Cassilis-History-Stories

Mining

It was mining that opened up the area and sustained the Cassilis township for some years. The quest for wealth, as gold, though a rare metal and useful in some processes, but not really as beneficial and therefore in truth not as valuable as iron ore, mainly underpins wealth. Has pushed people into places that would otherwise have been left much as nature made them.

Apart from being a destructive and rapine industry as all mining is, it was difficult in the Cassilis area because of droughts. Periods of water shortages had miners leave the area as the mines closed down due to lack of water, which is actually more precious than gold as well. Then restart again when the rains came and replenished that which was required to process the ore and become the steam that drove the mechanisms required for crushing, drilling and other tasks.

[quote Keith Streames 1979]

The second phase of mining activity on the Long Gully gold fields was one of great excitement and lead to the formation of the two major gold mining and treatment companies in the region.

In the 1880's, alluvial mining was predominant through Long Gully along Grays Creek, with upward of 100 miners sluicing. By 1885 however, water shortages reduced the population to less than 40, and by 1890 alluvial mining in Long Gully was insignificant.

In 1885, Forsyth's "Lone Hand" mine opened in Long Gully. This is considered the beginning of the important quartz mining phase in the Cassilis area. It lead to the rich finds on Markey's Line and elsewhere, and the development of increasingly comprehensive mills and treatment works in the region.

By September 1887, forty claims had been registered on Bald Hill Creek and at Long Gully where the township of Cassilis was established.

[end quote Keith Streames 1979]

Mining cleared the land without thought for erosion. There were no environmental safeguards, only tearing the gold from the bowels of the earth was thought about, discussed and enacted. The owners of the mining companies, who lived in the cities became wealthier and the miners and ancillary workers and suppliers thought they could make a great deal of money, but this wasn't realised by most of those who lived in the area where the mine tunnels led to the gold bearing ore. It was a hard time. Hope kept people in the area, and kept people cutting down the trees on the hills round the mine.

This timber from the forest on the hills fuelled the boilers and shored up the tunnels underground, keeping the miners safe in most cases. The hills were bared and at the mercy of the elements, ravaged without any consideration for the future well being of the area or the effects upon other areas further downstream.