Remnants Of the Sunset Mine - - No. 2 (Ravenswood, North Queensland)

The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area is situated south of Elphinstone Creek and to the west of School Street and Kerr Street, in the town of Ravenswood, about 85km south of Townsville and 65km east of Charters Towers. The Ravenswood goldfield was the fifth largest producer of gold in Queensland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its main mining periods, prior to modern open cut operations (1987 onwards), were: alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872); attempts to extract gold from sulphide ores below the water table (1872 - 1898); the New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917); and small scale mining and re-treatment of old mullock heaps and tailings dumps (1919 - 1960s). In 2016 the Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area contains surface structures from eight mines: the Grand Junction, Little Grand Junction, Sunset No. 1 and Sunset No. 2, Deep, General Grant, Duke of Edinburgh, and Grant and Sunset Extended mines, as well as the mill associated with the Deep mine, and the Mabel Mill tailings treatment plant (most structures dating from the New Ravenswood Company era). It also includes remnants of two treatment plants (Partridge and Ralston’s Mill, and Judge’s Mill) from the 1930s; and the Chinese settlement area (1870s to the early 20th century, covering the first three mining periods at Ravenswood).

 

The place contains important surviving evidence of: ore extraction (from underground shafts) and metallurgical extraction (separation of gold from the ore) conducted on and near the Ravenswood goldfield’s most productive reefs during the boom period of the town’s prosperity (1900 - 1908); later attempts to re-treat the mullock heaps and tailings dumps from these mines; and Ravenswood’s early Chinese community, which made an important contribution to the viability of the isolated settlement and was located along Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek. The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area also has the potential to reveal evidence of early alluvial and shallow reef mining, as well as domestic living arrangements on the Ravenswood goldfield. It is an evocative reminder of the precarious and short-lived nature of North Queensland’s mining booms, and has a special association with Archibald Lawrence Wilson, who established the New Ravenswood Company and improved both ore and metallurgical extraction processes on the goldfield.

 

Settlement and mining in North Queensland:

 

European settlement of the Kennedy Land District in North Queensland commenced with the founding of Bowen in 1861, and the spread of pastoralists through the hinterland. Pastoral stations were established up the valley of the Burdekin River, including ‘Ravenswood’ and ‘Merri Merriwa’. Townsville and Cardwell were both established north of Bowen in 1864.

 

However, mining, not pastoralism, proved to be the main catalyst for European settlement of North Queensland. In 1865 the founders of Townsville offered a reward for the discovery of a payable goldfield, and gold rushes occurred in the region from 1866. Mining employed 19.8% of the North Queensland population in 1868, and 50% by 1876, before dropping to 15% in 1911. Although gold mining attracted people to North Queensland, alluvial finds of gold usually led to temporary townships, whereas underground reef mining held the promise of more stable and permanent settlements.

 

Alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872):

 

Alluvial gold was discovered south of the later site of Ravenswood, in tributaries of Connolly Creek on Merri Merriwa Station, north of the Burdekin River, in late 1868. Prospectors soon established ‘Middle Camp’ (later Donnybrook) on Tucker’s Creek, and ‘Lower Camp’ on Trieste Creek, with about 700 miners on the field by early 1869. Further north, in April 1869, the goldfield’s richest alluvial discoveries were made in three dry creek beds close to the site of Ravenswood: Nolan’s, Jessop’s, and Buchanan’s gullies. Despite these finds, many miners soon left for the rush to the Gilbert River (over 300km west of Townsville).

 

The parent reefs of the alluvial gold found in April were located about the same time as the exodus to the Gilbert – the General Grant being discovered first, followed by the Sunset. Both were visible above ground level, and both reefs would play an important part in the future prosperity of Ravenswood. In the next 40 years, nearly £3 million of gold would come from the reefs ‘in the little triangle between Buchanan’s Gully, just east of Macrossan Street, Jessop’s Gully, southwest of the town, and Elphinstone Creek’.

 

Other reefs were soon found north of Elphinstone Creek, and in Nolan’s Gully; and meanwhile, reefs had been discovered at Middle Camp. However, a lack of water meant that miners did not establish ‘Upper Camp’ (later Ravenswood) near the General Grant and Sunset reefs until October 1869, after a storm temporarily resolved the water issue. By this time, most miners had returned from the Gilbert. The three camps on the goldfield had a population of 600 by January 1870, most in Upper Camp. Work was slowed by a lack of water, until rains in February 1870 enabled panning and sluicing, the results of which confirmed that Ravenswood was the first significant reef mining goldfield in the northern half of Australia.

