History question - how much was a "load" when crushing gold ore?

[Guessologist]

Hi everyone, I've just realised while trawling Trove for information that I have no idea how much a "load" is. My brain has always just edited the term to ton by itself and called it a day. It's a horribly generic term to try and Google so I haven't had any luck there. I don't have a feel either for if it's an formal or approximate unit (do you mean a Load or a load?). It was clearly a fairly widely accepted unit of measurement back in the day...

 

[grubstake]

I believe the full term is "dray load", this being the amount of material usually carried by a single horse and cart. I don't know what weight that might have been, though.

 

[user 4386]

I believe the full term is "dray load", this being the amount of material usually carried by a single horse and cart. I don't know what weight that might have been, though.

I'm a bit doubtful if it had even that formality. In my experience it can even mean "wheelbarrow load" and "bucket-load". Often it simply seems to mean the last "crushing" or similar - simply the amount they put through the last time they turned on the crusher to treat some ore or opened the dam to sluice a load of gravel that had accumulated since last time they treated anything. Or simply the amount brought up the shaft in the last bucket.

In most cases that I have seen it would not give any useful information anyway.

 

[Guessologist]

Yep, that's the context I'm working in - crushing results of x loads for y ounces of gold. Might be as useful a unit as "x ounces for y weeks of work" which seems to pop up a bit too.

 

[casper]

Hi everyone, I've just realised while trawling Trove for information that I have no idea how much a "load" is. My brain has always just edited the term to ton by itself and called it a day. It's a horribly generic term to try and Google so I haven't had any luck there. I don't have a feel either for if it's an formal or approximate unit (do you mean a Load or a load?). It was clearly a fairly widely accepted unit of measurement back in the day...

I saved the following from a post on this forum way back in 2016.

".....the old timers needed a standard to measure how rich a 'lead' was or what a new goldfield's potential might be, so they started to use the amount of gold recovered from the amount of wash dirt dug.
for example:-
A bucket of wash-dirt.
A tub which held 4 to 6 buckets of wash-dirt.
A load which held 30 buckets of wash-dirt....."

Now, I can't vouch for it's validity but it was interesting enough for me to make a record of it in my notes.

 

[Simmo]

This is a late night attempt at humour..

When the Boss says "Son... take that whole lode to the crusher'... I obey...

 

[user 4386]

Yep, that's the context I'm working in - crushing results of x loads for y ounces of gold. Might be as useful a unit as "x ounces for y weeks of work" which seems to pop up a bit too.

Probably very relevant at the time - in the early days one person required to recover around one ounce of work per week to just cover living costs. So it would have been an indication of whether an area was proving "payable", Trouble is, that the 1800s ranged from lots of rich finds, to people just trying to get by on "poor man's diggings" (eg in the 1890s depression). In the early days you always had the option of providing labour for someone else if you were getting hungry, but the shallow allluvial was gone well prior to the 1870s.

 

[user 4386]

This is a late night attempt at humour..

When the Boss says "Son... take that whole lode to the crusher'... I obey...

Reminds me of Lang Hancock and his lack of understanding (or empathy*) for indigenous attitudes. Sat down on a hill with a bunch of aborigines to impress them with a big blast on the hill opposite. Boom! Silence. Then "You really buggered up that hill boss".

*Lang proposed herding all aborigines into one place and secretly putting something in their drinking water to sterilize them, to solve "the aboriginal problem"

 

[Jaros]

I had never heard that before-goes to prove that power doesn't exist without some evil.

 

[user 4386]

I saved the following from a post on this forum way back in 2016.

".....the old timers needed a standard to measure how rich a 'lead' was or what a new goldfield's potential might be, so they started to use the amount of gold recovered from the amount of wash dirt dug.
for example:-
A bucket of wash-dirt.
A tub which held 4 to 6 buckets of wash-dirt.
A load which held 30 buckets of wash-dirt....."

Now, I can't vouch for it's validity but it was interesting enough for me to make a record of it in my notes.

Perhaps that was a general measure, although I doubt that it would have applied to all goldfields. Of course you would need to know how big the bucket or tub was, but it would be a general indication of magnitude,

 

[user 4386]

I had never heard that before-goes to prove that power doesn't exist without some evil.

But getting back on track......compare a "load" with the trucks we use now on the iron ore mines.....

 

[Guessologist]

This is a late night attempt at humour..

When the Boss says "Son... take that whole lode to the crusher'... I obey...

"Anyone seen my wallet this arvo? Think it might have fallen out of the LV when I was in the pit last..."

Also, with some fairly careful keyword selection I found an external reference for the mysterious load, grubstake might be on the money...

And 20 hundredweight is one imperial ton, so "about a ton but we didn't weigh it" seems to be where things are settling. I'll see if I can nail it down a bit better for my own satisfaction.