The first two claims to the west of the river were The Royal Standard and the Moonlight. The gold was patchy, but solid. The lead dipped fast to the west.

In 1858, a shaft near the brow of the plateau yielded heavy gold. The lead still dropped away.

A new claim, the St George ran out of funds, and in September 1863 it was sold to another St George Company. This company and several other companies, The Hercules, Potomac, Victory, Trafalgar, Rodney, Gladiator, Dauntless, Defender, Unicorn Neptune, British Queen and J P Fawkner amalgamated to form the St George United Company. They sank through four layers of bluestone to a bottom at 380 feet

The bottom ten feet of the second rock was very porous. Some frogs were found in it. The shaft was sunk by contract nine feet by 3'6" with three compartments. The timber in the shaft being 4" thick x 8" wide.

The terms of contract were the company to supply steam power, engine drivers, bracemen, timber, firewood, air pipes; the contractors to find blasting powder, fuse, tools, and have to fix the pumps. Payment for sinking in the shaft per foot was: Clay £1.10.0; soft rock £3.15.0, hard rock £9.10.0- drift sand £8.10.0; reef £7.0.0; puddling up shaft £7.10.0.

They worked west and struck the workings of the Albion Company The gutter at this point was 500 feet wide. They also Worked a large quantity of drift sand between the third and fourth layers of bluestone.

In 1866, one thousand trucks of wash dirt were raised each day There were twin plats in this shaft opposite each other, each 40 ft long making it easy to load the double decker cages f ram each side. But one plat was sited level with the top deck of the cage. As this cage was being loaded its mate in the next compartment of the shaft was being emptied on the surface.

In 1868 the St George United Company united with the Extended Band of Hope to form the St George and Band of Hope United.

In 1869, the claims of The Guiding Star and Red Jacket were taken up. From September 1863 to 1872 they employed 380 men for a yield of gold worth £346,811.

In 1864 Miss Charlotte Rodier christened the engine "The Dragon". Thomas Gray was the first manager.

The next shaft west, the Albion Company No.1 won gold to the value of £621,180 and was surpassed only by the Prince of Wales Company.

On February 1, 1863, they opened up an abandoned shaft. The manager reported that he found it in a bad working state. He did not name the claim, but did say there was " not a drive fit to use". The western level had to be relaid and to cap it all, the bottom was so soft a man sank up to his knees.

"We had to place a foundation of firewood from end to end, and on the main line east, it was so crooked we had to cut three different courses to make it straight, to drive to the St George claim for air, with the bluestone resting on the reef".

This shows the effort some companies went to, to obtain the precious air, as well as the gold. Then in July 1863 a miner lost his life on their southern boundary in an underground battle with the United Miners Co.

The Albion No. 5 due west of No. 1. On July 10, 1863, the Mining Court granted the company the right to mine under the water reserve, the highest point of land in Sebastopol.

This mine was flooded out in 1875. Rakes of trucks laden with golden wash dirt are still there. It was during 1875 that all alluvial mines were washed out and abandoned.

The Bulls Run Lead between the Woolshed and Terrible Leads started on the flat east of the river.

It ran west into ground held by the St George Company. There were only four claims - three not named and the Alexander Company.

The shaft was sunk in October 1862 through 50 feet of loose boulders, 50 feet of bluestone,45 feet drift sand and worked by a horse whim.

This is all that has been gleaned.

It is probably the run that let all the water into the first shaft of the South Star Company.

The Terrible Lead. Fifteen claims were registered on the plateau in July 1856, but records remain silent as to names and gold yield.

The lead was opened in August 1855 on the slope of the range between the Golden Gate Mine and Barnetts Lease. It was joined by Whites Lead and functioned with the White Horse under the plateau.

It is known the walls of this lead were high and fast dripping on both sides. The drift sand was bad to sink in while the ground was poor standing and had to be close timbered all the way.

The White Horse Lead. Discovered in 1854, between the later quartz mines, Dalzell-Buchanan and Lady Jane.

A point of interest is these two men, Dalzell and Buchanan, strayed on to Barnetts Lease.

He kindly showed them a likely spot to sink outside his lease. They hit the jackpot first time. They lost the lead for two years, but it was picked up again in 1856,to be joined by the Nuggetty and Little White Horse.

West of the river, the lead cut through a small seam of lignite. On May 13, 1856, 82 claims were pegged out and registered as frontage claims.