 

However, the miners needed to crush the quartz ore to extract gold. The first machinery for this purpose, WO Hodkinson’s five stamp crushing battery, the Lady Marion (or Lady Marian) Mill, was operational at Burnt Point (south of Upper Camp) from the 18th of April 1870. The first month’s crushing results caused ‘an even greater “rush” than that … caused by the discovery of the alluvial gold’. A second battery was operational in Upper Camp in August 1870, when the goldfield’s population was about 1200.

 

Official recognition of the goldfield and settlement soon followed. Government Geologist Richard Daintree visited Upper Camp in August 1870, and the Ravenswood goldfield (about 300 square miles) was proclaimed on the 3rd of November 1870. By this time, the goldfield had a population of about 2000, and Upper Camp had 10 ‘public houses’, with six public houses in Middle Camp.

 

The Government Surveyor, John von Stieglitz, arrived in November 1870, but was too late to impose a regular grid pattern on the settlement. Instead he formalised the existing plan, which was centred on the crossing of Elphinstone Creek by the main road (Macrossan Street), with tracks radiating out to the various diggings. Most commercial buildings were located along Macrossan Street. The resulting juxtaposition of mining, habitation and commerce gave the town its distinctive character.

 

The town was proclaimed on the 19th of May 1871, with an area of one square mile (259ha). This was later expanded to four square miles (1036ha) on the 13th of July 1883. Although gold had been discovered on Merri Merriwa Station, the name Ravenswood, after the run located further southeast, downstream on the Burdekin River, was preferred.

 

In 1871 the population of the goldfield was 900, with over half being in Upper Camp/Ravenswood, and by the end of 1871 there were five machines in Ravenswood. Hodgkinson’s mill had been moved into town, to a site just north of Elphinstone Creek, and was renamed the Mabel Mill. In 1871 the town had 30 licensed hotels, although these were referred to as ‘shanties’ and did not offer accommodation.

 

By this time Ravenswood also had a Chinese population, due to an influx of Chinese miners who had been forcefully evicted from the Western Creek diggings near Gilberton in mid-1871. At least three of the hotels of 1871 had Chinese licensees. The first Chinese had arrived in North Queensland in 1867, during the rush to the Cape River, and there were 200 Chinese looking for alluvial gold at Ravenswood in 1871. In January 1872 it was estimated that there were about 1500 Chinese present on the Ravenswood goldfield, and a matching number of Europeans. As the Chinese focussed on alluvial gold, and also provided other services, they were tolerated at Ravenswood, because the Europeans were now focusing on reef mining. The quartz reefs were originally worked at shallow depths by means of a windlass (hand-wound rope and bucket), or a horse-powered whip or whim (using poles, ropes and pulleys) raising the ore from shallow shafts.

 

Extracting gold from sulphide ores (1872 - 1898):

 

Despite its promising start, in 1872 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a ‘period of depression’, as its most important mines reached the water table at about 70ft (21m) deep – starting with the Sunset in 1871, followed by the General Grant, Black Jack, and Melaneur in 1872. Although the oxidised quartz (‘red stone’ or ‘brown stone’ quartz) close to the surface yielded its gold to traditional methods of mechanical crushing, below the water table the gold was in fine particles, which was not easily recovered by mechanical means. It was also mixed with sulphide ores; mainly iron sulphide (pyrite, or ‘mundic’ ore) but also sulphides containing lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, and antimony, which interfered with chemical treatments such as amalgamation (amalgamating the gold with mercury; then heating the resulting amalgam in a retort to vaporise the mercury) and chlorination (exposing roasted, concentrated ore to chlorine gas, and then precipitating gold out of the chloride solution). A process that worked on the ore from one reef might not work for an adjacent reef, due to a varying distribution of different types of sulphides. In addition, even if a process worked on a small scale, it could be uneconomical on a larger scale, given the price of transporting fuel to Ravenswood for smelting, or transporting concentrates for smelting elsewhere.

 

Once the mundic had been struck, ‘mining was "worse than dull" as the field grappled with the realisation that to break below the waterline, the days of the individual miner were over and the time of companies was looming’. The 1870s was a decade of major gold discoveries in Queensland, and miners keen on quick profits had plenty of new goldfields from which to choose. Many miners joined the rushes to Charters Towers (1872) and the Palmer River (1873). Charters Towers soon overtook Ravenswood as the most important inland town in north Queensland; and the Hodgkinson rush (southwest of Port Douglas) in 1876 also drew away miners.

