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Directions to your 7th story point: From Fiddlers Creek, turn left into Fiddlers Track. Distance to story point 7 is 600 metres. Drive slowly or walk mindfully. Look for a number 7 marker post. You can park here or turn at the turn point on your right ahead.
Pause this video, imagine a hillside and riverbeds crammed with miners. Play video to learn more: Union Jack Mine.
Once the clay granite and ore was extracted from the shafts, look to your right and up the hill. It was taken to the puddlers to agitate the gravel and loosen the gold in it. The cradles were then used to separate the gold. Later, cyanide baths were used (see story point 8 coming up). The dam supplied water to the puddlers behind the dam.
Two horses would be used, walking on the rim of the puddler, as it agitated the rock and clay to loosen the gold. The Union Jack Mine (look up and left) features an impressive open cut with many open shafts and an adit. The Union Jack Reef was probably worked from the 1870s.
The battery site and cyanide works appear to date to about 1904. Walk up the steep slope to the peak mine point. On the crown is a 30-metre-deep open stope. At the base of the hill (west side) is a long narrow cutting for a tramway terminating in a loading bay, where a 10-head battery stamp would crush the ore. By 1904, mining had all but ended.
Warning: The mine is bordered by a fence for safety. This is a dangerous mine site. Keep away from open shafts. Children and pets must be well supervised. Deep-lead gold mining was a perilous endeavour. Danger and death were ever-present.
One of Australia's worst underground mining disasters took place in Creswick. On the 11th of December 1882 41 men entered the mine to work a seemingly ordinary Monday night shift. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, water flooded in from an adjacent mine trapping 27 of the men underground. Rescue efforts commenced immediately. But by the time the miners were reached three days later only five had survived. The body of one man was still warm when it was recovered.