Byng, New South Wales is a locality in Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. There was once a village of the same name, now a ghost town, although its church and cemetery still exist. An earlier settler's name of the locality was Cornish Settlement. The locality was a site of mining for copper and gold, and has associations with the discovery of the payable gold in Australia, at Ophir during 1851.
Location and name The area now known as Byng lies on traditional lands of Wiradjuri people.
Byng lies between Bathurst and Orange, to the east of Lucknow. The site of the village lay between Lewis Ponds Creek—a left bank tributary of Macquarie River—and its tributary Sheep Station Creek, south of the confluence of the two creeks.
The settlement was first known as 'Cornish Settlement', a name given to it by surveyor James Richards around 1838. Around 1854 it was renamed Byng—also the name of the cadestral parish—after the ill-fated Admiral John Byng. The original name Cornish Settlement, also remained in use during the 19th Century.
History
Wiradjuri conflict with colonists and dispossession One of the most numerous of Aboriginal peoples, with vast traditional lands, the Wiradjuri were better placed to resist colonial settlement than those closer to the coast. They also had more time to prepare, as colonial settlement west of the Blue Mountains only became possible with the first crossing of those mountains in 1813. Under Governor Macquarie's rule, settlement proceeded slowly, and the Wiradjuri tolerated some encroachment onto their lands, such as a settlement of around 120 colonists at Bathurst.
The pace of settlement greatly increased, under Governor Thomas Brisbane, which led to the Bathurst War of 1824. For a time, some settlers were driven back off some of the Wiradjuri's land. The Wiradjuri sought peace, in December 1824. A prominent leader of the Wiradjuri warriors, Windradyne, died in 1835.
Surveying of the land in the area around what is now Orange began in 1828, and colonial settlement resumed. Governor Ralph Darling made grants of freehold land to colonists, extinguishing what later became known as native title.
Cornish Settlement
Colonial settlers The first colonial settlers in what is now known as Byng were a Cornishman, William 'Parson' Tom (1791—1883), his Devon-born wife Ann (nee Lane) (1796—1870), their children, a nephew, and Ann's brother, William Lane (1793—1855). They had migrated from Cornwall, England, in the ship, Belinda, in 1823, and one of their sons, William Tom (1823—1904), was born at sea. They farmed elsewhere in the colony, before William 'Parson' Tom took up a 640 acre land grant that he named Springfield, in 1829 or 1830.
Springfield is around the confluence of Sheep Station Creek and Lewis Ponds Creek. Tom first built a wattle and daub cottage there, now gone. In 1854 he built the two storey stone house that still stands. An inscription on three stones set into the paving outside the front door of the house reads, Cead mile failte, Gaelic words (Céad mile fáilte) meaning 'a hundred thousand welcomes'.
Over the years, 'Parson' Tom and his sons acquired a number of properties in the areas around the Lachlan. They were among the first to send cattle overland to sell to settlers in the newer settlements in Gippsland and Port Phillip. Only Tom's later involvement in copper mining was to curtail the growth of the family's wealth. In 1967, a reunion of 'Parson' Tom's descendants was attended by over 200 of an estimated 530 descendants.
Other settlers took up land south from Springfield. Springfield became the nucleus of what became known as 'Cornish Settlement'. Other families from Cornwall or Devon who settled in the area were those of George Hawke (1802—1882)—he originally arrived as tutor to William Tom's children— Richard Lane (1789—1875)—Ann Tom's brother— and John Glasson (1803—1890). Hawke built his house, Pendarves, and Glasson built Bookanan. Hawke and Glasson, in partnership, supplied nearby towns with produce, including beer and ales. Hawke attempted fruit growing, but with little success, and he is responsible for introducing and propagating the hawthorn bush, now widespread in the area.
These early settlers were able to use assigned men, convict labour allocated to settlers for the cost of their upkeep. Men received accommodation, a weekly food ration, and a yearly issue of clothing and footwear. Well-behaved men could be rewarded with additional food rations. The Wesleyan settlers were good employers and generally well-regarded by their assigned men, whom they referred to as 'assigned servants' not 'convicts'. The men generally worked with little direct supervision. George Hawke paid his men a small weekly bonus, so that they may have at least some savings when their sentence was completed.
Religious observance William 'Parson' Tom was a Wesleyan lay preacher. A rocky outcrop, above the left bank of Sheep Station Creek, which became known as Bethel Rock, was the first site of Wesleyan worship in the area. When Tom's first house at Springfield was completed, services were held there. In 1842, a rubble-stone chapel was built, which had an adjacent cemetery. That chapel—the first of two at Byng—stood on land between Sheep Station and Lewis Ponds Creeks, east of Bethel Rock and to the north of the later cemetery. It was the first Wesleyan chapel west of Bathurst.
Early copper mining The economy of Cornish Settlement was based only upon agriculture, up to the late 1840s. During the 1840s, copper ore deposits had been found at various Central West localities, including at Copper Hill (near Molong), Rockley, Lipscombe Pools Creek (near Canowindra) and at Coombing Park, near Carcoar.