 

However, Ravenswood grew during the 1870s and 1880s, despite the goldfield’s ‘refractory’ ores, and ‘mundic problem’. The goldfield had a population of 950 in 1877 (with 50 Chinese), rising to 1100 in 1880 (including 250 Chinese), and 2000 in 1883 (including 300 Chinese; with 190 working the alluvial, and 10 quartz miners).

 

The 1877 Pugh’s Almanac listed one Chinese hotelkeeper (out of seven hotelkeepers) in Ravenswood, and one Chinese storekeeper. The Chinese, as well as working alluvial claims and operating hotels and stores, were employed as wage labour in some mines; worked as roasters and chlorinators at the Mabel Mill; and operated 24 licensed gardens on the Ravenswood goldfield in 1883. Chinese gardens were vital in providing fresh vegetables to North Queensland’s goldfield populations.

 

For 19th Century diasporic Chinese communities such as Ravenswood’s, the establishment of specific cultural settlement areas, or ‘Chinatowns’, that ‘provided a range of sacred and secular services, including temples, stores, and accommodation’, was an important aspect of community building. Deighton Street, west of Macrossan Street, was the centre of Chinese life in Ravenswood. There were two eating houses close to Macrossan Street’s bridge across Elphinstone Creek, in the 1870s; and market gardens were located between Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek, as well as north of Elphinstone Creek, interspersed amongst several crushing machine operations. There was also a temple south of Deighton Street. Temples were not just places of religious worship; rather, they were an integral part of a Chinese village. ‘They were places to meet, to check one's horoscope before embarking on a new venture and places where ancestors were venerated’. As well as being a place where the community could worship at any time, major gatherings were held at temples on festival days, with feasts and processions. The Ravenswood temple appears on an 1874 survey plan, making it the earliest known Chinese temple in Queensland. The nearby pig roasting oven is also a rare example of its type, and demonstrates the usual spatial arrangement of temple and oven, for community feasts.

 

Ravenswood continued to develop during the 1880s. By 1885, the Ravenswood goldfield had an estimated population of 2294 Europeans and 227 Chinese, with 1490 Europeans and 148 Chinese located in Ravenswood itself. Ravenswood at this time had four Chinese storekeepers, and two Chinese produce merchants, but all six hotel licensees were European. The Ravenswood National School, which began in late 1873, had an average attendance of 110 students in 1878, and reached its peak enrolment of 390 by 1889.

 

The 1880s were also a period of experimentation in metallurgical (gold extraction) technology. In 1883, the only method for dealing with sulphide ores was stamper mills and rotary buddles (which used water and gravity to separate and concentrate the crushed ores), but later Ravenswood ‘was the first place where the chlorination process and Wilfley tables, developed in 1896, to shake the ore and separate out different sized particles, and were used in Queensland, and probably the first place where the cyanide process (dissolving fine gold in a cyanide solution, and later precipitating the gold out of the solution) for extracting gold was used in Australia’. Other techniques attempted included fine grinding (using ball mills), roasting (burning off the sulphides), and smelting (prohibitively expensive, as it required high temperatures and thus a lot of fuel). By 1888 a new company at One Mile Creek, formed by Duncan and Peter Macintyre, had adapted an abandoned Cassell’s patent plant (a version of the chlorination process which was applied and failed in Ravenswood in 1886), to work on a ‘secret process’ (cyaniding).

 

Ravenswood mining continued to be viable, although only a (fluctuating) percentage of the gold was being recovered from the ore. In the mid-1880s there was even a temporary increase in the goldfield’s production, due to good returns from the Sandy Creek mines on the John Bull reef. For the next eight years, the principal producers of the district were the General Grant, Sunset, New England, Wild Irish Girl, Melaneur, and John Bull reefs, plus the silver lodes of the One Mile (at Totley).

 

Ravenswood’s economy survived the 1880s due to the development of silver mines at Totley, a township established about 2km north of Ravenswood. The silver mines opened circa 1879 - 1880, and Richard King floated the Ravenswood Silver Mining Company Ltd in 1882 – the year of Ravenswood’s lowest gold production between 1878 and 1898. Silver prices were high during the 1880s, and the Totley mines encouraged the Queensland Government to approve a branch railway line (off the Northern Railway between Townsville and Charters Towers) to Ravenswood in 1882, completed in 1884. The railway meant that some gold ores could be crushed, concentrated and sent for treatment at the Aldershot works just north of Maryborough or overseas to Swansea, in Wales. However, all silver mining had stopped by 1891, due to falling silver prices and over-expenditure on treatment plants.

