Ian Riley, Tarrangower Times
One of the best things about the museum, other than the exhibits, is the people you meet there. I have always been a history tragic, but on my last visit to the museum, I met Michelle Ross. Michelle has a YouTube channel with 9,000 followers and a website called Goldfields Guide; she really is an enthusiast.
If you’re even remotely interested in goldfields history and I’m guessing if you’re reading this there’s at least a spark, have a look at Michelle’s sites.
It’s great to see younger people involved with museums generally and Michelle is leading by example.
I just had to ask how she got started, “I was always into history as a kid, ancient Egypt and all that.” But later on she found that her boys loved being out in the bush, running around and that led to gold fossicking and discovering relics.
So it was a mixture of archaeology and treasure hunting, I’m thinking an Australian Lara Croft.
She had about 140 pages of information on the website when it was launched and on the first day received over 1,000 hits. It now has over (almost) 700 locations on it.
Michelle really makes the history fascinating; she’s a storyteller. One thing leads to another and Michelle’s curiosity has her investigating specific aspects of mining. For a while she was investigating abandoned tunnels (note – these were stone drainage tunnels, not mine tunnels, there are some really cool ones in Ballarat) and currently she’s into mining machinery. Later in the mining boom, large amounts of money were spent on equipment, and the area had some of the biggest, most sophisticated machinery in the world, some of it manufactured locally. She was describing the beam engine at Moolort, which was basically a big pump, a very big pump, think 50 feet high and powered by a steam engine, the biggest beam engine in Australia (note – it was the biggest in Victoria and one of the best in the world at the time- it was imported from England. The huge beam engine at the Berry No 1 Mine near Creswick was manufactured locally though) and used to pump the water out of a deep mine shaft.
Some favourite mine sites are Kingower, Weala (Wehla), Wild Dog, Morton’s Inn at Waanyarra, Majorca. Have a look at her video on YouTube about Kingower; it will make you want to go and explore. There’s all sorts of stuff still lying around, but unless you know what you’re looking at, most of it just looks like piles of bricks and holes in the ground. I guess that is the point that I keep coming back to. Some other sites are the deep lead mines near Creswick and the quartz mines at Stawell. There’s a Goldfields Guide video about Stawell, which is surrounded with monuments and references to the gold rush, not to mention a fully working commercial gold mine.
Which brings us back to Maldon. Some of the best relics of machinery foundations are right here. Go down to the end of Parkins Reef Rd and you’ll find what’s left of the North British mine. As well as that we’ve got the quartz kilns which you can see without even getting out of your car in High Street and the bucket dredge at Porcupine Flat near Fogartys Gap Road. Other favourite sites are Walhalla and Ballarat.
There was a progression from alluvial mining, panning in creeks to mining on an industrial scale. Much of this started in Ballarat, where the ground was soft and sandy and the miners had to work out how to get down deep, without being buried in mud or sand. Then they had to get beneath the basalt. Speak with anyone in the museum and it all starts to mean something.
The Victorian goldfields are still the seventh largest gold producer worldwide, with significant mines at Fosterville north of Bendigo and Stawell, plus the Kaiser Reef processing plant just outside of town in Maldon.
As I’ve mentioned before, the more I learn about the gold rush, the more I realise I don’t know.
The real benefit of speaking with Michelle is that she has such a broad knowledge so that she can put it all in perspective and all the elements start to make sense. The timeline, the progression of the machinery, the social effects and the very foundations of Victoria.
There’s so much to it and our town of Maldon was right in the thick of it. I don’t think this is the last conversation with Michelle Ross and I thank her for her time and patience and infectious enthusiasm.
This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 25 October 2024.
