Mitchells Creek
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Mitchells Creek is a creek in central
New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
. Rising north-east of
Wellington, New South Wales Wellington is a city in the Central Western Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia, located at the junction of the Wambuul Macquarie and Bell Rivers. It is within the local government area of Dubbo Regional Council. The city is northwest o ...
, Mitchells Creek flows generally northward and joins the
Talbragar River Talbragar River, a perennial stream that is part of the Macquarie catchment within the Murray–Darling basin, is located in the Orana district of New South Wales, Australia. The river rises on the western side of the Liverpool Range on south ...
about 5 km south-west of Ballimore. The direct distance from its source to its outlet is 31 kilometres, longer via the twists and turns of the watercourse. There is usually no water in the creek. The broad valley through which the creek runs is used for growing wheat. The non-existent localities of Comobella, Windorah and Westella lie within the valley, which has no extant towns or villages. The
Golden Highway Golden Highway is a highway, located in the Hunter Region, Hunter and Orana (New South Wales), Orana regions of New South Wales, Australia. It runs eastwards from Dubbo towards Newcastle, New South Wales, Newcastle on the coast, allowing roa ...
crosses Mitchell's Creek immediately adjacent to where it merges into the Talbragar River.


Goldfield

Mitchells Creek Goldfield is claimed to be Australia's first goldfield. It is located at Bodangora near
Wellington, New South Wales Wellington is a city in the Central Western Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia, located at the junction of the Wambuul Macquarie and Bell Rivers. It is within the local government area of Dubbo Regional Council. The city is northwest o ...
. Gold was apparently first found in this area by a shepherd called McGregor in Mitchells Creek on the Montefiore's squatting run, Nanima in 1848 (about four years before the “official” discovery of gold in Australia). Newspaper reports of early prospecting are a bit confusing as another Mitchells Creek (now called Sunny Corner) was also a goldfield and was located to the south–east. The Bathurst Free Press noted on 25 May 1850, ''“Neither is there' any doubt in the fact that Mr. M'Gregor found a considerable quantity of the precious metal some years ago, near Mitchell's Creek, and it is surmised he 'still, gets more in the same locality''", which pre-dates the extravagant claims of
Edward Hargraves Edward Hammond Hargraves (7 October 1816 – 29 October 1891) was a gold prospector who claimed to have found gold in Australia in 1851, starting an Australian gold rush. Early life Edward Hammond Hargraves was born on 7 October 1816 in Gosp ...
to be the first discover of gold in Australia. One published source identifies the shepherd as "Hugh McGregor" 1994. He appears in the press of the day variously as M'Gregor, McGregor and Macgregor. The mining appears to have occurred in several phases:


Alluvial Mining in the 1850s

Alluvial Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluv ...
mining is only documented by the occasional newspaper reports.


Quartz Mining from the 1860s

Quartz mining was primarily undertaken by the Mitchells Creek Gold Mining Company which seems to have had numerous owners and gone through several phases of activity. A newspaper report on the mine published in August 1892 commented "When I first visited it, 18 or 19 years ago, it was being worked under the management of Mr Fitte, and was yielding fair returns of gold. I remember it then as a splendid body of quartz, traceable along the surface for more than half a mile, and sunk upon at several parts. The prospect was then hopeful, but for some reasons with which I am not furnished the mine failed to meet expectations". A full description of the Mitchells Creek Gold Mine was published by the NSW Department of Mine in its ''Annual Report'' for 1891. It gives a brief history of the mine ownership and activity: "Owned originally by a Sydney company, the old "Mitchell's Creek Gold Mining Company", and subsequently by Messr's J.B. Rundle and S.D. Gordon, it was worked at intervals between 1869 and 1881. For the following eight years (1881–1889) no effort was made to resume working the reef, regarded by the owners as consisting thenceforward almost exclusively of sulphides too intricate to treat with profit. In 1889 the estate was purchased by the present proprietary (Messr's Philip Davies, T.M. Dalveen & J.M. Lindlay, of Sydney, and James Dick, of Glasgow) for the purpose of reopening the mine". .