 

Gold mining at Ravenswood continued during the 1880s and 1890s. Hugh Hawthorne Barton, who had operated Brothers Mill on Elphinstone Creek from the late 1870s, took over the General Grant, Sunset, and Black Jack mines, and the Mabel Mill (and later the Melaneur and Duke of Edinburgh mines), and floated the Ravenswood Gold Mining Company in 1887, with £100,000 in capital. From 1884 to 1896 Barton’s group was the largest and most successful operation in Ravenswood, its profitability assisted by the railway, economies of scale, and flexibility in ore-treatment methods. Barton utilised roasting, chlorination (by 1889), and smelting, and employed Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill. Along with their market gardens along Elphinstone Creek, Chinese employment at the Mabel Mill also influenced the location of the Chinese settlement area in Ravenswood. Meanwhile, the landscape was being altered by mining. The need for timber for boilers and for timbering-up mine shafts led to the loss of native trees in the locality, and goats also helped shape the landscape by eating regrowth.

 

By the mid-1890s, Barton was in debt to the Queensland National Bank, and his properties were seized in 1896, with the General Grant, Black Jack, and Mabel Mill being let on tribute (where a party of miners worked a mine, while giving the mine owner a percentage of any results) in 1897. The tributers refused to employ Barton’s experienced Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill, leading to disastrous attempts at chlorination. However, the goldfield’s production was boosted in the late 1890s when work resumed on the Donnybrook reefs for the first time in 20 years, and the Hillsborough (Eight Mile) reefs were taken up.

 

The New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917):

 

Ravenswood’s boom period of gold production (1900 - 1908, with 1905 the year of highest production) is reflected in the town’s surviving mining infrastructure and commercial and public buildings. This boom occurred due to the efforts of Archibald Laurence Wilson (1852 - 1935). After gaining a diploma in mining engineering in Edinburgh, and working in New Zealand and on the Palmer River, Wilson arrived in Ravenswood in 1878. He was publican of the Silver King Hotel in Totley in the 1880s. As manager of the John Bull mine at Sandy Creek in the mid-1890s, he raised capital in London and installed a cyanide plant.

 

Wilson later travelled to London in 1898, where he floated both the Donnybrook Blocks Mining Syndicate and the New Ravenswood Company in 1899. Wilson was the General Manager of both companies, under their London directorates. Until 1917, the New Ravenswood Company was the largest mining operation on the Ravenswood goldfield. Registered with a capital of £50,000, the company purchased the General Grant, Sunset, Black Jack, Melaneur, and Shelmalier mines, and the Mabel Mill, from the Queensland National Bank (and later obtained the Saratoga, Duke of Edinburgh and London North mines), and initiated a new era in ore and metallurgical extraction. Using British capital, Wilson introduced modern machinery to work the mines, and effectively reshaped Ravenswood’s landscape. Wilson was known as ‘the uncrowned king of Ravenswood’. He was also Chairman of the Ravenswood Shire Council for some years, and was later on the Dalrymple Shire Council, until he resigned from poor health in 1934.

 

From 1900, both the Sunset and General Grant (also known as the Grant) mines were redeveloped by Wilson. These became the key earners for the New Ravenswood Company; by 1903 the two mines employed about 205 men, and were ‘the “backbone” of the town’.

 

The Sunset reef, which runs roughly northwest-southeast through the Ravenswood Mining Landscape, was the largest producer on the goldfield (almost a quarter of the total). It produced 14,722oz of gold from 1870 - 1894, and by 1900 it was worked from an underlie (an inclined shaft, following the dip of a reef) branching off from a vertical shaft 130ft (40m) deep. It was stated at this time that the reef had ‘much the same history as the General Grant, the two being generally worked together’. By 1903 the New Ravenswood Company had extended the underlie shaft right up to the surface, where a headframe was constructed to haul ore directly up the slope. The Sunset’s yield of ‘free gold’ (pure gold not combined with other minerals), which could be extracted at the Mabel Mill, peaked in 1904, then fell slowly. In 1905 an average of 170 men were employed at the mine. In 1908 the reef was being worked by the main underlie shaft, 900ft (274m) deep (Sunset No. 1); and a vertical shaft, 556ft (169m) deep (Sunset No. 2). As the Sunset reef was worked in conjunction with the General Grant and the Duke of Edinburgh reefs in the New Ravenswood Company era, its exact total production of gold is hard to calculate; but from 1876 to 1912 the reef probably produced about 177,000oz of gold; and probably most of the 22, 000oz that the company extracted from 1912 - 1917.

