Gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, the year my father's ancestors arrived in the country. When we visited our friends Leon and Sue they took us to one of the gold mining sites near them, on Mount Alexander, known variously as the Garfield Mine or the Forest Creek Mine.
Seams of quartz were mined here from 1856 to extract the gold and the evidence of holes in the ground, humps and hillocks, and remnants of industrial structures are all around. From the 1880s the quartz was crushed using a giant waterwheel on this site, the largest ever constructed in Australia.
It was very windy while we were there and I genuinely thought we were at risk from falling branches, if not whole trees. The trees here are very tall Eucalypts, which don't feel safe in extremely windy weather.
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We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos.
2 comments:
Interesting that they call branches limbs... It conjured up visions of tree surgeons cutting an arm or leg off and it falling on you...C
Is 'limbs' an Australian expression? It had never occurred to me that it was.
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