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This report was published in the Australian Town and Country Journal, 22nd January 1870, p. 15:
“THE Jembaicumbene Creek is an east west tributary of the Shoalhaven River, which it enters at one corner of the ‘Church and School Estate.’ Its little tributaries have proved highly auriferous, the gold being coarse and nuggety. The stripping is easy, being shallow and gravelly, and the work, where practicable, was done by ground sluicing. Claims have been here sold to the Celestials by the Terrestials for L600 and L800. The former transporting themselves to the Celestial Kingdom, on piles driven out of what others supposed worked out, and selling the claims to their Celestial brethren before their departure. In working this ground, from 2 in. to 2 feet of the bed rock (granite) were taken according to its density - these claims laid between Summer’s and O’Brien’s; the value of the gold is L3 13s. 6d.; at the Shoalhaven River it rises to L3 15s. 6d.; in Bell’s Paddock it is L3 12s., and in Bell’s Creek L3 13s. 6d.
“Half-a-mile below the post-office is the neat little township, which, together with the neighbourhood, has a married and settled air about it, as if the majority of the residents had made it their home for many years past. There is a good school, and (Oh, Bacchus !) only one hotel.
“There is a crushing mill in the course of erection close to the town, called Plumb’s Mill. It has three batteries of five head each, each head weighing 6 cwt.; the engine is 14 horse-power, portable by Hawthorne and Co.; and a little lower down is a fine flour mill - stopped as such, and converted into a quartz crushing mill, by having two batteries erected at the back, driven by a belt from the 24-horse power engine, which drove the flour mill. Water is proposed to be drawn from a large reservoir dug in the soil and clay. I doubt if this will prove sufficient.
“It is noteworthy that in most of these creeks gold has come from the south, where the sinking is soft, and the ranges which form the south of the Jembaicumbene and are the same, which head Bell’s, Major’s and deep creeks, all highly auriferous. These are the ranges, therefore, to look for reefs, and here accordingly we find every indication of them. The low ranges in the private property lying between Jembaicumbene and Major’s Creeks being, in mining phrase, ‘full of them,’ - and very peculiar looking customers they are - being a conglomerate of soft soft pliable clay cemented with quartz, grit, and full of smutty and copper coloured pyrites, intersected at any place and any angle by a vein of cloudy and muddled-looking quartz - very often containing a glittering delusion in it, not unlike gold. Griffin has a lode of this at the back of Durham Hill, 6 feet wide and 30 feet deep - siad to go 1/4 oz. and supposed more. There are abundant evidences of sinking, trenching, and ‘scratching,’ all around above this paddock; but the reef I like the look of best is the ‘Mill Lane,’ which really has quartz, and of a very inviting appearance and quality; this reef has been traced a very long distance - I am informed nearly to the Shoalhaven River. Dransfield’s Reef is 2 feet thick, hard, and full of minerals; at 25 feet down has very little quartz; the granite casing is 2 in. thick, and firmly attached to the quartz where present.
“Dargue’s Reef, on the Spring Creek, a tributary of Major’s, and close on to it, is 15 feet wide below the surface, and composed of granite, taken to pieces either by the electric currents, or the slow and certain action of oxygen, water, and salts; permeated by quartz veins and veins of clay - in the centre and occupying it as if having come from below rather than unexpectedly, lies a large boulder of soft granite. If this curiosity has moved suddenly at any former period, and I can’t see how it came there otherwise, it proved two things: - 1st, that though now soft it once was hard - and 2nd. that the reef on each side at one time was hard also, by the manner in which it has made room for the boulder. On these reefs the gold is said not to be in the quartz, but in the soft decomposed (or unformed) rock, and the width of this reef (or dyke) is such that drays back in and are loaded direct, without any intervention whatever of trucks, cages, or buckets. The stuff is said to go 1/2 an oz. to the ton, and as much as 2 dwts. to the dish, where washed on the surface. This shoul be a ‘paying’ investment.
“Before we take leave of the Benedicts of Jembaicumbene and drop into Major’s Creek, I may mention that five years ago, owing to some dispute between the miners and the landowners, the Government sent up a surveyor to define the Creek, which is Crown land on one side and P.P. on the other. He set out the centre to the Shoalhaven River, and then pegged out the water margin, or ‘high water mark’ - thus far and no farther shall private property extend.
“And now for that without which the Creek need neither run nor fall nor rise at all, I mean population: Terrestials, 200; Celestials, 250.”
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