 

The General Grant, one of the most productive reefs on the goldfield, running roughly north-south just east of the Sunset reef, was worked almost continuously to the late 1880s, and periodically thereafter. By 1895 returns had diminished, due to the small size of the reef and its highly refractory ore. In 1900, the General Grant had a vertical shaft to 110ft (34m), and then an underlie of 610ft (186m), the bottom of the latter being 450ft (137m) below the level of the shaft mouth; but operations were ‘almost completely suspended’ as the New Ravenswood Company concentrated on the Sunset reef. To 1900 the General Grant had produced 23, 651oz of gold; and after crushing of ore from the mine resumed at the beginning of 1903, it was treated with ore from the Sunset. On average, 40 men were employed on the mine in 1905. In 1908 the powerhouse for both the Sunset and the General Grant mines was situated on the General Grant lease, with three Cornish boilers. By 1912 the General Grant had produced about 36,000oz of gold.

 

To the east of the General Grant was the Duke of Edinburgh reef, running roughly northwest-southeast. This was one of the early reefs discovered on the goldfield; and in 1872 it was identified by Warden TR Hackett as one of the 28 principal reefs. It was worked in several episodes prior to the 1890s, and was re-opened in 1891, producing 1286oz of gold during 1891 - 1895. In 1908 the mine was taken over by the New Ravenswood Company, and was reorganised as an underlie shaft with haulage machinery from the Golden Hill mine, being worked in conjunction with the General Grant until 1917.

 

Along with his modernisation of the goldfield’s best mines, Wilson also abandoned chlorination at the Mabel Mill, increased the mill’s crushing capacity to 30 stamps (by 1904), and introduced the first Wilfley tables to Queensland. Crushing resumed in January 1900. Wilson improved metallurgical extraction by ‘postponing amalgamation of the free gold till the great bulk of the sulphides had been removed by concentration’. The ore was crushed in stampers without using mercury. Then, using the Wilfley tables, the heavier Galena (lead sulphide ore) and free gold was separated from the lighter sulphides. The free gold and galena was then ground in Berdan pans with mercury, while the remaining sulphides (containing iron, zinc and copper) were dispatched to the Aldershot works (near Maryborough) for smelting. In 1902 - 1903, a raff wheel, 14.5m in diameter, was built at the Mabel Mill to lift tailings (post-treatment residue) up to a flume, which carried them over to the south side of Elphinstone Creek, where they could be treated with cyanide. The cyanide works (of which remnants still remain south of Elphinstone Creek) was erected circa 1904. A 21m long girder bridge was constructed across the creek to carry steam water pipes and electric cable from the Mabel Mill to the new works, which eventually comprised two Krupp ball mills and 12 Wilfley’s tables.

 

Due to the New Ravenswood Company’s efforts, the goldfield’s production increased between 1899 and 1905. Gold recovery increased from 18, 016oz in 1899 to 24, 832oz in 1900 and to 42, 465oz in 1905. The New Ravenswood Company paid impressive 50% dividends to its shareholders in 1901, 1902, and 1904; and 75% in 1903.

 

The productivity of Ravenswood’s mines during the New Ravenswood Company era was also reflected in the goldfield’s population, which rose from 3420 in 1901 to its peak of 4707 in 1903. The 1903 population included 215 Chinese, 89 of these being alluvial miners. In 1905 two Chinese were listed as ‘storekeepers and grocers’.

 

The population increase led to a building boom in the first decade of the 20th Century. Hundreds of new houses, the town’s first two brick hotels – the Imperial hotel (1901) and the Railway Hotel (1902) – as well as brick shops such as Thorp’s Building (1903), and the brick Ravenswood Ambulance Station (1904) were constructed in this period; the use of brick being spurred by the threat of fire. The New Ravenswood Company also rebuilt the mining landscape in and around the town, with expansion of the Mabel Mill, and new headframes and winders, magazines, boilers, and brick smokestacks erected beside all the principal shafts.