No. 1 claim The Lignite Co, two, three, four, five, six and seven united and worked from No. 6 claim. Eight to ten were known as Swipers Mob. They found coarse gold in the drift between the first and second layers of bluestone. They reckoned it was not good enough for them to work. This shaft bottomed at 210 feet.

Eleven to 13 had no names; 14 to 16 The Royal Charter; 17 to 19 Victoria; 20 to 22 White Star; 23 to 24 Flying Dutchman; 25 to 26 Champion of the Seas; 27 to 29 Oppossum; 30 to 32 Heart and Anchor; 33 to 39 Leviathan; 40 to 44 Eldorado; 45 to 48 Pilot; 49 to 53 Tam O'Shanter; 54 to 58 Golden Horn; 59 to 64 Red Jacket; 65 to 82 United, this one was abandoned for the simple reason there was no more lead left. Some had been swallowed up by the Frenchmans Lead.

The Red Jacket shaft went down in May 1856 to a depth of 400 feet and was worked by hand windlass, till the mine was proved. Its drying room or miners change house was a shed built on the brace and heated with a wood stove. They also worked part of the Wellington Lead as well as two small gutters known as the Red and White, bythe colourof the wash dirt they Contained. One hundred and twelve men, 20 boys and seven horses worked below. This company took out gold worth £64,772.

The mine for a short time was worked by a party of tributers. It has been told how these men were sometimes chased up the shaft by bursts of water 40 to 50 feet, from abandoned ground which had burst through collapsed drives. They said it was the roaring of the released water and air that always gave them warning.

The Golden State Company, the Forty Thieves and the Last of the Mohicans Company lay near the junction of the Terrible Lead with this one. When the Golden Horn Company was swamped out on July 31,1857, they used canvas buckets of 90 gallons capacity, but were only good for 24 hours of continual bailing.

Talking of buckets, on this lead they were also using Glasgow Iron Buckets, claimed to hold twice as much ask American buckets which were slow bailing. Judging by the: names on this lead, it is hard to say whether they were groups of seafaring men or the names of ships they arrived on.

The Frenchman's Lead was next door to the White Horse Lead opened in June 1854 (near the site of the British Queen Quartz Mine on the indicator). Heavy gold was shed into the gutter, running through shallow ground, so giving the diggers very rich yields for little work. Up to 3 lb weight per tub from crab holes was yielded on this section.

This lead was enriched by the Chinamans and Old Magpie Leads in this section.

Some of the shrewd heads had noticed the gold in the sand drifts of these leads and about a year later, when the pumps on the big mines had lowered the volume of water, they sneaked back to work the old ground without fear of encroachment by other diggers. To combat the dangerous fire damp which had built up, a small fire was kept burning at the foot of the shafts, to burn up the gas.

Along these lines of shafts, as not to be left out, women and boys cradled the tailings and fire places where the diggers' huts and shanties had been for good results.

It was the digger's habit each night to dry the day's return at his fire. The fine and small specks of gold were too tedious a job to extract and were cast into the ashes.

From the source of these three leads to the river there would be at least 500 shafts. No trace of any records of the names or gold yields has as yet come to light.

As the gutter ran west under the Plateau to the deep ground, it was then proclaimed a frontage lead.

In March 1856,122 claims were pegged out. No.1 claim with 160 feet of first rock was the Newcastle; two, three, four and five, no name; No. 6 Black Flag; seven, eight, nine, Yankee Company, worked by hand windlass to 275 feet.

At one time, twelve men, working day and night for twelve weeks could barely keep the water down, using 32 gallon buckets.

Claims ten to twelve, The Twelve Apostles; 13 to 14, no name; 15 to 19 Co-operation; 20 to 22 Alma; 23 to 27 Enterprise; 28to31 Hand in Hand; 32 to35 Equitable (the third rock found in this shaft).

The first steam engine on the lead was erected at this latter shaft by James Cuthbertson from Newcastle on Tyne, England). His father assisted Robert Stephenson to build "The Rocket" in 1829.

Claims 36 to 47 no name; 48 to 51 Redan; the fourth rock found in this shaft; 52 to 55 Kangaroo; 56 to 62 United Miners; 63 to 66 Round Tower; 67 to 70 Cumberland, Durham and Cornish. This company worked from the abandoned United Miners Shaft, and had a joint control with the Round Tower, and bought the Kangaroo Shaft. It cost this company £27,000 for a return of £24,300.

