#gold #mining #history
I'm out at the Wild Dog Diggings near Dunolly, which is one of the region's best examples of shallow alluvial workings, and today I'm going to show you some of the brilliant features of these diggings and share a bit about the area's interesting history.
Discovered in the mid 1850s, some holes here at Wild Dog were paying as much as an ounce to the tub, but the ground was fairly patchy and inconsistent. Because of this, Wild Dog was initially pronounced by many to be a shicer, but those who worked with perseverence and patience could do well here.
As we walk around the diggings here, we come across many open mine shafts, both circular and rectangular, all in a fairly good state of preservation.
In this very shallow section, miners dug under the ancient riverbed and opened it right up beneath the ground.
Much of the Wild Dog Lead is deeply buried under farmland, but this section on public land at the Wild Dog Diggings Historic Area is a great place to visit to check out the sort of workings that occurred on many shallow leads across the goldfields.
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Explore the Victorian Goldfields - www.goldfieldsguide.com.au/
Historical Gold Maps - historicalgoldmaps.com.au/
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Historical images - State Library Victoria
Newspaper articles - Trove
Diamond Drills and Water Augers in Victoria (Third Boring Report 1887)
Report on boring from April 1886 to June 1887 - State Library Victoria
Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Victoria, No. 7, The Deep Leads of Victoria, Stanley Hunter. 1909.
Deep lead mine illustration - Robert Kaufman
3 апр 2023
