Teemore
One foot out the door
With Vic. weather expecting to top out around the high 30's for the next week what better than to read up on some old history .... really makes you realise how difficult it was back in the late 1800's.
Too dry? fancy buying water at 1shilling & 6 pence per bucket or 9 pounds for a weeks worth (very pricey for those days!!!
Fancy a trip back to Melb from the Maryborough fields ... that's 15 hours rattling along in a Cobb & Co coach. Under 2 hours now in the luxury of an air conditioned car.
Tired after a days digging we revert to a comfy caravan or motel room and enjoy a quiet ale. Back then the fun was just starting with claim jumping, midnight wash stealing, outright robbery from sleeping miners, the odd bit of fistcuffs etc etc etc.
What is really interesting is the speed with which some rushes were populated and, in many cases, just as quickly vacated when a new rush was discovered. Rushes built up from 2-300 to the thousands in a matter of weeks (in some cases days).
There must have been many claims that were left, still obviously profitable by todays standards (or just that foot away from the good washdirt) but not worth pursuing for a 'better' rush nearby.
If they were pulling many ounces per bucket load is it any wonder the miners at the first rushes left so much smaller stuff for us to search for today ... if only!
Also something that I think about again and again is with so many populating a 'rush' and the close confines they worked in only a small proportion of the land would have been dug. think tent space with a bit of room to move around, their 'shaft' then the same again for a couple of thousand miners to my mind means a lot of ground was never covered (or at least not in those early 'rushes').
Haven't got to what happened after WW1 or the 30's, 40's and 50's but somewhere between those early days and now there fields were revisited many times.
Glad the aircon is working, time for another ale.
Cheers Tom
Too dry? fancy buying water at 1shilling & 6 pence per bucket or 9 pounds for a weeks worth (very pricey for those days!!!
Fancy a trip back to Melb from the Maryborough fields ... that's 15 hours rattling along in a Cobb & Co coach. Under 2 hours now in the luxury of an air conditioned car.
Tired after a days digging we revert to a comfy caravan or motel room and enjoy a quiet ale. Back then the fun was just starting with claim jumping, midnight wash stealing, outright robbery from sleeping miners, the odd bit of fistcuffs etc etc etc.
What is really interesting is the speed with which some rushes were populated and, in many cases, just as quickly vacated when a new rush was discovered. Rushes built up from 2-300 to the thousands in a matter of weeks (in some cases days).
There must have been many claims that were left, still obviously profitable by todays standards (or just that foot away from the good washdirt) but not worth pursuing for a 'better' rush nearby.
If they were pulling many ounces per bucket load is it any wonder the miners at the first rushes left so much smaller stuff for us to search for today ... if only!
Also something that I think about again and again is with so many populating a 'rush' and the close confines they worked in only a small proportion of the land would have been dug. think tent space with a bit of room to move around, their 'shaft' then the same again for a couple of thousand miners to my mind means a lot of ground was never covered (or at least not in those early 'rushes').
Haven't got to what happened after WW1 or the 30's, 40's and 50's but somewhere between those early days and now there fields were revisited many times.
Glad the aircon is working, time for another ale.
Cheers Tom