The Defiance Company with 125 men and 22 boys bought their ground from the Cumberland Company for £1,000 and had no number; also the Queen and Co and Penzance Co under manager Henry Lewis.

The shaft was 5' x 3', bottomed at 355 feet; 580 feet south of the shaft, the fourth layer of bluestone lay on the wash dirt, and to get it out, they sank a blind shaft 7' x 3', 50 feet deep. A huge chamber was cut, and the shaft was worked by a horse whim. The first time underground.

During the month another horse was purchased, lowered down the shaft, and introduced to an underground life.

In June 1862, twin reef drives were cut 2,500 feet long under the gutter. In January 1865, the sludge from the puddlers was reclaimed and put through a gold saving huddle. They had a run of flower gold, proved over a length of 500 feet by 300 feet.

This was proved again in the 1930's, when a trail of this flower gold was worked in the sludge dump. This claim yielded 31,222 ozs of gold.

This mine like all of the deep alluvial mines had a furnace for roasting the black sand which accummulated in the bottom of the puddling machines. This sand contained a fair amount of fine gold. In February 1866, they got 42 ozs, which would have been thrown out with the tailings.

Claims 71 to 75 Leviathan; 76 to 79 Bullock Horn, this company was named from the practice of blowing a horn at the change of shifts. 80 to 82 Nelson Company. These three companies began sinking in May 1856, but the volume of water in the trap rock was too much for the pumps. In March 1858, they united under the style of Nelson Company. They sank the shaft commenced by the original Nelson to 240 feet, but the water swamped them. This shaft was abandoned in 1859.

They then worked the shaft of the Leviathan Company after the back-breaking work, they bottomed on July 16,1861, rich in the gutter in rich wash dirt at a depth of 415 feet. In May 186 they found the Wellington Lead, twenty feet lower than the Frenchmans. Now they called themselves Nelson and Wellington.

In August 1863. prior to installing new bottoms to the puddling machines (these bottoms weighed two-and-a-half tons), the gold yield had been falling off. But then they had pleasant surprise. From under the first machine they found 36 ozs, 13 dwt, 19 grains, and under No. 2 283 ozs,13 dwt, worth £2,500. In December 1864, as was the liberal custom of the directors, they gave the wages men a holiday on Boxing Day!

The depth of the lead then was 284 feet, width 300 feet. They cleaned up 61,000 ozs. David Owen was killed in the shaft by a slab falling 300 feet from the surface.

Claims 84 to 98 united under the style of Working Miners Company. Depth to gutterwas 390 feet with aworkforce of 220 men. The No. 2 shaft was used as an air shaft 475 feet deep.

There were six shafts flooded out here. They were first taken over by the Union Company, then by the United Working Miners Company. It was twelve years before a dividend was paid. They worked a run of wash between the third and fours layers of basaltic rock for a time.

99 to 114 Evening Star Company. In 1866 their engine and boiler houses were burnt down but luckily missed the shaft 115 to 122 United Albion Company.

In January 1857, they bored for the deep ground, 23 bore were put down for a total depth of 5,000 feet. It was very expensive because of the quantity and hardness of the bluestone. This Company was the first in Victoria to bore to the deep alluvial. John Tynan of Ballarat was the first in the colony to make these boring rods. There was a great demand for them throughout Australia for shallow boring, as they were cheaper than the diamond drill.

The shaft went down on June 4,1858, through bluestone,l the rate of ten feet a week - 20 inches a day and using black gun powder at 7d per pound and fuses at 10 pence. Depth of sheaft was 475 feet, and was 9 feet 4 inches by 4 feet. It was timbered by planks8 inches wide by 5½ inches thick, and they were such first class they could have been used as sleepers on a railway.

The gutter was 400 feet wide and gold showing two feet up in the wash dirt. A flat rope, 3½ inches wide, 575 feet long weighing one ton and cost £80 was used for hauling. The "signs of the times" show up here. A contract was let for £1 000 and entailed cutting a plat, using 16" x 16" timber and a reef drive 500 feet long.

The shallow ground had been worked out, labour being cheap. They reaped gold to the value of £254,000.

The gutter turned south to be swallowed by the Cobblers Lead. Over the entire length of this famous Frenchmans Lead on the plateau, nearly as much money was put in to work the mines as the value of gold obtained. There is no doubt it would have been to advantage with less shafts to work. But to them it was less shafts going down to help with the water problem -one-and-a-half million gallons a day, with inadequate machinery at most times.

