Gold Mining History - book finished at last!

[pmccarthy]

I have finally finished my book with the title Hidden Rivers of Gold which covers the origins of Deep Lead Mining, the technology and challenges, and the final years of mining in the Carisbrook-Moolort area of Victoria which led to huge financial losses and very little gold. Characters involved included the State Premier and a future president of the USA. This was all around the turn of the 20th Century.

 

The book can be purchased through online booksellers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Fishpond, Booktopia and Angus and Robertson. Prices vary a lot, and some are in US$ so check carefully.

The book is published by Echo Books.

 

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 05:21 AM by pmccarthy

[facthunter]

I don't know IF there's Much GOLD in writing Books? .I would keep Digging at Today's Prices.  Nev

[onetrack]

I was part owner of the Fairplay Gold Mine at Higginsville, W.A. from 1972 to 1990, when the mine was sold to a large gold mining company. The brother, his wife and I mined and produced around 600 ozs of gold in that period, utilising the Norseman State Battery (a 10 head stamp mill, owned by the W.A. Govt).

 

Gold was ignored and only worth around $35 oz when we purchased the mine from two old Slav prospectors. But U.S. President Richard Nixon had taken America off the Gold Standard in August 1971, in a staggering display of non-consultative, "executive" Presidential power. It was called the "Nixon shock", and it rattled the worlds financial markets - and led to a rapid rise in the price of gold, now the gold price was no longer controlled by the U.S.

 

We knew this would happen, and purchased the gold mine accordingly. By 1975 the gold price was $160 oz and by 1980, it was over $800 oz, and there was another gold rush on.

 

At that point, our strategy of utilising an under-utilised and cheap source of ore crushing went to hell in a handbasket, as scores of prospectors turned up at the State Battery to crush parcels of ore.

A queueing system for crushing was initiated - but even worse - the Govt imposed a very sharp increase in crushing costs to reduce the State Batteries ever-increasing losses (the State Batteries were always subsidised to encourage local employment, bring in gold revenue, and to assist in prospecting work that might deliver new and profitable mines).

 

At that point, we turned to the large (200,000 tonne) tailings dump on our mine, which still held an average of around 2 grams/tonne of tailings. We took on 3 business partners who had experience in heap leaching and cyanidation of tailings, and between all of us, we developed an improved design of tailings leach vats, which proved very effective and very profitable.

The benefit of treating tailings was the ore was already crushed very fine, it just had to be set up with the correct pH levels, be able to contain a cyanide leach solution, and to have a simple circulatory pumping system.

The addition of activated carbon in stainless steel tanks finished off the treatment process, and it was a very simple job to set up a small, single-cylinder Lister diesel pump to circulate the solution until the activated carbon was full of gold!

Then the tanks would be taken into Kalgoorlie to be stripped of the gold, using a caustic solution, by professional carbon tank strippers.

 

The final product, gold "dore" bars were taken into the Perth Mint, which refined the gold to the Internationally-accepted gold bar standard of 99.999 (%) fine gold. 

After we had re-treated all our gold tailings on the Fairplay lease, we re-treated many more tens of thousands of tonnes of tailings, from numerous other tailings dumps we had pegged. It was a very profitable period for us in the 1980's.

 

Then, after we ran out of tailings dumps of our own to re-treat, we went on to build tailings vats on contract for other operators that needed to re-treat their tailings.

We re-treated tailings and built leach vats for well over 2M tonnes of tailings in the 1980's, from as far East as Ejudina, 150kms E of Kalgoorlie, to Burtville, SE of Laverton, W.A. - right through the W.A. Goldfields, to even Marble Bar!

 

It was a very interesting period, and one that was highly profitable, and not a period I'm likely to see again! The sheer pleasure of holding a large gold bar that you've produced and poured, is something that few people experience.

 

Edited Friday at 08:15 AM by onetrack

[old man emu]

Wouldn't you like to still be in the game with gold at $5000/oz?

 

What sort of ounce is that?

[onetrack]

A very expensive one, that's for sure. The fact that the price of gold has currently soared to exotic heights is pretty indicative of how low the value of our currencies has become, thanks to political mismanagement and squandering.