Description of the Mitchells Creek Mine in 1891

Lindlay went on to describe the mine in detail. After ore from the mine was crushed, the quartz dust was mixed with water to make sloppy
mud A MUD (; originally multi-user dungeon, with later variants multi-user dimension and multi-user domain) is a Multiplayer video game, multiplayer Time-keeping systems in games#Real-time, real-time virtual world, usually Text-based game, text-bas ...
which then ran down sloping tables, called concentrating tables. On top of these tables were
copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
sheets coated with
mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...
, which attracts gold. The gold particles stuck to the mercury, and could be collected from there. A summary of Lindlay's description follows: ''"The ground comprises an area of 600 acres freehold land, situated close by the Wellington to Gulgong road, about eight miles from
Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
township, in the parish of Bodangora, and overlying the divisional line between the counties of Bligh and
Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincol ...
. It is traversed by a strong
quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...
reef A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock out ...
, between walls of hard black
diorite Diorite ( ) is an intrusive igneous rock formed by the slow cooling underground of magma (molten rock) that has a moderate content of silica and a relatively low content of alkali metals. It is intermediate in composition between low-silic ...
, exceedingly well defined, and with every indication of a permanent character".'' The plant and machinery may be described as follows: Winding and pumping plant, No. 1 shaft, comprises vertical
Tangye Tangye is a surname of Breton origin and is common in Cornwall. It may refer to: * Richard Tangye, industrialist (1833–1906) **His son, Sir , 1st Baronet (1866–1935) ***His son, Sir , 2nd Baronet (1895–1969) ** His son, Lt. Colonel O.B.E ...
boiler of , steaming horizontal Tangye engine, with winding gear attached; also pumping gear, working two by 5 pumps, with two
connecting rod A connecting rod, also called a 'con rod', is the part of a piston engine which connects the piston to the crankshaft. Together with the crank, the connecting rod converts the reciprocating motion of the piston into the rotation of the cranksh ...
s (of steam gas pipe) and delivery pipe. The rods rest on friction pulleys, the shaft going down on the underlay of lode at an angle of 45deg. The pump draws the water from depth of in one column. A substantial steel tramway is laid from top to bottom of the shaft upon which the trucks are hauled by means of steel-wire rope attached to drum of the winding gear. This plant is entirely under a substantially-built wooden shed, covered with
galvanized Galvanization or galvanizing ( also spelled galvanisation or galvanising) is the process of applying a protective zinc coating to steel or iron, to prevent rusting. The most common method is hot-dip galvanizing, in which the parts are submerged ...
iron. Winding and pumping plant, No. 2 shaft, is a sister plant to the above described.
Crushing plant A Crushing plant is one-stop crushing installation, which can be used for rock crushing, garbage crushing, building materials crushing and other similar operations. Crushing plants may be either fixed or mobile. A crushing plant has different sta ...
, erected on the machinery site of the former company, about midway along the reef, consists of a new ×
Cornish boiler A shell or flued boiler is an early and relatively simple form of boiler used to make steam, usually for the purpose of driving a steam engine. The design marked a transitional stage in boiler development, between the early haystack boilers and ...
, with Galloway tubes seated in solid brickwork, and the
flues A flue is a Duct (flow), duct, Pipe (fluid conveyance)#Materials, pipe, or opening in a chimney for conveying exhaust gases from a fireplace, Industrial furnace, furnace, Water heating, water heater, boiler, or Electric generator, generator to ...
connected with a substantial brick stack; an horizontal engine, driving 15 head stamper battery (weight per stamper, ; length of drop, 8 inches; speed 75 drops per minute); inclined wooden tables, long, wide, 1 inch per foot pitch, with two mercury wells on table - one in middle, one at lower end - the intervening space covered by electro-silvered copper-plates (2oz electro-silver per super foot) long , wide , in front of each box, the remaining space - on each table - being occupied by wooden 'distributing-lozenges'. . Grinding and concentrating plant, about distant from battery, and connected with same by narrow wooden shoot, conveying the pulp from stampers. This comprises one double-cylinder Marshall's portable engine, driving two Lamerton grinding mills imported from Glasgow. These regrind the tailings after the stampers, and discharge on to inclined tables, by , with pitch of 1 inch per foot, covered by electro-silvered copper-plates in following order:- Top of table, plate; space of unoccupied; bottom plate . Distributing shoots (wooden launders) and pipes deliver pulp from grinding mill tables to 6 Frue-Vanner concentrating machines, driven by a Tangye vertical engine, steamed from the Marshall's portable boiler. Two plunger sand pumps, driven from the portable engine, return waste water from the tailings dam to the reservoir at battery through cast iron pipes, distance . Both battery and concentrating plant is supplied by a line of pipes laid down between supply-reservoir and the concentrating shed. The concentrating shed it is very substantially built, and measures long by wide, and high to the wall plates. Nearly the whole floor is boarded or bricked, and a large area is kept in perfect order for depositing and bagging
pyrites The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Fe S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue ...
. The whole of the shed is covered with galvanised iron. A drying furnace of brick work for freeing pyrites from moisture opens from the shed. The main water supply is furnished by pumping plant at the Mitchell's Creek on extreme northern end of property. A Blake steam-pump, steamed from a steel tubular boiler, Tangye vertical, pumps from an undercurrent on the west bank of the creek, and force the water through a mile and quarter in length of cast-iron pipes to the supply dam at the battery. The buildings comprise a three-roomed office (one compartment for smelting gold, one for assay weighing, and the third for clerical purposes, a very complete assay plant being housed here); a substantial residence for general manager; storehouse; smith's shop; explosives magazine (brickwork); and stable. Water is laid on to the office and residence, and every precaution provided against fire'. The Mitchells Creek Gold Mine continued in operation until 1908 with only a short halt in production during 1901 when a new crushing plant was installed. After the mines closed the
tailings In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...
from the crushing plant were purchased by the Mitchells Creek Gold Recovery Company for treatment by cyaniding.Osborne, Idle 1975 Annual Report Compilation, Wellington Division – Dubbo Sheet 1875–1974, Department of Mines NSW, ARC080 A further attempt to form a company to mine at Mitchells Creek was made in 1920, but the project did not proceed.


See also

* Hoist (mining) *
Mineral processing In the field of extractive metallurgy, mineral processing, also known as ore dressing, is the process of separating commercially valuable minerals from their ores. History Before the advent of heavy machinery the raw ore was broken up using ...
*
Shaft mining Shaft mining or shaft sinking is the action of excavating a mine shaft from the top down, where there is initially no access to the bottom. Shaft (civil engineering), Shallow shafts, typically sunk for civil engineering projects, differ greatly ...
*
Quartz reef mining Quartz reef mining is a type of gold mining in "reefs" (veins) of quartz. Quartz is one of the most common minerals in the earth's crust, and most quartz veins do not carry gold, but those that have gold are avidly hunted by prospectors. In the sh ...
*
Underground mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...


References

{{coord, -33.15, 147.31667, display=title Gold mines in New South Wales Localities in New South Wales Underground mines in Australia