These miners were a legend in their own lifetime. No other lead had surpassed this one for feats of endurance and sheer courage.

There were at the least 50 shafts on the lead and the fringe averaging 300 feet through four layers of bluestone, although only two layers on the edge of the plateau. This is 15,000 feet of solid rock, taking five and six years to bottom.

Hand boring holes and blasting through this rock took time and patience. After the hole was bored a piece of sail cloth or a water proof coat was held over it to keep out the water spraying from the rock higher up the shaft. The hole was then dredged out with a piece of rag or bag to make it as dry as possible. Loose gun powder was poured in and tamped with dry earth and clay to make it water tight. When fired, the blast left a fairly good fracture in the rock which was worked on with spelling hammers and bars, although some shots produced only a hat full or more.

The trials and tribulations these men faced have been handed down and still remembered by many Sebastopol families. Looking back on those days, miners spoke of them with a sense of pride, "I worked in the rock shafts".

These miners were all good rock sinkers worth £2.10.0 per week working eight hour shifts. Sebastopol would have remained a sheep station or run for many years if this lead had been quickly worked out. Why, there would not have been a Place called Sebastopol, for it was on this same lead the miners named it Sebastopol Hill in 1855.

The Lord Raglan Lead. This was found in 1855, near the Magpie Gully Methodist Church.

It was not reckoned a good lead. A bit better than a mile in length. Records are silent here. One shaft, the Flat Catchers Company, reported in March 1858 battling with a gutter choked with bluestone, with boulders up to seven feet high and wide. They had to be hand drilled and blasted out.

The Cobblers Lead. This lead had a lively and self-contained township called Cobblers - home to many Welsh folk, now the southern part of Sebastopol.

The lead came off the range in 1854, through Magpie Gully. was poor at the river. The Consols Quartz lode passed deep under the gutter. Within half-a-mile it cut the Guiding Star an Albion lodes, so enriching the gutter. The first shafts west of the river were the Red Funnel, Engine Company and Try Again Camp. In this claim at a depth of 285 feet was found, on the edge of the gutter, trees with trunks two feet in diameter, encased in bluestone and in a good state of preservation.

Next in line were the Cambrian, Blue Jacket, Long Funnel, and the Sebastopol shaft. Next was found a famous Company, The Prince of Wales, working three shafts and employing 400 men and 33 boys, the backbone of Cobblers Township. It was registered in February 1857, taking four years to bottom. The shaft was 387 feet, through 258 feet of solid bluestone; four layers of it, with a fifth layer in the deep ground west of No.1 shaft. The shaft was 7' x 4' with two compartments.

The first hauling rope was a 6" flat Manilla, followed by W S Round's handmade flat chain. The cages carried two trucks, one above the other, then adjusted to take four, landing two each side of the shaft. The cage was raised 30 feet up the shaft by one stroke of the engine, from the bottom to landing brace in 30 seconds.

1,500 trucks were landed every 24 hours. In 1867, 134,000 trucks were handled every three months. The trucks were 2'7" in length, 1'9" wide, 1'10" deep, holding 8.2 cubic feet, or approximately As of a yard. They were made by W S Round for £5.0.0 each. By 1865 they had so many trucks in the mine it was costing £7.0.0 per week just for oil for the wheels.

The horse power of the engines varied to suit different operations, for winding, pumping and crushing batteries, ranging from 12 to 90 horse-power. One battery was a 16 head with square stampers, and one standard 40 head. The wearing parts of this battery- wipers, shanks, discs, stamp heads and shoes - were made by Vivian and Company of Castlemaine.

Four boys fed the battery by hand. The boilers at No.1 shaft were 35 feet long by 7 feet diameter, with the other 26' x 6'. During this early period, they were working quartz and alluvial. One clean up in June 1863, resulted in: gold yield quartz 747 ozs. 16 dwt, 12 grains; alluvial 748 ozs, 8 dwt, 6 grains.

In April, 1864, from 1,541 tons of quartz the gold yield was 7 dwt, 17 grs, per ton. The first quartz was crushed at the Standard Company s battery at Hiscock's, where gold was first discovered in the Ballarat district. When they erected their own battery, no one had experience in battery foundations.

Eleven layers of logs 14" square and 17 feet long were put down, giving an elevation of twelve-and-a-half feet from the surface. On this platform was the 16 head battery. In 1863 when this lode was opened, they worked up from a reef drive, 20 feet, and broke into the alluvial workings. They then worked along the cap of the lode 200 feet in workings 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep. A future floodgate opened, which hampered operations when the alluvial ground became water-logged. In March 1863, tenders were called to drive the pumping engine in twelve hour shifts, seven days a week. The two lowest tendered were £6.15.0 equal to three men's wages of £2.5.0, so three shareholders elected to drive it themselves. In 1862, a share sold for £1,290.

While the ground was still hard and dry, a contract let for digging a dam 150 feet by 175 feet by 3 feet deep cost £45. In May 1864, while putting in reef drives from No. 1 and No. 2 shafts to work the Buninyong lode, they were surprised to break out of the reef into a valley filled with wash dirt. Here they had a run of nuggets from one to eleven ounces. This they called the Britannia Lead.

Another lead they broke into they called The Prince, and what a shock it was - only 40 feet north of the shaft. The managers, reports were no different than any other company on Sebastopol. All mines in the deep ground spoke of mysterious gutters running alongside the ones they were Working, separated by a wide bar of sandstone. They were spoken of with a sense of awe and wonder.

The No. 3, 1866 shaft was 410 feet deep. Its plat was 45 feet long, 12 feet wide and nine feet high, built with logs two feet in diameter. The wash dirt went through four iron puddling machines' end two sludge machines.

The paddlers were grouped together, each 16' 6" in diameter by 2'6" deep, holding 102 trucks to within six inches Of the top. They were placed 40 feet above the surface. The trucks of washdirt were run straight from the brace onto a tramway over the machines. A self-tipping 'gadget' was attached to the rails. Above the machines were ten 400 gallon water tanks. Below the machines were the sluice heads, where, through trap doors in the bottoms of the machines, the wash was discharged. The sludge ran from the puddlers into machines 14 feet diameter, two feet deep. The gravel and boulders were to forked into trucks from the tailings race, then on to the dump.

The company built a dam with a bank 700 feet long, 15 feet high with a road 12 feet wide, the water being reticulated to the three shafts. This is when they put in their own fire fighting service. This dam now St Josephs Home lake.

When the workings were abandoned in the face of rising waters, they were getting gold off a high reef. A match box of this gold was heavier than a box-and-a-half from the gutter. It was heavy shotty gold known by the miners as peas and beans.

The mine had produced gold worth £700,200 at a time when the main shaft was only 700 feet deep on the quartz lodes Management of the mine at this time consisted of Manager FW Thatham; Chairman of Directors Alexander Dempster; Treasurer, Thomas Lewis; Engineer, Peter Matthews;. Underground Manager, Richard Uren; Battery Manager, James Boughtman.

The mine was originally started by a band of Welshmen, but many were forced to give up before the rewards came round. This was the mine where the first 'stink pots' were used.

The United Albion Company encroached into their ground and underground warfare broke out. The fumes given off by the infamous 'stink pots' were deadly in the confined space underground. The miner who poured the nitric acid on the pieces of scrap copper must have had a warped sense of humour!

At the No. 3 shaft fresh drinking water was piped down the shaft to the plat where a boy kept the miners billies filled.

The Main Lead. As the Frenchmans - Cobblers system of leads trend south from Cobblers township, the gutter was now known as The Main Lead, fed and enriched by gutters from a spur of the White Horse Range at Magpie Gully, the Long Gully, Paddy's, Crawfish, and Prospect. Where the Long Gully joins can be found the Prince of Wales and Bonshaw on Bonshaw Creek, the ground, 640 acres, being bought from John Winter for £20,000 in 1857.

The company was reaping two golden harvests here - gold from below, and above the rental from four farms. They only needed the hole from which the gold came out.

The company won gold worth £380,000. They built a beautiful dressed bluestone foundation for £1,000 to take a 90 horse-power pumping engine, and a chimney stack 98 feet tall, but dwarfed by the poppet head.

A thousand yards south east at Cambrian Hill, on the Colac Road were two mines, the Bonshaw Freehold No. 1 and Alston and Weardale, working the prospect lead. The former claim was working 50 feet from the Alston ground, and was suddenly swamped by an inrush of water. The last cage to leave the plat held two men, one tall, the other short. The water rose fast and the tall one held the short one up to keep his head above water. For three days the horses would not go up the north drive, only when forcefully persuaded. It was as if they new disaster was at hand. Finally the 50 feet of ground between the claims could not hold the pressure of the water from the flooded Bonshaw, and it burst through drowning the horses that had given the miners warning, but not heeded.

