Ophir gold diggings in 1851 - asset 1

• This asset shows Summer Hill Creek, below Lewis Ponds Creek in the Orange-Bathurst area of New South Wales - the first officially recognised 'payable gold' find was made by John Lister and William Tom in April 1851 at Lewis Ponds Creek; gold miner Edward Hargraves (1816-1891), returning from California, had shown them how to use simple mining equipment and had instructed them to pan for alluvial gold in the creek; their later find of 4 ounces (nearly 125 grams) of gold, and Hargraves's claim for the £500 reward, as well as all the glory, led to a dispute that raged for 40 years.
• It shows an alluvial gold field - alluvial gold is found near the surface; usually it has been eroded from gold-bearing quartz reefs and deposited over the years in creeks and waterways, especially at points such as bends in the creek, where the flow of water slows.
• It illustrates various types of prospecting equipment - Californian cradles, pans, and puddling tubs, all of which required water to be effective tools for gold extraction.
• It highlights the California cradle - the cradle was a box on rockers with two metal sieves; earth and water were shovelled into the top and rocked back and forth, which forced them through the sieves and out the bottom; since gold is the heaviest metal, it sank to the bottom and was caught in the riffles at the base of the cradle.
• It demonstrates that early gold miners at Ophir were using Californian cradles, only recently introduced into New South Wales by Edward Hargraves - the cradles increased the amount of earth a miner could process, dramatically increasing gold yields; this helped drive the gold rushes as the average weekly wage was far less than could be mined in a day using the new devices.
• It shows the pristine state of the Australian bushland before tens of thousands of diggers (miners and prospectors) arrived - the processes that the miners used to extract gold ranged from panning and prospecting the surface layers to deeply sunk open mineshafts; both methods caused considerable damage to the environment through erosion and muddying of the streams and rivers of the area.
• It depicts an area already beginning to be devastated by the demands of gold miners for wood and suitable clay - the area was known to its original inhabitants, the Wiradjuri people, as 'Drunong Drung', believed to mean 'many snakes'.
• It shows prospectors in the field during Australia's first gold rush - the Ophir rush was only the second major gold rush in world history after California; the diggers are wearing loose pants, flannelette shirts, vests and what are probably cabbage-tree hats.
• It is one example of the paintings of Ophir created by George French Angas (1822-86) - Angas was in Sydney when gold was discovered near Bathurst; he travelled there to record the diggings and prepare a number of drawings and paintings of the scene; these were published in Sydney and subsequently in London.

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