In January 1849, John Glasson's brother-in-law, John Lane, found copper ore on Richard Lane's land at the Cornish Settlement, alongside Sheep Station Creek. The deposit was found to extend northward onto the neighbouring land owned by Glasson. In August 1849, the two landowners employed a 'mine captain' to oversee around six miners. A letter to the Bathurst Advocate, dated 20 September 1849, stated that copper mining at Cornish Settlement had been underway for "not above a month" by then.
Glasson's mine had but one shaft—originally known as Maker's shaft—the Carangerra or Carangera, later the name of the mine. Lane's mine further to the south had four shafts, each named after four of his earliest miners, Rose, Tucker, Jenkins and Weeks. Both Glasson and Lane worked their mines, under tribute mining agreements, a traditional Cornish mining industry practice. The 'tribute' that the miners received was a share of six to ten tons of every twenty tons of ore that they extracted from the mine, but they were paid no wages.
During his three-and-a-half year long survey of the colony, first Geological Surveyor of New South Wales, Samuel Stutchbury (1798–1859), made a report on the deposits and the mine workings at the Cornish Settlement, which was published as a brief letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, in February 1852. His report gave the relative position and extent of progress on all five of the shafts at Cornish Settlement. He described a deposit, consisting of oxidised (oxide and carbonate) and sulphide zones, as follows, "ores above the ten fathom [60 foot] level are similar to those described as occurring in the Coombing mine, and may be considered as 'Gossan' ores—below this depth the yellow sulphurets of copper commence, with much 'Mundic' or sulpheret of iron." Stuchbury apparently missed the potentially auriferous (gold-bearing) nature of the deposit, something that became important later.
In April 1850, Glasson and Lane engaged Robert Cocks, who had been in charge of the Rosemorrin Smelting Works, at what is now Woolwich, to erect a smelter, close to Lewis Pond Creek, near Booknan. Most copper smelters of the era used reverberatory furnaces—such a those later extensively built by Lewis Lloyd— but Cocks erected two small furnaces that were a type of blast furnace. It was intended to operate one furnace at a time, alternately.
The smelter was described as follows in December 1850, "The buildings consist of an engine-house, a shed adjoining to screen the fan-wheel belts, a building for the casting, and a charcoal shed. There are also two blast furnaces, surrounded by a strongly built stage, elevated to a convenient height, the floor of which receives the ore and fuel, and from which the furnaces are charged. The charging is greatly facilitated by a level contiguous to the stage, where the ore. is deposited and can be mixed beforehand with the requisite materials for fluxing., These works, though on a small scale, are, in point of design and convenience, highly creditable to the scientific and practical knowledge of Mr. Cock. [sic] In a word they are an example of economy and efficiency combined. The engine, which of four horse power, is a good piece of workmanship, and works very well." "This engine drives a powerful eccentric fan three feet six inches in diameter. The fan is constructed on a new principle, and performs twelve hundred revolutions per minute. The engine would with ease drive two of them. The air is conveyed to the furnaces by means of brick drains, passing under the furnaces, and is conducted into each of them through three cast-iron tuyer [sic] pipes. No two pipes are exactly opposite to each other, consequently the air is equally distributed to the furnaces"
The furnaces were intended to use charcoal, but ended up being charged with wood instead. The ore was first roasted or 'calcinated' (oxidized) in the open air—stacks made of layers of wood and ore were burned, until the sulphur and arsenic content of the ore had been lowered—prior to smelting, and then smelted to produce copper ingots. The blast furnaces were reducing the 'calcinated' ore to copper metal; that is opposed to the later use of specialised blast furnaces (water jacket furnaces) in which sulphide ore was oxidised to produce a copper matte. The smelters needed one fireman and five men tending the furnace when in operation, aside from Cocks, who was in charge.
The copper ingots that the furnaces made at Cornish Settlement were estimated to be 95% copper, described as "copper nearly pure, and containing no metallic iron, but a small portion of oxides of iron diffused through the metal". However, the smelting process was not efficient, and, at least initially, for every two tons of copper produced, another two-and-a-half tons was lost in the slag. Nonetheless, the smelter sent a bullock dray carrying its first batch of 132 ingots—weighing around 40 lbs each—to Sydney, where they were successfully sold at auction for £75 15s. The shipment of copper ingots, about two tons of copper, passed through Bathurst, on 1 January 1851, and it was observed that "the public became excited at the appearance of the glistening bars". The driver delayed the journey at Bathurst, for a day, so that all who wished to inspect the copper could do so. Glasson also sold some untreated ore, and the partners considered sending the remaining ore to be smelted elsewhere.
The gold rush of May 1851 had a disastrous effect on the copper mines at Cornish Settlement 1851; by 13 May 1851, all the miners at Carangara Mine had deserted for the nearby goldfield at Ophir. Consequently, the mining and smelting operations came to an end in May 1851. The copper mining venture had yet to become profitable; after deducting the tribute for the miners, the two partners were each still £500 short of recovering their own share of the cost of the smelter and its engine.