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.

From Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, Vol 1.

To the stranger personally uninterested in the search, it seems that the known presence of gold beneath the earth begets a fury in the minds of men compelling them to search for it, let the risk, the danger, the misery, the probably losses, be what they may. That a thing in itself so rich, so capable of immediately producing all that men most desire, should like buried in the dirt beneath their feet, loose among the worthless pebbles of the rivers, mixed at haphazard with the deep clumsy lumbering rocks, overcomes the imagination of the unconscious thinker, and takes possession of his heart and brain. [Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, Vol 1., p64]