 

However, not all Wilson’s ventures in this period were successful. In 1902 he floated Deep Mines Ltd, with a capital of £100, 000, to sink a shaft east of the New Ravenswood Company’s leases. This mine (also within the Ravenswood Mining Landscape) was an ambitious attempt to reach a presumed intersection of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth. Using the capital raised, Wilson built a model mine and mill. The shaft was started in late 1902-early 1903, and construction work on the buildings and machinery was completed later in 1903. The mine reached 512m, the deepest on the goldfield, with extensive crosscutting and driving, but only about 240oz of gold was recovered. No ore was crushed at all in 1908. By 1910 a new shaft was being sunk ‘near the western boundary’; but the mine was abandoned in 1911, and never worked again. Wilson’s London investors lost at least £65,000.

 

The Deep’s mill, built nearby and operational by 1906, was a smaller version of the Mabel Mill, with gravity stamps, Wilfley tables, and a cyanide plant. Its site, adjacent to the mine, ran counter to the normal practice of siting mills near water courses. With the failure of the Deep mine, it milled ore from other mines until about 1917.

 

Another mine, the Grand Junction, was located north of the New Ravenswood Company’s most productive mines, in the Ravenswood Mining Landscape. The Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company was formed in 1900, and a shaft was sunk in 1901 (probably the No. 1 shaft on the Grand Junction Lease No. 520). In 1902 another exploration ‘deep shaft’ (No. 2) was sunk at the southwest boundary of the Grand Junction Lease No.503. The Grand Junction mine was another failed attempt to locate a presumed junction of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth; by 1908 it was owned by the New Ravenswood Company. Total production was about 425oz of gold.

 

Slightly more successful was the Grant and Sunset Extended mine, at the southern end of the Ravenswood Mining landscape. This was a deep shaft sunk by the Grant and Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, a Charters Towers-owned company with Wilson as its local director. During the 19th Century, small mines had been operated in the Rob Roy reef, to the southeast. The Grant and Sunset Extended was floated in 1902, the intent being to locate the General Grant and Sunset reefs south of Buck Reef. The plant and buildings of the Yellow Jack mine, southeast of Ravenswood, were re-erected on the site. The shaft was down 70ft (21m) in 1902 and 930ft (283m) by 1908, with 50 men employed at the mine by the later date. The mine closed by 1910, but was worked on tribute until 1917, with about 15,000oz of gold obtained over 1904 - 1918.

 

The boom period at Ravenswood did not last. As well as losing money on the Deep and Grand Junction mines, the New Ravenswood Company faced the closure of the Aldershot works in 1906, and declining yields from 1908 to 1912. Although Wilson experimented with flotation (agitating crushed ore in oil and water, and extracting fine gold particles on the surface of air bubbles) and cyanide processes at the Mabel Mill, it was too late to save his company. The Shelmalier had closed by 1904, the Black Jack in 1909, and the Melaneur in 1910. By that year, the General Grant, Sunset, Duke of Edinburgh, and London North (obtained 1910) were the New Ravenswood Company’s only producing mines.

 

Few new buildings were constructed in Ravenswood after 1905. The hospital closed in 1908. That year the goldfield’s population consisted of 4141 Europeans (including 2625 women and children) and 181 Chinese (including 94 alluvial miners). This dropped to 2581, including 92 Chinese, by 1914.

 

Increased costs and industrial disputes in the 1910s hastened the end of the New Ravenswood Company era. During a miner’s strike between December 1912 and July 1913, over lay-offs, the fresh vegetables and business loans provided by Ravenswood’s Chinese community helped keep the town going. Although the miners won, it was a hollow victory, as the company could only afford to re-employ a few of the men. World War I (1914 - 1918) then increased labour and material costs for the New Ravenswood Company. The London North mine closed in 1915, and on the 24th of March 1917 the New Ravenswood Company ceased operations; ending large-scale mining in Ravenswood for the next 70 years.

 

By 1917, the Ravenswood goldfield had produced over 850, 000oz of gold (nearly a quarter coming from the Sunset mine), and 1, 000, 000oz of silver; making it the fifth largest gold producer in Queensland, after Charters Towers, Mount Morgan, Gympie, and the Palmer Goldfield. Ravenswood was also the second largest producer of reef gold in north Queensland, after Charters Towers.

