Mine Site near Smeaton

Cameron — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:27:12 +0000

I took this shot with my trusty Diana camera during 2007, when I was in country Victoria for the Daylesford International Foto Biennale, which has now transformed into the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. When we first visited this area in the goldfields, we were detoured down a mainly one lane road, occasionally surfaced with bitumen, but often not. As we bumped along, dodging potholes, in a pasture to the left I noticed this brick structure with large slurry heaps flanking it. I wanted to stop and photograph it then, but the children were restless and needed to eat, so we kept going. On my return visit sans kids, I looked for this place again and grabbed a moment of relative brightness from an overcast sky behind me to capture this image.
From my research I have determined that this structure is the housing for the Cornish vertical beam engine at the No. 1 Shaft of the Madame Berry Lead near the township of Smeaton, Victoria.
During the gold rush years this would have been a very active and probably noisy place, but now it is sitting peacefully in a field surrounded by the discarded materials from the mining operation with sheep for company.

(from VICTORIAN GOLDFIELDS PROJECT: HISTORIC GOLD MINING SITES IN THE
SOUTH WEST REGION OF VICTORIA, REPORT ON CULTURAL HERITAGE – Department Of Natural Resources
& Environment, August 1999)
In 1879… the Berry section of the lead was also being worked and its progressive mines were beginning to join the list of gold producers, including among the gold producers was the Madame Berry (Victoria’s greatest deep lead mine).
Mining machinery… through necessity got more extensive and powerful as mining moved northwards and progressed
through the 300 feet to beyond 400 foot. Thus the most spectacular machinery installed on the field
was on the Berry lead. All the deep lead mines shared common features – steam engines for pumping,
winding and puddling; steam boilers and brick chimney stacks; wooden poppet heads, and raised
tramways and cast iron puddling machines. Some companies, such as Madame Berry, also had
crushing batteries to treat cement obtained from the gutter. 162 Horizontal acting engines were the
norm for the Creswick field, with only two companies – Berry No. 1 and Hepburn Leasehold Estate -
erecting Cornish vertical beam engines.

I find it interesting to think that this is all that is left to show of all that industry and equipment…

Camera: Diana 151 Film: Fuji Pro 400H

* This photo was first uploaded to The Plastic Lens v.1 on June 29 2007 (comments transposed from that post to here)

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Mine Site near Smeaton