the richest of the black sand; they had gone down to the tables which caught the gold in miners’ plush, and when they looked down from the bank of the claim late in the day, the tables would look like a sheet of solid gold. It was so thick on the plush that hundreds of pounds’ worth of gold were lost off the tables, as the miners in those days were unable to save what remained on the plush. There were fly catchers erected in some of the creeks by miners to save anything that left the claims, and a fair amount was caught in this way.
About ten different parties worked the deep deposited gold leads on the Flat. Some miners also worked the gold deposits in the sides of the hills by the tunnelling process, and some were lucky enough to make good money at the game. Four ounces of gold were got to each set of timber; that would mean £16 to every four feet of earth dug out of the hill, and good men made £15 for each day they toiled.
The rig system of removing the stones, boulders and gravel from the face of the paddocks was operated in each claim.
O’Toole’s party was the first to experiment with this system and the first man to put it in working order was a man by the name of John McTaggart. He first tried it with what is known as the water balance, that is, a large truck tank was loaded with water at the top of the rig, and as the tank got full, it would pull up a truck of stones that was loaded down at the hopperings. About half as much weight of water would be in the tank as what was in the truck of stones and when the tank got to the bottom of the rig, it would mechanically empty itself and the empty stone truck would then be filled with water, and by this means it would bring the empty tank back to repeat the operation of filling again to raise the truck of stones. When this method proved successful, then all the other parties in the other different claims erected the water balance. The party system of working the claims was a success all through the long years of the mining existence. Thirty odd years ago a company was formed in Westport and they bought out Mr Landy’s claim. A Mr Waters was appointed manager. Several hundreds of pounds were spent in building a large dam in the hills at the back of Paddy Sullivan’s, near the Red Hill. They opened out the claim at the foot of the hill and named it “The Fair Maid.” This claim worked for a few years with Mr John Guthrie as working manager, but it did not turn out the financial success they expected.
Later was started the Shamrock claim, on the Charleston side of Mountain Creek. Instead of the water balance rig system of getting rid of the gravel, they worked it with what is known as the high pressure blow up. This claim worked for a year or so and then went into liquidation. Phill McEnroe then gave it a fresh start on his own, but it never was a paying concern.
Tom Wright, the Westport watch maker, Hardley, the tinsmith, and Steve Garvin, formed a company and started the first crushing battery with a dozen head of stampers in a claim known as “The Venture.” They crushed the red cement out near Suilivan’s and for years this was paying handsomely. All the rich patches of cement have been worked out. There
