Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Gold sluice and tailings on the river, probably Home Rule (?)

Gold sluice and tailings on the river, probably Home Rule (?)

1872
Glass photonegative

If running water was available, the most efficient method of separating gold from washdirt was to process it through a sluice or ‘long tom’. The running water broke up the paydirt and washed away the lighter sands and gravel, leaving the gold caught in the horizontal strips of wood called ‘riffles’ built across the sluice box.

Dirt that pays - By Marcelle Freiman

Water runs down the long-tom like a washboard,

separating gold out from paydirt

it catches in the riffles of the sluice-box

shining through – washdirt and gravel

run into the mill-pond, the lightest sand like fine dust

swirls dirty patterns on the surface of the pond –

keep those riffles sharp across the box,

no gold-dust and filings must be lost:

mounds of tailings grow big as houses.

This river where sheep and cattle drank

water clear as rain, banks lush with reeds

frogs’ croak at night, the insects’ trill:

now the bank’s an open cut, trees felled:

for men with shining coins in their eyes

water jarrs a riff on paydirt.

  - on Gold sluice and tailings on the river, probably Home Rule (?)   1872 - a2822198