Lefroy: The six pub town
I have always found it rather interesting that the population and wealth of Australian historic mining areas seem to be always measured by the number of pubs (hotels) it had.
Lefroy sits around 15 km south-east of the cottage and 58 km north-east of Launceston. Originally known as Nine Mile Springs it was changed to Lefroy in 1881 after the visit by the Acting Governor, Sir Henry Lefroy.
It was a bustling town, which is said to have contained 5,000 people in its peak boom period of 1890-95. It was the fourth largest town in Tasmania,.
Mining endeavours at Lefroy were a series of booms and busts. The alluvial gold lay in the creek gullies and under the basalt rock on the eastern side of the field. But most of the gold lay in scattered reefs in the quartz rock which formed the base of the area.
In the upper levels the gold was quite rich, but it was quickly exhausted and as shafts were dug deeper, the amount of gold diminished. Extraction was expensive because of water seepage, which required pumps, and the quartz rock had to be crushed in batteries of stamping machines, and then washed in sluices to extract the gold from the crushed rock.
A tailings dump we have been picking through |
From a material point of view, the total find during our four-hour search consisted of an tiny sliver of gold in a fissure in a chunk of basalt. Cash value - zero.
The real payout, however, comes with the health giving beauty of the silent embrace of the surrounding forest. Real Value - priceless.
Be assured that the gold is there, and taking the time to have a look is well worth many hours of your time.
The capping on one of over fifty shafts in the region |
remediation program in the 2005/2006 budget period to address public safety risks posed by abandoned mine workings on Crown Land at Lefroy, north-east Tasmania.
Over fifty open shafts and two adits were either capped or fenced during
this time for an approximate cost of $140,000.
You may also be interested in two items I have published in my site, Dear Grandpa Pencil, including: