Mining

Much of Victoria's wealth in the 19^th century came from gold mining, but it came at a cost to our environment.

Victoria's gold rush of the 1850s was the basis for much of the state's economic and social development, but it put enormous strain on our environment. 12,600,000 pounds of gold was mined in the first year alone, with no concern for the fact that destructive mining techniques were destroying the landscape.

There were a few different types of mining that took place in Victoria. Alluvial mining was used to collect gold from river beds and topsoil. When gold was found in a creek or river, thousands of diggers would rush there, devastating the area. The topsoil was completely dug away and all the vegetation was destroyed.

We have begun to destroy the beauty of this creek. It will no longer run clear between its banks, covered with wattles and tea-trees, and amongst its shallow parts overgrown with foreign-looking shrubs, flags, and cypress-grass. A little while, and its whole course will exhibit nothing but nakedness, and heaps of gravel and mud. We diggers are horribly destructive of the picturesque.

– William Howitt

Deep lead mining involved digging for gold in river beds deep below the surface, and left the land potted with shafts. Reef mining took place across Victoria from the 1850s until World War I, and involved digging deep shafts to find veins of gold-bearing quartz. The quartz was crushed to powder, and chemicals – such as mercury and arsenic – were used to extract the gold dust. The leftover crushed rocks were then dumped over the ground or tipped into creeks.

Sluice mining was carried out until the 1950s, and involved firing a stream of high-pressure water against river banks or any other ground where there was gold. The water washed away soil, rocks and vegetation, and left behind vast areas of land polluted with the toxic chemicals used to extract the finer gold particles. Huge areas, such as the Thompson River dam, were mined in this way.

Gold mining has many economic benefits for the state, and is currently undergoing a revival. But more than a century of mining has taken its toll on the Victorian landscape, and these economic benefits must be weighed against the potential dangers to our environment.