Understanding old diggings

[Dignit]

Also remember that there were 10's of thousands 'rushing' some places in the Vic Goldfields. Everyone was clambering over each other meters apart digging their hole. It was a mad frenzie.
From what I understand most didn't find enough gold to live off and quickly abandoned their non paying hole.
If there was payable gold a hole extended longer or deeper following the gold.
As an example I believe there were up to 30,000 prospectors at Maryborough at one stage. Can you imagine the frenzie. Like locusts they moved from gully to gully swarming in, reaping what was to be had, and then swarming on to another patch. It could explain enormous numbers of non-connected holes. This is how I envisage it.
Would appreciate other people's views.

 

[fantail]

Dignit, that's how I pictured it. I looked up the old 'Diggings' reports in the Mount Alexander Mail (available at the National Library Trove) and even tiny locations had 1,000 diggers in 1854 and numbers fluctuated from week to week.

 

[Magilla]

It would be hard for us to imagine the intensity of the digging during the mid 1800's rush, I was reading a gold field report the other day written in 1867 and it was detailing how worked ground was being re-worked back then.

 

[fantail]

OK, thanks everyone. Here is my next question and this time I took the phone so I could take photos.

I have seen a lot of these trenches that basically seem to run along contour lines of a hill above a gully. Sometime there is one a few meters above the bottom of the gully and I have seen places where there were two, one around 5m above the other. They can go for hundreds of meters. What was their purpose?

 

[user 4485]

Divert water away from a working gully/diggings.
Some may have diverted to a dam for storage or back into the gully downstream.

 

[fantail]

Ah, that was one of my theories. Thanks mbasko.

 

[user 4386]

Yes, water race. Long ones were usually bringing water from elsewhere.

 

[moeee]

Divert water away from a working gully/diggings.
Some may have diverted to a dam for storage or back into the gully downstream.

Why would there be 2 ? - or even 3 ? in parallel 5 metres or so apart as the OP said ?

edit : and this would be water as in Rainwater running down the slope onto the miners ?

 

[user 4485]

Why would there be 2 ? - or even 3 ? in parallel 5 metres or so apart as the OP said ?

edit : and this would be water as in Rainwater running down the slope onto the miners ?

More trenches would most likely be to make it more effective & yes these ones that run with the contours of a hill/slope above a gully would also likely be for rainwater & could have 2 uses - stop diggings from getting inundated in heavy rain & to capture water for storage, use in washing paydirt + other water needs.
As Goldierocks says they also used races to transfer water from one point to another I.e. dry diggings. Some large races & even tunnel systems were used to divert whole rivers/creeks so they could get to rich sections.

 

[grubstake]

Every drop of water was precious in the old days, especially to prospectors who didn't have pumps or even pipes to bring it to where they needed it. All they had was simple hand tools - picks, shovels, buckets, etc. - and a willingness to undertake hard manual labour in a shared cause. I'm in awe of how much they were able to accomplish with so little.

 

[fantail]

Yes, I can't imagine what it must have been like. I read some of the articles in the papers from around 1855 on what it was like to just travel to the gold fields and working and 'living' there must have been infinitely harder.

 

[user 4386]

Divert water away from a working gully/diggings.
Some may have diverted to a dam for storage or back into the gully downstream.

Why would there be 2 ? - or even 3 ? in parallel 5 metres or so apart as the OP said ?

edit : and this would be water as in Rainwater running down the slope onto the miners ?

They would often bring water many kilometres in trenches sub-parallel to the hill contours, so that it would flow under gravity. Then they would distribute it in a series of similar races close to where they needed it.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10761-016-0330-0

The Victorian Historical Journal recently published a paper on the Beechworth water races and how they were used, with maps showing their layout.

Sometimes miners would stockpile alluvial wash over summer for washing in the winter - if it was a bad winter they would sometimes have to wait a year....

 

[moeee]

here is nice link for Creswick

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1328/GSR2_Turnbull.pdf

 

[Muk]

Well done moeee lots of reading and maps cheers Muk.

 

[MJB]

These trenches were generally dug by a small company who "owned" the water that ran through them. If miners wanted the water to wash their dirt they would have to pay for the water. As everyone wanted water to wash their dirt, the water "owners" could charge a premium. These water races could run for many miles and the Daylesford/Hepburn region is a good example of this.

 

[Mackka]

Yes I have actually seen them circling a hill, top to bottom. The Chinese Miners used this to great outcomes.
Mackka

 

[user 4386]

These trenches were generally dug by a small company who "owned" the water that ran through them. If miners wanted the water to wash their dirt they would have to pay for the water. As everyone wanted water to wash their dirt, the water "owners" could charge a premium. These water races could run for many miles and the Daylesford/Hepburn region is a good example of this.

The Beechworth reference that I cited describes exactly that (in the RHSV Journal)

 

[user 4485]

An older thread:
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=24020

The Turon Diggings
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18711363

 

[Dappa]

Yeah i seen a lot of races in this area North east Vic. There is some real extensive work done in Snake Gully . I 've walk a lot of them working on the Forestry There'd be hundreds if not thousand of Kms of them. I saw a lot of trenches from the old timers too some of them very narrow none of us could fit in them all of us between 20 and 30 year old and deep like in some places they were 20 ft deep and run for 100's of meters i was talking to an old timer the other day and he told me they would use kids to dig them!!

 

[user 4386]

Yeah i seen a lot of races in this area North east Vic. There is some real extensive work done in Snake Gully . I 've walk a lot of them working on the Forestry There'd be hundreds if not thousand of Kms of them. I saw a lot of trenches from the old timers too some of them very narrow none of us could fit in them all of us between 20 and 30 year old and deep like in some places they were 20 ft deep and run for 100's of meters i was talking to an old timer the other day and he told me they would use kids to dig them!!

4,000 km of them in Victoria if you read my post above.