Imagine Being 1st On Here With a Detector

Not sure just where abouts this was in WA but imagine being the 1st on here with a detector :.10:
Could be Mount Charlotte in the background.

Pretty sure I just waked over the today, only some prick decided to plant tree's!

The old boys knew how to dig, thats for sure. Where ever it is, it must have been all close to the surface.

You can bet it's on a lease now and covered by bulldozers and excavators or... just waiting for some benevolent mining mob to start operations in a few years.

Robert

cool!! see where they chased a leader right down the side of the hill. my bet is that hill is a big hole somewere by now

In the centre of the photo,you can see a few piles of mullock that look to have been fine sieved. Id say they must have been onto a definate wash layer at reasonable depth by the size of some of those Mullocks as well.
Then again,I could be wrond and the Gold may have been top to bottom in fairly deep ground.

Makes me salivate just looking at it

amazing to think all that work was done with handtools and carts.

Yeah Im fully frothing bloke.
How good would it be to hit that ground between the hill and the diggings.

Good stuff Pete. 1 photo and it got me searching. The J.J. Dwyer collection on Trove.

http://innopac.slwa.wa.gov.au/search~S2?/tJ.+J.+Dwyer+collection+%3B+5816B%2F236/tj+j+dwyer+collection+5816b++236/-3,-1,0,B/browse

How to search a mine, with a candle

This is an amazing set of photographs of times gone by. The bright light would come from the old style camera flash, but the men are working by candle light. And I think I've got it hard.

The pic that Pete put up has me intrigued. I've been searching, it's interesting. where is it. Here's a pic of Mt Charlotte when they built the reservior in 1903. Maybe the trench coming down the hill was just the beginning of the pipeline trench. I don't know. Doesn't look like the same hill to me. maybe the other pic was taken from the eastern side. Who knows, more searching required.

Fantastic set of images. We had a bunch up at camp here at work. Always loved the Mt Margaret footy team photo's.

Thanks heaps for posting the link. Love the quality of the mining back then.

Always amazed by the underlays, and wooden backfill brattices.

OHS back then...? Huh?

This Bloke knows where the alluvial patch was at, he took the photo

I went thru the white pages and made some phone calls but the bugger has gone into hiding. He's keepin it to himself :rolf:

I'll even keep to the 10 foot rule if he tells me where it is

Ok - between Cliff and his contacts and myself, the great mystery is now being solved bit by bit

As i first thought when i posted the photo, the abandoned alluvial patch is at Kalgoorlie, its the original
run found by Paddy Hannan on 17th June 1893 below Mt Charlotte that started the gold rush to Kal.

The hill was taken up as part of the original "Mt Charlotte 211E & Hannan's Hill 97E Leases" and the spot where
Paddy Hannan's Tree now stands is within the run, the Alluvial run was magnificently rich with gold and the average depth to the wash was 14 feet.......

There is one very strange tale of a digger digging up some old Dutch artifacts dated back to the 1600's
on his alluvial claim at 2 foot deep , so it seems the early Dutch explorers came further inland in their
search for gold than thought, they may have found the spot but perished trying to get back to the coast
or been speared by the local tribesmen.










More Info To Come

Pete

Here's a couple of pics that has been helping with the search. early days in Kal.

Well done lads. Interesting stuff. If only Paddy could see it now!



Robert

it gets better all the time, yeah right. It has now been suggested it is what is called Maritana Hill/Nannygoat Hill but maybe called Mt Gledden. Where ever that photo was taken, that alluvial field extends underneath the town of Kalgoorlie.

Ok, as Cliff said in his last post it is now 99% certain it is the Mt Gledden area.
This photo has been driving Cliff and myself nuts, dont ask why but it has, i guess
its the nature of a gold prospector to need to know.
We have had some great help from the Eastern Goldfields Historical Society in Kalgoorlie,
and the photo has been scrutinized immensely by the kind volunteers at their HQ.
We can not speak highly enough for this group of dedicated volunteers who promote and
research the history of the Eastern goldfields for future generations of Australians.

http://www.kalgoorliehistory.org.au/Home.php

Ok, this video is the end result of all the research done by Cliff,myself & the EGHS in Kal,
It will blow your mind, basically the guys took all the info and one of the volunteers actually
went to the exact spot the old original photo was taken and took a new photo...
Its a trip back in time, and YES i still wanna detect it but KCGM say No way





Pete

Pete and the people at the EGHS deserve all the credit and a big round of applause for the research.
All I can claim is an obsession with a bloody hill :rolf:

That truly is F-ing awesome

Any culvert's along the road :bounce:

Here's part of a message I got from one of the Kal people who helped with the search. Gold, don't ya just love it

"For the past three weeks there has been a program of works widening the road at Williamston Rd Tee Junction with the Bypass road. This is about 40 metres south of Paddy`s Reward Claim.

On Friday morning they had a small backhoe digging trenches along the side of the Bypass Road opposite the Robert Street Tee junction. The first 20 meters was obviously fill for the road but then they got into about 30 metres of fresh alluvial dirt. If ?????'s call is correct , then they would have been trenching through the alluvial in the original photo in question. I will wager I wasn`t the only one drooling over it and wishing I could put it through a dryblower."

This is a classic example of how to research and find good areas just from
stumbling onto a single old photo.
Firstly the photo was found in WA archives
so that gave us the state it was in, next the year was on the webpage it was displayed on
so that gave us a time frame of the rush, minus say 1 year for the rush to happen and be
abandoned, next you investigate all the alluvial rushes that happened within that time frame
and that again narrows the search down heaps.
The size of the alluvial patch told me it had to be a major rush for that year which narrowed it
even more, next thing was to download the warden of the mines Mines report for that year
and that singled out only two major rushes fitting the size scale.
That report also had the mines of the district and photo's of each mine back in the days
just after the alluvial rush, those photo's showed hills very similar and in fact the same to
the original old photo - Boom Baby



Within that Mines report was also the old leases map and it all falls into place.
it was then a case of which lease had a massive alluvial rush/patch and job done.

Good luck to anyone else who may be trying to trace an old forgoten patch.

Pete

PS: and Cliff was a major player in this story i kid you not

Picture over looking the diggings from hill