[facthunter]

People Turn to GOLD in times of great Uncertainty. Nev

[old man emu]

5 hours ago, onetrack said:

A very expensive one, that's for sure

I meant Troy or avoirdupois. I couldn't see which scale of units was used. I never ate my carats.

[onetrack]

I have never forgotten a quote from a book I read - where the author quoted John Maynard Keynes (the worlds leading economist in the early 20th century), who stated that "gold is a barbarous relic that has no place in a modern monetary system".

 

The author went on to say, "Six leading global economists today, agree with Keynes opinion with regard to gold - they only have to convince six billion people in the world, that they are right, and the six billion people are wrong". 😄 

[onetrack]

1 minute ago, old man emu said:

I meant Troy or avoirdupois. I couldn't see which scale of units was used. I never ate my carats.

OME, the troy ounce system is used exclusively for precious metals. A standard pound of weight contains 16 avoirdupois ounces, a troy pound weight consists of only 12 troy ounces. Grams are the favoured gold measurement in Australia today, but gold bars are nearly always marked in troy ounces, and troy ounces is the standard for trading in precious metals.

[old man emu]

I looked it up. The name is thought to derive from Troyes, France, a major trading hub in the Middle Ages, with usage dating back to Roman times. A Troy ounce is  31.1034768 grams. There are 12 Troy ounces in a Troy pound, or 373.24 gms. 373.24 grams is approximately 0.823 lbs or 13.17 oz (avoirdupois). 

.

 

 

[red750]

So many book jockeys on this forum.

[facthunter]

What's a BOOK JOCKEY? Nev

[pmccarthy]

Back in the 1990s we set up a company and mined 55,000 tonnes at 1 oz/tonne. Gold price was $350-400/oz and we lost money. It was called Reef Mining at Tarnagulla in Victoria.

[onetrack]

It's not hard to lose money on gold mining pursuits - especially if hard rock and underground mining is involved. I've never been deeply involved in underground mining, but I've certainly seen a lot of mining companies come and go, and seen vast sums of money lost. I think I've seen figures that reported only around 30% of mines are profitable.

 

When we were at Higginsville, the old Slav prospector who remained there - Mick Urlich - living in his old prospectors humpy, was a constant source of stories about the exploits of would-be miners in the area.

Mick told me he came across a couple of blokes digging a big hole in pure white quartz, on the track between Higginsville and Eundynie, sometime in the 1930's.

These blokes had a nice stockpile of broken quartz, which Mick looked at in puzzlement, as it contained no visible gold - nor any signs of the quartz even showing indications of being gold-bearing. It was just pure white, clean quartz.

 

He went over to them and asked if they were onto anything of value. The two prospectors, very obviously greenhorns, stated that they were onto some good gold, as shown by the quartz!

Mick went on - "But have you crushed or panned any of the quartz to see if there's actually any gold in it?" The prospectors looked a bit blank. "But it's quartz, it must have gold in it!", one stated.

 

Mick replied, "No, just because it's quartz, doesn't mean it actually has gold in it! Quartz is a good indicator of gold-bearing lodes, but it usually has to have banded iron in it, or even visible gold, which is called specimen stone!"

"You can have quartz that is totally barren of any gold, you have to crush a small sample and pan it off, to see if there's any gold in it! This stuff you're digging out here is just barren, pure white quartz!"

 

At that, the pair of greenhorn prospectors developed downcast expressions. "But we got told, all we had to do, was find quartz, and we've found gold!" one replied, now looking in despair at their stockpile of barren quartz.

Mick said it rapidly become obvious the pair had exactly zero knowledge of gold prospecting, and had not even studied up on the basics - but they were fully equipped, and full of enthusiasm, and possessed a gung-ho approach to gold prospecting, thinking that gold was everywhere, and you just had to dig a hole to be rewarded.

 

He remarked how often, other prospectors were misled by "old-timers diggings" - with many modern prospectors stating with confidence, "the old timers dug holes and shafts and drives here, there must be gold here!"