 

Small scale mining and re-treatment (1919 - 1960s):

 

After 1917 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a period of hibernation, with intermittent small-scale attempts at mining. In 1919, Ravenswood Gold Mines Ltd took over some of Wilson’s leases and renovated the Deep mine’s mill, but obtained poor returns. Ravenswood Gold Mines also worked the Duke of Edinburgh from 1919 to 1930, with good returns reported in 1924. The General Grant and Sunset were also worked on a small scale from 1919 - 1921, while the Mabel Mill continued to provide crushing services for the limited local mining.

 

Consequently, Ravenswood’s population declined and the town shrank physically. In 1921 the town’s population fell below 1000, and by 1923 there were 530 people left, including 8 Chinese. During the 1920s, prior to the closure of the railway branch line to Ravenswood in 1930, hundreds of the town’s timber buildings were dismantled and railed away. By 1927, only the two brick hotels remained operating as hotels. The Ravenswood Shire was abolished in 1929, and by 1934 only 357 people remained in the town.

 

Despite this decline, some gold was still being extracted. There was a small increase in gold production between 1923 and 1927, and due to the gold price rise of the 1930s, some mines were re-worked and efforts were also made to treat the old mullock heaps (waste rock from mining) and tailings dumps with improved cyanide processes. Between 1931 and 1942, 12, 253oz of gold was obtained from the goldfield, the peak year being 1940.

 

A number of companies were active in Ravenswood in the 1930s-early 1940s. In 1933, the North Queensland Gold Mining Development Company took up leases along Buck Reef and reopened the Golden Hill mine, and the following year their operations were taken over by Gold Mines of Australia Ltd. The 1870s Eureka mine (near the Imperial Hotel) was revived by James Judge in 1934. In 1935 the Ravenswood Concentrates Syndicate began re-treating the Grant mullock heaps in the remaining stampers at the Mabel Mill, and dewatering the Sunset No. 2 shaft; while the Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, with James Judge as manager, dewatered the Grant and Sunset Extended shafts (which connected to the Sunset, General Grant and Duke of Edinburgh shafts), and re-timbered the Grant and Sunset Extended, General Grant, and Sunset underlie (No. 1) shafts. The London North mine was reopened by R J Hedlefs in 1937, and Basque miners were working the Sunset No. 2 shaft at this time.

 

The Little Grand Junction mine, located at the intersection of Siggers Street and School Street, on the old Grand Junction Lease No. 520, was operated from 1937 - 1942 by local miners Henry John Bowrey and John Thomas Blackmore. Five men were employed at the mine in 1940. The shaft had apparently been sunk previously by the Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company; and Bowrey and Party reconditioned it and extended the existing workings.

 

In 1938, Archibald and Heuir set up a mill on the bank of One Mile Creek to treat mullock dumps, and the Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate (formed 1937, with James Judge as manager) began treating the mullock dumps of the Sunset mine in late 1938. The same syndicate also dewatered and reopened part of the Grant and Sunset Extended; and the Grand Junction mine was reopened by Judge circa 1939 - 1942.

 

The Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate’s (Judge’s) mill initially consisted of 10 head of stamps obtained from the Mother Lode Mill at Mount Wright (northwest of Ravenswood), powered by a diesel engine. The ore was crushed by the stamper battery, concentrated with Wilfley tables, and then either treated with cyanide or sent to the Chillagoe smelters. Initial success with some rich ore led to enlargement of the mill to 30 stamps in 1939 - 40. A Stirling boiler and a 250hp engine were also obtained from the Burdekin meatworks (Sellheim), and a rock breaker, elevator, and conveyor were installed. However, the upgraded mill proved to be overpowered and required a lot of timber fuel; the brick foundations used for the machinery were not strong enough; and the best ore from the Sunset had already been treated, so the mill closed early in 1942 and the plant was moved to Cloncurry.

 

Also in 1938, Maxwell Partridge and William Ralston installed a new plant south of Elphinstone Creek, to the immediate west of the Mabel Mill’s old cyanide works, to re-treat the old tailings with cyanide. A ball mill, filter, and other plant were purchased from the Golden Mile, Cracow in 1939, while later that year a suction gas engine and flotation machine were also installed. This operation closed circa 1942, and the coloured sands on the site today are residues from the flotation process: the yellow sand is from the floatation of iron pyrites; the grey sands are copper tailings; and the black material is zinc tailings.