This shaft was only 100 yards from John Winter's home.

In one section of this mine, the cap of a quartz reef struck up from the bedrock about two feet. As told by a twelve year old lad, Thomas Watson, one day a miner idly tapping his pick on the reef, broke off a lump. He was amazed to find the whole cap studded with gold. This incident led to the forming of the Ballarat South Mining Company. They applied for a lease on January 15, 1948.

After cutting down the old Leviathan shaft, they opened out shallow, to the west. The main gutter was 100 feet below their workings.

A mile down, the Colac Road on the left side was the Great Gulf Shaft. This company amalgamated with the Non-Such company. There were three layers of bluestone there. After a mere 203 feet, carbonic acid gas was struck in the second rock. They tried burning, but it was no good. The miners then hit on a plan. A jet of steam was used to break up the gas giving them time to puddle it back.

When the shaft caught fire from the underground furnace, four lives were lost. Also the puddling clay-behind the timber cracked and fell out resulting in the shaft being flooded. The cost of sinking this shaft was £14 per foot through basaltic rock and £17.12.0 per foot through drift sand.

A shaft 12' x 4' was then sunk 2,000 feet south west on the Colac Road at Black Lead, to work the Black Lead. They employed 279 men at the time.

In 1864, they were getting heavy nuggety gold up to 20 ozs slugs, but no reports of the quartz reefs which shed the treasure.

The same year a miner was reprimanded for not using the Davy Lamp, which was used for testing foul air in the mine.

Further south, overlooking the Ross Creek was the Leviathan No.2. Running west is the old track of Captain Ross who settled Ross Creek. He was still at the head of the creek in 1844. Three hundred yards south east at the junction of Ross and Dog Trap Creeks is where the Learmonth brothers first settled i n 1838. The Leviathan No.1 is at Napoleons, where the main gutter swings south east to Scotchmans Lead. This mine employed 109 men, six boys and six horses below.

At Napoleons, was the Sunbeam, Golden Era, Fortuna, Gympie, Sons of Freedom and the Waterloo. The latter was worked first as the Duke of Wellington, then the New Extended. Near the school house they were getting nuggety gold, while searching for the Jerusalem Lead, so-called by a party of Hebrews who had abandoned it five years before. At Scotchmans lead, the main gutter cuts through the indicator line of quartz lodes, running south from Ballarat. Here was al jumble of quartz and alluvial mines. The Homeward Bound, Lady Franklin; Monte Christo; Turntide; the Group of Freehold Mines; Bishops and the long line of mines on th quartz lode, the Desosa; Democrat; Dalcoath; Standard; Imperial No. 1 which worked for nigh on sixty years down to 400 feet. Later the New Imperial, (the site of the first discovery of gold in the district by Hiscock); North and South Imperial; British Empire and One and All Company.

Leaving Scotchmans, the gutter ran through Durham Lead, where the first stock route, the Pyrenees Road, came through from Geelong, later to be called the West Road.1 he leads were short but very rich. Here the main gutter was known as the Durham Lead. Here you find the shafts of the Old Forties; National; Great Britain; John Bull; Garabaldi; Try Again Company; Pioneer or Tunnel Company, where Miss Clara Maisey christened the engine, "Queen of the Leigh" on to Duke of Northumberland; Telegraph and Convention (all the wash dirt from this mine was sluiced and not puddled), Enfield, Duke of Cornwall; Leigh Consols; Wheal Fortune; Chryseis or golden Lady (a very wet shaft pumping 33,000 gallons per hour), Roseleigh; South Grenville Company; City of Manchester Company (the track into this mine on the west bank of the river Leigh was so rough and the ground so rotten that the huge boilers had to be cut into two and three pieces and put together again at the mine) and the Leigh Grand Junction near Shelford.

Where the gutter passes south it becomes lost in the ancient marine deposits which were made up of fast running sand drifts and water. All of the Leigh shafts took their names from the Leigh River on which they were closely sited.

In the autumn of 1857, a gold lead was fcund at the HardHills near the cemetery, running through Webb and Carriggs land into the Buninyong station, known as Learmonth's paddock (146 acres).

