Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Gold miner's hut opposite Petersen's (formerly Price's) battery, Hill End

Gold miner's hut opposite Petersen's (formerly Price's) battery, Hill End

1870-1875
Glass photonegative

This idyllic bush scene is the result of at least five attempts by the photographer to portray this miner’s wattle and daub hut in a painterly manner. The reality is his other negatives reveal the hut was directly across the mill pond from Peterson’s stamper battery on Oakey Creek. The noisy battery crushed gold-bearing quartz from the mines of nearby Nuggetty Gully on Lower Hawkins Hill, 24 hours a day, except Sunday.

El Dorado - by Sheryl Persson

Oakey Creek flows slowly towards mill pond

through bush land pocked and scarred

where hordes shovel and sluice hope

like cannibals they gouge earth’s flesh

suck golden marrow from its bones

Trees felled mercilessly lie crosshatched

tumbling rocks unstable the gulley

and the arms of an ancient ghost gum

arch protectively over tormented terrain

In a clearing a hut sits squat and lonely 

bark shingles sag and the chimney

tilts and totters like a drunkard

inside mud floors packed hard smell dank

The miner’s face is grey and grave

eroded as this land and his voice sings

deeper than shafts dug at Nuggetty Gulley

a humble black pot steams and spits on the hob

wishing it could be the pot of gold he seeks

-  after Gold Gold miner's hut opposite Petersen's Petersen's (formerly Price's) battery, Hill End - a2822942

Photographs are silent - By Marcelle Freiman

Soaring eucalypt frames the foreground

like a landscape by Constable or Corot –

steep valley walls enclose a cosy hut

fence of sticks built around,

smoking chimney, rug airing on the picket  –

but the ground here is unstable:

something has happened – 

trees stripped of their bark

skins exposed out of season,

broken branches mess the valley floor, cut

or fallen from trees that are dying:

a man sits posed amongst broken, shattered rocks –

bend the frame of the picture’s silence: 

no birds call, no crickets rub legs together

shrill: only the racket and din

of the stamper battery crushing rock,

crushing quartz day and night

across the mill-pond covered

with stagnant film of shuddering dust.

  - on Gold miner’s hut opposite Petersen’s (formerly Price’s)   battery, Hill End 1872 - a2822942

The Rush - by Rob Kennedy

I understand why the carved out countryside
the destruction, the loss, the pollution.

I know what had to be done
and who you were doing it for.

Young men dream of fortune
and other countries.

People want rights
familes and freedom.

In the rush
would I be one of these men?

  *

On the hillside, in the rubble
dreaming of what's to come.

In this grand earthly chasm
you sweat into the soil

wishing

for something more.

I understand why the carved out countryside
you did it for me.

-  after Gold miner's hut opposite Petersen's (formerly Price's) battery, Hill End, 1870-1875 - a2822942