The BSA A7-A10 Forum
Bikes, Pictures, Stories & more => Chat, Offtopic & Everything Else => Topic started by: Greybeard on 28.03. 2023 12:49
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I believe Richard (Orabanda) will be turning that into A10s.
Richard L.
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Finds like that are not uncommon in our part of the world.
"The Golden Mile" (the mining area at the southern end of Kalgoorlie) is known as the richest square mile on earth.
My family were pastoralists and prospectors; we had Mt Carnage Station at nearby Ora Banda for 50 years.
They found a lot of gold. According to the family records, 7,300 ounces which is worth around $19 million Aus at today's price.
I remember in 1968 my father, grandfather and uncle returning back to the homestead very excited (and *****; they had drunk all the beer in the landrover on the way home), and emptying 230 ounces of specimen gold (nuggets) out of a couple of billycans onto the kitchen laminex table.
They had just found a patch of gold, which they had loamed up (tracked) from a few colours of gold in a hand held pan.
Happy days.
Years later dad sold the lease to Western Mining and it became a major open cut mine.
Dad's dying words to me were "All that gold out there, and I didn't find it".
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And true to form the newspaper mis reported it
That is a gold vein, not a nugget
The 2 biggest nuggets ever found ( or at least recorded ) were discovered in the Victorian gold fields and they regularly find large amounts of gold there.
One of the theories about the "picnic at hanging rock " ( yes the movie was based on a true story ) was that the girls fell down an abandoned mine shaft .
There are hundreds of thousands of them some partially filled but most open waiting to catch whayever unfortunately fails to notice them.
What I found amazing is just how small a lot of them are considering that some one was down at the bottom swinging a pick .
The biggest nugget recorded , the Welcome Stranger nugget was apparently only 1.5" under ground and apparently found by a prospectors horse.
There was a model of it in the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney in their foyer bar naturally called the "welcome stranger bar "
When Sheriton took over the management they "internationalised" the hotel and tossed it out so it now resides in either the Aust Museum in ACT or the Powerhouse can't remember where it ended up but it was poo fight between all of the places that wanted it .
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Here's pics of the Camperdown patches; note bottle of Hannans beer (king brown size) for reference. The brewery's motto was "Hannans beer; like gold it sets the standard!".
The Camperdown mine ("show") was in the Siberia region (in the middle of Mt Carnage Station's million acres); about 15 miles north of Ora Banda.
Dad is on his Golden Flash at the homestead; same bike that I ride today.
Also a side view of him on same bike (K363).
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Couple of pics of nuggets Dad found in the Siberia (Waverley) region.
Also he is in the process of "loaming" taking a sample from the surface.
They also had horses on the station; I never gelled with them - preferred Honda horsepower.
Pic of me on the station SL175 (which I still have) doing a dash through the dust.
Cheers
Richard
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Dad's dying words to me were "All that gold out there, and I didn't find it".
Wow, sounds like a plot for a book 📙
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Richard, That is wonderful stuff.
Col
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Richard,
Thanks for showing those amazing and historic pics. It's hard to believe no one has made a TV show about gold mining. *smile* Really, it seems like one could be based on your family.
Richard L.
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richard on our tv freeview as they call it they put hour long programs on about aussie gold diggers and they cover a lot of different areas of oz
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I've watched way too many hours of gold mining shows. Some from Oz.
Richard L.
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The Welcome Stranger was found by a couple of Cornish tin miners who emigrated to Oz, so I believe. I think it was found under some tree roots. What a find, eh, I think they got ten grand in the day, worth about £2m now?
Great stories and pics Orabanda - livin' the dream.
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The Cornish were a large part of the population to come to the Australian goldfields (NSW, Victoria and then WA).
Often fondly known as "Cousin Jacks".
Our direct descendants (Argus) were from Truro (we have traced back to the 16th century). Two brothers emigrated to NSW in 1844, and then settled in the Shepparton region in Victoria.
a son (my great grandfather) came to the Western Australian goldfields in 1893.
The Cornish pasty is very popular in Kalgoorlie. Another Cornish legacy is the expression "crib" for lunch (or crib room) which is always used in Kalgoorlie and an official term throughout the Australian mining industry.
To make it more interesting, many europeans came to the WA goldfields. My mother's father came from Split (Yugoslavia) in 1919, worked tenaciously all his life as a timber cutter and miner. In 1921 he met my grandmother for the first time as she got off the boat at Fremantle (arranged marriage). My mother (who is still enjoying life in the goldfields) was the first of 10 children.
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Heh, we live on the 'Cornish' estate in my town in West Yorkshire and Truro features in the street names. Why we have a Cornish estate in Yorkshire is a mystery in itself. *dunno* *dunno2*
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No, but periods of (more or less) suddenly poor :O)
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Thought I’d come in here as my family history has lots of stories about gold mining in Australia and in the USA.
My great grandfather on my mother’s side was a Cornish tin miner from Callington in Cornwall, who went to Australia to mine for gold when he was about 16 years old in the early 1850s and story is that he was involved in the Eureka Stockade incident. Afterwards he turned up in Ohio in the USA as a gold miner in 1870, returning to Cornwall in 1880. he then became a publican and ran The Bell at Launceston in Cornwall and The Imperial Inn in Ivybridge, Devon until his death in 1882.
Family story is that when he returned home to Cornwall he had a waistcoat with gold nuggets for buttons. Later he had the gold nuggets from his waistcoat made into tie pins and gave each to a member of his family. My parents always kept theirs on the mantlepiece, I remember seeing it as a teenager. From memory the gold nugget was about shirt button size, round, uneven, worn fairly smooth and mounted on a stainless steel pin about 2” long. Later my father gave it away to relatives who were visiting from the USA, because they were so taken and overwhelmed by it and the story.
Also my father went to Australia in the 1920s to work on a relative’s sheep farm. Summer season he worked as a sheep drover and in the winter building bridges. He spent 8 years there, returned home to Plymouth for a holiday and to see family, met my mother and never went back.
I have lots of photos of his time there, here’s one of him on his horse Barney. He loved to tell stories about Barney. Apparently after a long day Barney could find his own way home from about 20 or so miles with my father asleep in the saddle. His records and photos show he spent time in a place called Warracknabeal and Rainbow.
Rog.
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Loving these family tales *good3*