By Callum Ludwig
A Woori Yallock resident has helped recover a precious stolen artefact for a historic mining community.
Nick Smith and a friend were out prospecting in Chewton when they discovered an Indicator Level Gauge abandoned in bushland, which Mr Smith said he recognised that it was one that he had seen reported as stolen.
“We were driving down Vaughan-Chewton Road and on the side of the road, between Vaughan-Chewton Road and Crocodile Reservoir Road, I saw this big black shape that had been dumped near a car park,” he said.
“I thought ‘Oh, that’s funny’ and I’d seen all the posts that had been put up during the week about it and thought ‘surely not’ but we doubled back, had a look and there it was.”
Mr Smith has been prospecting on weekends for about four or five years and became aware of the missing gauge through the community of prospectors on social media.
Prospectors and Miners Association of Victoria (PMAV) President Jason Cornish, who also originally hails from Chirnside Park, said when it disappeared, he started sharing it far and wide.
“That included the Yarra Valley social media sites, I also put it on [Facebook] Marketplace and pretty much anywhere I could to spread it far and wide and I think the people who dumped it, they just got too much heat,” he said.
“There was a $1000 reward on it and they would have been thinking ‘Geez, I can’t put this in my man cave anymore, I’m going to have to dump it’ which is exactly what they did.”
The Friends of Wattle Gully Gold Mine and the PMAV had been searching for the gauge after discovering it was missing from the Winding Room of the historic mine.
Mr Cornish said the Wattle Gully Gold Mine has been around since the 1860s, operating at different stages throughout its whole life until recently when it went into liquidation and there’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears that have gone into that mine including the deaths of many men.
“I think there were 20 men that died extracting the gold from it, it was a very rich mine for that area, but years ago a community group started up trying to preserve it and trying to protect the site because it’s on the National Heritage Register and the Victorian Heritage Database as being a historic site so they were concerned because a lot of people getting in every day,” he said.
“All the copper’s been ripped out now, there’s graffiti everywhere, all the windows have been smashed, so a lot of the buildings have been damaged and the Winding Room dates back to probably the mid-19th century to late19th century and had historical items such as these gauges,”
“The gauges would be used by the winding operator who lowers men down into the boughs of the earth, he would use those gauges to see what level he was at, it would show level one or level four or anything, so he would operate pretty much the poppet head, the winding wheels and lower the men down to where they were going to be working for the day so they’re quite important items for the mine.”
The PMAV offered a $1000 reward for its safe return out of their own pocket, with $500 of that later reimbursed by the Victorian Government following some pressure from the PMAV.
Dedicated efforts to protect the Chewton site have been carried by the Friends of Wattle Gully Gold Mine and the PMAV since last year and the stolen gauge, as well as another remaining one, have since been relocated to the Maldon Vintage Machinery and Museum for safekeeping.
