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A collection of mines located approximately 24 kilometres east of Armidale in northern New South Wales. Worked mainly for gold, antimony and, to a much lesser extent, tungsten, the Hillgrove mines thrived during the late-nineteenth century. In 1877, lodes of antimony had been found in the Baker’s Creek gorge, several kilometres south-west of the present township. By 1881, the site was being worked by John Bracken, Peter Daly and James Elliot, who, upon noticing specks of gold, decided to concentrate on the extraction of auriferous stone rather than antimony. Bracken called the mine Eleanora in honour of his wife, and two years later it was formed into a limited liability company. ? Schouler, the founder of quartz mining in Stawell, Victoria, was invited to inspect the property. He was so impressed that he immediately invested £1,000 in the enterprise. The presence of sulphide in the antimony, however, made the extraction of gold both difficult and costly. As a result, the Eleanora mine, which employed up to 80 men at its peak, was profitable but not extravagantly lucrative. The plodding success of the Eleanora was soon eclipsed by the discovery of gold at Baker’s Creek. In March 1887, George Smith, a shareholder in the Eleanora who had a habit of wandering the nearby terrain in search of the latest Eldorado, stumbled upon a rich outcrop of gold near the bottom of the gorge. Upon locating the reef itself, as he recalled, ‘after three more weeks of hard toil’, Smith hastily ‘pegged out what is now known as the Baker’s Creek Goldmining Company’s lease’. His large claims for the mine were met with skepticism in many quarters, but the the richness of the reef had convinced Smith of its potential wealth. He declined an offer to manage the newly-established Carrington Mine and formed a partnership with his brother William and two others to pay for the purchase of a small plant. The first returns from the mine were impressive at 51 ounces to the tonne, and within a short time the party had pulled £2,500 worth of gold from the ground. News of Smith’s success brought 1,500 people to the field in 1888 and their numbers doubled in the following year. It also pricked the interest of established capital; in August 1887, Smith and party sold the claim to an Adelaide company. The Baker’s Creek Goldmining Company was thus born with a capital of £100,000. A twenty-head crushing plant was installed and tramway built to allow for the more efficient transporation of men and material up and down the steep gorge. Despite over-expensive mining techniques, the mine remained one of the richest in New South Wales for the first decade of the twentieth century. When it was closed in 1921, Baker’s Creek had yielded 269,848 ounces, or about seven-and-a-half tonnes of gold. In the meantime, Smith’s success had inspired a rush of activity on the Hillgrove field and in the fury of speculation which ensued claims were hastily pegged out by prospectors eager to make their fortune. It was not unusual, as RB Walker has commented, ‘for £500 to £5,000 to be asked for a half share in a piece of ground on which the sanguine lessee had nothing to show other than four corner pegs’. Nevertheless a number of important claims were discovered, and from the late-1880s to the end of the century several new companies were formed. Foremost amongst these were Carrington (1886), Sunlight (1888), the New Cosmopolitan Gold and Antimony Mining Company (1890), West Sunlight (1891), Hillgrove Proprietary Mines (1898, formed from an amalgamation of the Golden Gate Company with Hillgrove Mining Property) and Hillgrove United (1899, formed from an amalgamation of the Cosmopolitan and Carrington companies). During its heyday, Hillgrove was one of the richest goldfields in the colony. The Illustrated Sydney News suggested in 1889 that ‘the number of claims opened up justify the opinion that Hillgrove is to be a permanent goldfield’. Indeed, the extent of the Hillgrove field was so ‘amazing’ that ‘its permanency may be considered as secured’. At the time there was no reason to doubt such an assessment. In 1896, the Hillgrove goldfield produced an extraordinary 28,501 ounces, which was also the highest return in New South Wales for that year. But the difficulty of extracting and hauling the gold from the depths of the gorge as well as the inordinate cost of plant and railway maintenance, specialised technical expertise and fuel for furnaces and boilers led to a steady decline in the Hillgrove field. As the more obtainable reserves were depleted, moreover, mining companies were forced to dig deeper into the gorge. The shaft for the Baker’s Creek mine eventually reached down 1,700 feet. The need to build protective timbering and wire gauze guards was not only financially taxing on companies faced with a decline in payable ore but also dangerous to miners. As the tunnels went deeper and deeper the pressure from above became tremendous and frequently resulted in violent rock bursts which killed at least eight men during the field’s history. One by one the mines began to shut down: West Sunlight in 1909, the Cosmopolitan, Carrington and Sunlight in 1915, and the Eleanora in 1917. Baker’s Creek struggled along for several more years, and although the auriferous stone was by no means exhausted the company increasingly accepted that the costs of maintaining the mine had come to outweigh its benefits. In 1918, the once opulent mine produced a measley 744 ounces of gold. Three years later operations ceased and the mine was dismantled. There was a brief and far less spectacular revival in the Hillgrove field when the old Baker’s Creek mine was reopened in 1937. The New Baker’s Creek Company operated for several years with poor returns before being sold in 1940 and eventually wound up in 1954. Equally disappointing were the Metz Gold Mines (1937) Kurrajong Mine (1958) and Endurance Mining Company (1970), which, despite intermitent success, failed to overcome the financial and technical difficulties traditionally associated with the Hillgrove field. More promising were the activities of the New England Antimony Mines, opened in 1970. The old Eleanora mine and new Smith’s Mine were worked briefly for gold and antimony before the company turned its attention to a property about one kilometre south-east of Hillgrove. The Freehold Mine began operating in 1974 and through its activities Hillgrove again became the largest provider of antimony in the state. Antimony and, to a much lesser extent gold, is still mined at Hillgrove. Related Bodies:
Hillgrove
Hillgrove Station
Baker’s Creek Mining Company Related People:
George Smith References:
Illustrated Sydney News (28 November 1889, 16 July 1892); RB Walker, Old New England: A History of the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, 1818-1900 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1966); Ross Mainwaring, Tramways Down the Gorge: The Story of Hillgrove, 2 vols., Light Railway Research Society of Australia, vol.XXIV, nos.94 (1986) and 96 (1987); Graham Wilson and Bruce Cady, Hillgrove: A Photographic Study of a New South Wales Mining Town, 1893-1912 (Armidale: Armidale and District Historical Society, 1996).
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