 

There was limited activity on the goldfield in the late 1940s to early 1960s. The Empire Gold Mining Syndicate treated mullock dumps from The Irish Girl, London, and Sunset mines from 1946 to 1949, as well as some of the dumps from the Grand Junction (1947). The Duke of Edinburgh mine was briefly reopened by Cuevas and Wilson in 1947, and the Cornish boilers on the site (one with the maker’s mark ‘John Danks & Son Pty Ltd makers Melbourne) may relate to this (unsuccessful) operation. Percy Kean reopened the Great Extended mine at Totley in 1947, and later purchased Partridge’s mill in 1951 to use it as a flotation plant to treat the silver-lead ore from Totley, adding a diesel engine, stonebreaker, Wilfley tables, and classifier. The Totley mines closed in 1954, although the Great Extended mine was briefly sub-leased by Silver Horizons No Liability, in 1964. Partridge’s mill was closed circa 1965.

 

Other attempts were made in the early 1950s to rework old sites. A Townsville syndicate led by Leslie Cook and George Blackmore reopened the Grand Junction mine in 1951, but it soon closed. James Judge also recommenced gold mining at Donnybrook, but closed in 1954; while 900 tons of tailings from the Deep mine’s mill site were taken for re-treatment at Heuir’s cyanide plant in the early 1950s.

 

A new industry:

 

In the 1960 and 1970s, Ravenswood’s population shrank to its nadir of about 70 people. At the same time, there was a growing nostalgic interest in old towns in Australia. In 1968 the landscape of Ravenswood was described in romantic terms: ‘Mute testimonials are the numerous mullock heaps which dot the countryside; the rusty remains of steam engines; stampers which were used to crush stone; and collapsed cyanide vats… Derelict poppet-heads…stand above deep, abandoned shafts. Colossal columns of chimney stacks rise majestically from the entanglement of rubber vines and Chinese apple trees.’ Some locals realised that preserving the town’s surviving historic buildings and structures was necessary to attract tourists and create a new local industry.

 

From this time onwards the town’s mining heritage was seen as an asset. The National Trust of Queensland met with locals in 1974, and a conservation plan for the town was published in 1975. Later, the town sites of Totley and Ravenswood were both entered into the National Trust of Queensland Register. Comments from an International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) trip to northern Australia in 1978 included ‘Ravenswood…is one of the most evocative (gold towns of Australia) and this must be preserved. A policy of “all that is necessary but as little as possible” must be strongly pursued’. The increased population of North Queensland, longer paid holidays, improved roads, and the rise of car ownership after World War II, all increased visitation to Ravenswood, as did the completion of a road past Ravenswood to the Burdekin Dam, in the 1980s. As a result, the town and its mining landscape have been represented in brochures, art, and photography. In particular, the landmark qualities of the tall brick chimneys are a distinctive feature in representations of Ravenswood.

 

Modern operations:

 

However, gold mining recommenced at Ravenswood in the 1980s, due to a rise in the gold price and the efficiencies gained from open cut mining and modern cyanide metallurgical extraction processes. From 1983 - 1986 the Northern Queensland Gold Company Ltd conducted agglomeration heap-leaching (spraying a sodium cyanide solution on previously mined material heaped on a plastic membrane), in the process removing a landmark tailings dump at King’s mine in Totley, and mullock heaps from the Grant and Sunset mines. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold commenced open cut mining of the Buck reef (the Buck Reef West pit) near the old Grant and Sunset mines on the south side of the town. Later, pits were dug further east along the reef. Some underground mining was also undertaken from the Buck Reef West pit until 1993, which broke into the old workings of the General Grant, Sunset, and Duke of Edinburgh mines. The old headframe at the Grant and Sunset Extended was demolished in 1988, and replaced with a new steel headframe, which was used until 1993 and then removed. The Melaneur-Shelmalier-Black Jack-Overlander reef complex, on the north side of the town, was mined as an open cut 1990 - 1991, before being backfilled as a golf course. The Nolan’s Gully open cut commenced in 1993.

 

Although modern mining revived the economy of the town, it did not replicate the building boom of the early 20th century.

 

The heritage significance of Ravenswood’s surviving mining infrastructure was recognised in a 1996 Queensland Mining Heritage Places Study by Jane Lennon & Associates and Howard Pearce; and a 2000 Conservation Management Plan by Peter Bell. In 2006, the population of Ravenswood, the oldest surviving inland town in north Queensland, was 191.

 

By the mid-2010s the population of Ravenswood stood at 255 people.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register & Australian Bureau of Statistics.

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