On Thursday we visited Sovereign Hill, an open air museum located around the area of the most significant gold discoveries in the 1850's.
The tour took us underground to the gold mines...
Luckily we didn't take this route...
Most of the gold was found in quartz. To remove the gold, quartz had to be removed from the mine, crushed to sand and then the gold would sink to the bottom. Two tonnes of quartz would yield just a teaspoon of gold. This may not seem much but it kept these mines in operation for some 65 years...
There is a street of some 30 shops including hotels, a bank and all of the following...
Sarah felt at home...
We then watched gold being purified through melting in a crucible to 1,200 degrees before being poured into a mould. The piece of gold on the left is worth over £100,000...
Sarah decided there had been enough looking at gold and decided she'd find some of her own. A man in a hat showed her how to pan for gold...
Sarah decided it was taking too long so she used a shovel...
But it paid off as this is what she found...
.. Well actually this is a replica of the Welcome Nugget in the Gold Museum. It was found by a group of Cornish miners in 1858 and is the second largest gold nugget in the world. It was found in the Red Hill mine and weighed 69 kg and contained 99% pure gold. It would now be worth nearly £2m.
Needless to say the nugget found its way to London (via the Crystal Palace exhibition) and was melted down to produce Sovereigns by the Royal Mint.
As a footnote, my Grandad Gill visited Ballarat to see all of this in 1984, shortly before he died and some 8 months before I was born. I don't think he found any gold either but it was great to follow in his footsteps.
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