Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Gold mines on the northern end of Hawkins Hill & Nuggety Gully, looking south-east

Gold mines on the northern end of Hawkins Hill & Nuggety Gully, looking south-east

1872
Glass photonegative

A correspondent to the D50, 3 December 1872, was surprised by the appearance of Hawkins Hill.

The ‘claims’ of Hawkins Hill do not at all answer to one's preconceptions of a gold mine, for which perhaps £150,000 [more than the construction cost of Government House, Melbourne] have been paid. A few sheets of bark or of corrugated iron, to keep the rain off, is all that is visible of the far-famed Beyers and Holterman's or Krohmann's. The entire property consists, on an average, of about a hundred feet of space. Claims are as close together as a row of huts in a back street …

From the Sydney Morning Herald, 20 Sep 1872

Every few yards a shaft or tunnel meets the view. Many of them abandoned—hopelessly, even at this early date. Three thousand pounds is a small sum to start with prospecting about Hawkins Hill. The statement that such a shaft has only to go down so many feet and strike payable gold, I fancy, ere this, has lost its effect. The richest of claims on the hill took years of prospecting, and party after party abandoned many of the claims held now at such a high valuation. [Sydney Morning Herald, 20 Sep 1872, p2]