chart, page-20

LOL! Funny you should bring that up about the telegraph. It was so important during the development of that area.

I had started to write out some history just to keep us going in the morning, but as you've given us some of your own personal history, I'll take this opportunity to add some more from this book I'm reading. Hope you guys don't mind...


"Okay,

So we?re waiting for some news. Here?s a little history lesson I?ve found thanks to Geoffrey Blainey from his Book ?The Rush that never ended ? A History of Australian Mining?.

"While Chinese diggers were filing across the steaming mountains to the Palmer, another province of China opened more than a thousand miles to the west. The lonely harbour of Darwin became the new Cooktown. Pack-horses disappeared into long grass with stores for the goldfield. Ships rounded the cape with quartz captains from Bendigo. Facing the sea were the cool telegraph offices where operators tapped out messages to beckon the bold from every goldfield in Australia.

The telegraph had opened up these goldfields of the NT. .... The men who spanned the continent with wire found the first payable gold in the NT. About a hundred miles south of Darwin the telegraph crossed a highly mineralized zone, and near the anthills of Pine Creek three men laying the telegraph line washed gold early in 1871; in August surveyor MacLachlan found five ounces close to the line. Only a few gangs camped long in that auriferous zone, and digging postholes in the sun, few had energy or time to dig holes for gold. Most of the gold, moreover, was in quartz, locked from the grasp of men who lacked capital..... (jumping further ahead now so as not to bore you...)

The overland telegraph had opened the goldfields, and now was the magic instrument that raised the capital. The telegraph stations at the Schackle and Pine Creek, 121 and 151 miles from Darwin, had been built to relay the messages between England and Australia, and now they had their own messages to cable. Owners of Yam Creek mines paid dearly to send messages south offering their mines for ?1,000 or more to Adelaide agents. The agent wired the goldfields warden enquiring if the claims were legally held by the prospectors. Reassured he wired the prospector at the Schackle that he would buy the claim, and then paid the purchase price into the prospectors? accounts in Adelaide banks. Owning a mineral claim he had never seen and might never want to see, he floated a company and recouped his outlay with part of the ?2,000, ?5,000 or more he raised from investors."

The book is a fascinating and enjoyable read. I hope you managed to write down some of your Grandfather's life history.

Cheers,
Tangrams