Volume 01: Production and resources of the northern and western districts of New South Wales, 1854 [ca. 1850-1857] - Page 558
You are here
Primary tabs
Transcription
WESTERN GOLD FIELDS IN NEW SOUTH WALES
STONEY CREEK GOLD FIELD WELLINGTON DISTRICT
JULY 9th 1856
This gold field is situated on the road to Mookerwa [?] [Mookerawa?] & is about 35 miles from Orange in Wellington District. This is the richest gold field ever discovered in New South Wales, and will answer gold diggers of small capital from the richness of the surface diggings & the sleight depth the shafts require to come at the gold deposits. This gold field may be termed the poor mans diggings.
There are at present twelve hundred diggers at work in sinking shafts or surfacing upon the ridges, & it is considered that there is room for twelve thousand diggers.
The whole country which is hilly, & abounds in gullies, is covered with Stringy bark trees and box wood, & is said to resemble the country about Forest Creek (in Victoria) in its appearance & formation. At this field the whole earth from the grass to the bottom Consists of a kind of rotten[?] slate & shaft sinking at present is confined to about nine feet. The shallow or surfacing to about two feet. The yield is astonishing & already vies with the richest of the Victorian gold fields. Some diggers are obtaining twenty ounces of gold in a day & this continues with them for days together. One hundred ounces were taken out of three adjoining claims in one day, the gold being nuggety & weighing from one to 18 ounces.
The surface diggings contain more or less of the precious metal, yielding in many places one ounce to the bucket of earth, with occasional nuggets of greater weight, small specks are also seen amidst the grass on the surface of the earth. At Golden Gully the sinking is shallow & the diggings may be considered dry although at this season of the year there is abundance of water, here the sinking of shafts is nine feet. Experienced diggers consider that the field will prove to be the richest gold field yet discovered in any part of the world. These diggings are situated in the undulating Country, & will extend to the plains in the westward, they are at a considerable distance to the westward of the great Cordillera in which the discoveries of gold
have been principally confined, and are the first of extensive fields to develope [develop] the immense deposits of gold which lay imbedded in
the interior of New South Wales. The gold diggers of this Colony will leave their claims on this great range, & like their brethern [brethren]
in Victoria, Spread themselves over the vast plains & undulating country in the districts of Liverpool, Gwyder [Gwydir], & Darling, and the anticipated discoveries to the westward of Port Curtis to which I refer to in my writings, will at a future time be made, either from the plains & undulating country situated in the most northern parts of Gwyder [Gwydir] district, from the Western parts of Darling District on Lower Condamine river, or from Port Curtis. The present diggings at Stoney Creek are situated
about three miles from Mookerwa [Mookerawa?],
Sixteen miles from Molong, eight miles from the Macquarie, thirty miles from Orange, & twenty miles from Burrendong. Kenny creek is one hundred & sixty miles from Sydney.