 

Mick said that if more of the modern prospectors had any idea of how little, a lot of the "old timers" knew about gold and prospecting, and had just dug holes in enthusiasm, with little gold prospecting knowledge, then those modern prospectors would be sorely disappointed with their confidence that the "old timers" actually knew what they were looking for!

[facthunter]

MY Mum used to say "a Fool and His Money are soon Parted." Nev

[pmccarthy]

I have read a lot of early diaries of prospectors. That idea that all quartz contained gold was fairly common ame caused a lot of disappointment.

[old man emu]

On 30/01/2026 at 4:19 PM, pmccarthy said:

I have finally finished my book

Congratulations. Whether it makes the Best Seller lists or not, you must be pround of your achievement. At least you have created something that will last into the future.  You nver know. Maybe at some time in the future your work will be included in  the bibliography of a doctorial paper on the history of mineral exploitation in Australia.

[willedoo]

Likewise, congratulations Peter; I'm looking forward to reading the book. My very limited gold experience was all in 1986. I worked for a time for a Brisbane based drilling company and we did five weeks of diamond drilling on an old abandoned historic gold mine near Inglewood. We were tracking a quartz reef that was about 4' deep and only about 6" wide. 60 degree angle drilling if my memory is correct. The boss made a lot of money on that rig. It was an old ex New Guinea Mindrill that he picked up for $4,000. 35 days drilling, 12 hour days, it would have paid for itself in no time. It was mounted on a 4 wheel trailer and towed behind a truck. Made in Melbourne I think and basically just a glorified lathe. Had a 5 cylinder Lombardini main motor and a little 2 cylinder mud pump. The old mine shafts were those old scary narrow ones. It was one of those mines that closed in WW1 due to lack of manpower and never restarted again.

 

Not long after that job I left the company and went over to Halls Creek and did some subcontracting for Freeport, basically just constructing access and pads for gold test rigs. After that I worked for a while for an alluvial miner at the Old Halls Creek area. The creeks had been picked out in the 1800's and there were only a few odd exploratory trenches dug out from the creek banks. I'd strip and stockpile the bank area top until we found some gravel that indicated where the ancient creek bed was. Then it was a matter of very slowly shaving off a couple of inches at a time so the miner and his partner could go over the exposed gravel bed with detectors. That thin removed layer was stockpiled and they would run a detector over the heap after the wet season had washed it. If they fell on hard times, they would get the dry blower going and put the stockpile through it. Hot, dusty, hard work and the least desirable option compared to detecting and picking up nuggets. I saw my first decent sized nugget on that job.

[facthunter]

The ONLY Mining I've done is OPALS at Lightning Ridge. . Nev

[ClintonB]

I love a good read, I have ordered from Amazon,

I brought a copy of the old book Gold, from a customer for $100 ounce after spotting it in their caravan whilst working on it.

i knew I had seen it before, but forgot t had been among y dads books.

so e great info in finding old creeks and river bed signs even when they have moved.

 

[willedoo]

I've got a copy of the Ion Idriess book on prospecting for gold somewhere. Haven't read it in many years but I remember it as a good read.

[pmccarthy]

Victoria used to produce a good Prospectors Guide. I have a couple of copies from different eras.

[onetrack]

Ion Idriess books are all worthy reading, if a little dated today.

 

There's a historian lady in Kalgoorlie (Moya Sharp) who has an amazing website covering the history of the Kalgoorlie Goldfields. It's mind-boggling what she's dug up.

She originally had two women helpers, but it appears they have both passed on, so she's running it solely on her own now.

 

She covers everything from tragedies, to family histories, to gold and lease scams and gold stealing, individual prospectors stories, train crashes, and histories of a multitude of Goldfields ghost towns.

Some of the tragedies of the Goldfields would make you weep, especially the ones involving children. Life was hard and short for many, back in the "good old days".

 

There are enough stories on this website to keep you occupied for months, if not years.

I'm about to give her a few bucks to support her site, because she has done such an amazing job of recording the history of the Kalgoorlie region.

 

https://www.outbackfamilyhistoryblog.com/about/