Quartz Crushing, Base of Black Hill Ballaarat, 1855, lithograph, State Library Victoria

In this lithograph, the early heroics of labour have given way to machine power. When Gill arrived on the goldfields in 1852, the equipment he depicted was makeshift and could be carried by the diggers on their backs. Three years later, the pans and cradles had been replaced by heavy machinery used in deep sinking and mechanised quartz crushing. The search for gold was no longer a one-on-one encounter between the miner and the pit; it had become a mechanised team effort, where the ore-bearing rock was brought on train tracks to a crushing shed.