The 1930's saw larger locally owned electric powered dredges of the Blackball and Argo companies. The first was the Ford Creek Dredging Company 1900-1902, ending due to buried timber, and the inability of the dredge to reach the bottom gravels. The site had several earlier dredging operations. The dredge was operational from 1992 to 2004 across 220 hectares achieving around 55 000 ounces of gold. It is known as the Grey River or Birchfield dredge, with Birchfield purchasing the dredge in 1992 from the Grey River Gold Mining Ltd. Its new mining licence had been hard fought, opposed by conservation groups, and government departments worried about fish stocks in the Grey River.ĭredging has not always been environmentally friendly in the past, although various areas have been rehabilitated back to dairy pasture, and you would be hard pressed to tell mining was once conducted on the land.īirchfield is a local family owned mining business, their dredging lease at the confluence of the Grey River, with Ford and Blackball Creeks. Its been idle for several years, but as of 2017 when this was written was for sale. Said to be the last bucket ladder operational gold dredge in the southern hemisphere. As the dredge worked, it continuously dug into its own pond in front and filled it in with tailings at the back.Sitting in a pond on the alluvial bearing flats by the Grey River outside Blackball, is Birchfield's World War Two era dredge. After its completion, the pond was filled with the 8-10 feet of water needed to float and operate the 988 ton dredge. Sometimes it took a whole day to load just one truck with some of the pieces needed to build the dredge.Īnother trucking company delivered the twenty-five pontoons, each measuring 10x10x27 feet, by hauling them over Galena Summit, no small feat.
One of the largest loads was the 55-foot, 17.5 ton spud. Some pieces were shipped by rail to Mackay and trucked there by Lindberg’s Trucking Company of Mackay to the Yankee Fork site over Spar Canyon Road. It was a major operation to transport the equipment and pieces needed to build the dredge. Winch room at the Yankee Fork Dredge Construction of the Yankee Fork DredgeĪ pond for the Yankee Fork Gold Dredge was constructed to allow the assembly of the massive four-story floating machine.
0 kommentar(er)