A company was formed called the "Buninyong Gold Mining Company" with 27 shareholders, three of them becoming sleeping shareholders, in consideration of having brought the negotiations with Thomas Learmonth to a satisfactory termination. And the results of their labour? 5% on the gross yield of gold for the first year, with 7½% for the second and third.

No. 1 shaft commenced in November 1857, finding gold in May 1858 on the Scotchmans Lead at a depth of 153 feet, close to the north west boundary. Before they could reach the boundary, two companies called the Road Company and Criterion, sneaked in under their ground. There not being any law as yet for mining on private property and not having the influence like the Bonshaw Freehold Company, they had to let it ride.

Five companies were on a line with the gutter at the south end of the paddock. The Sons of Rock, Enterprise, Young Australians, Monte Christo and West of England Company were tunnelling towards their ground, so they let a portion of ground to a mob of miners called The Excelsior Company.

After working out only 200 feet of the gutter and through the non-fulfillment by the new company of their contract with the Buninyong company, they were adjudged by a decision of arbitrators appointed to have forfeited their title and were compelled to abandon the ground. The underground drive conveniently fell in so protecting them from encroachment. In that 200 feet the Excelsior company won gold worth £9,500. The Buninyong company only received as their share £873.6.6, but probably smiled as they worked the rest of the lead - 6,000. feet of it - leaving No.2 shaft. No.3 shaft was put down nearthe Excelsior shaft. At this time, miners on the Union Jack, Sodawater, Stone Quarry, Gold Seekers and Devonshire Leads could see the leads trending into the paddock. Some of them tried to buy the paddock over the company's head, but the company quickly bought it for £20,000, thus winning the freehold.

At No. 3 shaft, the wash dirt was taken out over a distance of 900 feet by 150 feet wide, exposing the solid trap rock overhead. At this shaft two types of hauling gear were working along side each other: the W S Round's flat chain 7/16" thick, and an English flat wire rope 4" wide, 5/8" thick made by Morton and Company of Leeds, England. The pulley used for the flat wire was 7' 6" in diameter.

At No. 6 shaft, in June 1864, they cut a chamber 40 feet square, height ten feet, a thousand feet from the shaft, for a new stationery engine to haul trucks up an incline from the gutter. At the christening of the engine on June 8, 1864, 180 people jammed the chamber in 100 degree heat, 60 of them being ladies, who went down a dry shaft and rode on special trolleys made for the occasion. To save time, the men had to descend a wet one. The engine was christened "The Gold Finder" by Miss Cuthbert.

No. 7 shaft was the Old Union shaft on the Victoria Lead, cleaned out in September 1864 to act as an air supply shaft.

The poppet heads were erected NO. 9 shaft in March 1865. Also a built in water fall in the shaft to break up smoke from blasting operations. From 1858 to 1865 the company won: 52,699 ozs at £4 totally £210,796.

Road sweepers were very active during this period and for many years.

The early tracks around the mines had no bottom. Waggons and drays cut the tracks to ribbons. As soon as an alluvial mine opened up the wash dirt, great quantities of it was spread on the torn up tracks. Some of it carried good gold. On moonlight nights, the sweepers went into action. The moment the Council sought Police protection for their roads, it then became a dare for the young blades of the Borough.

Prince Street was the plum.

It was swept that often it became a shallow creek when it rained.

The Council of the 1920's was very tolerant. Many of them grew up with this problem, but when the depression of the early 1930's gripped the country, the street started to disappear, so the Council was then forced to build it up again with mullock, mainly hard slate.

Most mining companies set up their own rules and regulations on the deep alluvial mines as they saw fit.

Any claim owner under the influence of drink coming on the claim to work was fined £5. Any hired man committing himself in the same way, was precluded ever after f rom employment on the mine.

Any claimowner insulting another while on duty was fined £5. Every working claimowner, and every hired miner working below, had to be provided with two suits of clothes, the mining suit to be kept in the changing-house.

The mining clothes had to be put on before going to work in the mine, and be taken off and left at the drying house upon coming up from the shaft. Anyone refusing to conform to this law was not allowed to go to work, another miner being put on in his stead. A notice similar to the above was posted up on the change-house door of the Great Redan Extended Mine.

The object of the latter regulation was to prevent anyone secreting gold.

In July 1862, two claimowners from the Great Redan Extended mine refused to submit to be searched for what they considered an indignity. They were then prevented from working, so they then sought relief in the Court of Mines. The judge instanced the case of the liability of anyone, no matter whom, to be searched at the Custom House for the general benefit.