School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe Rocky River goldfield, 1851-1867( 1953)This thesis pretends to be nothing more than a case-history of a relatively minor Australian goldfield during its most productive years. The intrinsic interest of such “histories” may be small, but, for two somewhat similar reasons, I believe that they should be written. In the first place, case-histories of Australian goldfields are few and far between, and generalisations about the goldfields and their effects on the country’s development must remain of doubtful validity until a number of studies of this kind have been made. In the same way, secondly, enquiries into particular aspects of the history of the New England region, New South Wales, have until recently been rarely undertaken, and a satisfactory general account will not be written until its author may draw on many more monographs than are as yet available. The Rocky River goldfield was selected for examination because, though it ranked much below Ballarat, Bendigo and other famous Australian mining areas, it was one of the chief fields, if not the chief field, in Northern New South Wales in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties — and my choice of subject was, at the time, virtually limited to subjects on which the bulk of the material was available in Northern New South Wales. The period chosen begins in 1851, because gold was first discovered in the Rocky River area in 1851, and ends in 1867, chiefly because in no single year since 1867 has the field’s production exceeded 4,000 ounces of gold — indeed, in the best two years, 1868 and 1870, total production was probably not much more than the 3,144 ounces and 3,120 ounces taken by escort to the Mint. A secondary reason for the choice of 1867 as a limit was that detailed information about the field became much less abundant from the beginning of 1868. One would, of course expect the amount of information to decrease as production declined. But, as distinct from this general decrease, there was a sudden drop in the amount of information from January, 1868, because after that date, the Armidale Express (the chief local source) no longer continuously employed a “special correspondent” at the Rocky. No one year could be chosen as marking the point at which the company replaced the small party as the predominant type of organisation; this thesis is chiefly concerned with the work of small parties, but company mining had made its appearance well before 1867; the choice of 1867 as a limit, then, was not determined by organisational considerations, though even in this respect it is probably as convenient a date as any. In Part I the emphasis will be placed on the development of the goldfield — the changes in its population, its production, and the techniques employed in working it. Part II will deal primarily with the men who lived and worked on the field — their social origins, how they lived, and what happened to them afterwards; the Chinese, an important group at the Rocky, will be discussed in a separate chapter; for convenience, though somewhat misleadingly, the other miners will be referred to a Europeans. Finally, an attempt will be made in Part III to assess the more important effects of mining at Rocky River on the district, and particularly on the adjacent township of Uralla and neighbouring town of Armidale.