first one was sitting in plain sight.
The dark one was in the shade and you can see the moss growing on it.


This spread was south of a large reef area and digging hole sloping down to the north. The area in the circle is sloping southwards. About 40 nuggets were found and about half were sitting in the sun having a tan.Most were about 2 or 3 grams in weight. The circle is 300 mt across.

Yours were in WA, mate - a very different geological setting than Victoria, which is under discussion here.

 

[bogfrog]

Gold-fields were difficult to find in Vic. Then if people had arrived earlier and mined in one area, they could have decided there was no more to be found. 'Fighting craft' boats are painted in north Australia and were partly copied in 'Queensland'.

'Similar “canoes” are represented in rock art elsewhere on Australia’s northern shore, but none appear with similar details to those at Awunbarna. The nearest candidate is the most elaborate Indigenous Australian vernacular watercraft, the canoes of the Torres Strait Islands. This identification of Moluccan fighting craft has significant implications for the reasons mariners from these islands may have been on the northern Australian coastline, and subsequently for the intercultural encounters on the Arnhem Land coast.'
https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2...ntify-moluccan-boats-on-nt-rock-art-drawings/

Aboriginal place-names in southern Australian on the Yarra and Murray river-mouths may be 'Indonesian' loan-words which indicate royal guards for gold, of around the years 1200-1400. Indonesians were gold-mining in the 'Philippines' then and were in Madagascar Africa in that gold region. In those days, 'the largest Javanese ships, carrying 1000 men, would be about 88.56 m LOA (80.51 m in deck length), with a deadweight of 2000 tons and a displacement of 5556 tons'.

 

[geof_junk]

Yours were in WA, mate - a very different geological setting than Victoria, which is under discussion here.

As you say it is different in WA the only nugget I found that was laying in site in Vic. was at Majorca a 2 ounce one back in the early1980's so the odds are different.