Bodangora is a locality in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia, lying to the immediate north-north-east of Wellington. The locality is predominantly agricultural, but in past times was associated with gold and copper mining. There was a village of the same name, which no longer officially exists and is now virtually a ghost town; it had two earlier names, Mitchells Creek and Daviesville. The locality once also contained three other small villages, Lincoln and two mining villages, Jawbone and Kaiser, or 'Kaiser Crossing'; all three of these villages are now ghost towns. History
Aboriginal and early settler history The area now known as Bodangora lies on the traditional lands of Wiradjuri people.
John Oxley and his expedition passed the future site of Wellington in 1817, when following the Macquarie River. Wellington became a convict agricultural settlement in 1823. Jacob Levi Montefiore (1819 – 1885) was given a land grant in the area and made other land acquisitions; part of that land is now within the locality of Bodangora.
Early mining Early find In 1843, a shepherd, Hugh McGregor had taken around £200 worth of gold from around a quartz reef outcrop, in the locality now known as Bodangora, then called Mitchells Creek, and had quietly sold it to jewellers in Sydney. The find predated the first New South Wales gold rush of 1851. Edward Hammond Hargreaves, who later was rewarded for discovering gold in New South Wales, knew of that earlier find, and was planning to pursue the source of the gold near Wellington, when he diverted his attention to the area near Ophir.
Alluvial gold mining Very soon after the rush to Ophir, gold had been found on Mitchell's Creek, in early June 1851.
In the late 1860s alluvial gold was found at Jawbone, on the road between Wellington and the site of the later village at Bodongara. There was a minor rush to the field. The discovery of gold at Gulgong led to most miners deserting the field.
Mitchells Creek Mine The main mine within the locality now known as Bodangora was the Mitchell's Creek Mine. It was a quartz reef gold mine. It was only in 1869, that the Michells Creek Mine began to work a quartz reef, although it was close to where McGregor had found his gold in the 1840s.
Early years (1869 – c.1880) The mine site lay on freehold land, comprising some contiguous portions of land that were owned by Samuel Deane Gordon (1811–1882) or jointly owned by him and Jacob Levi Montefiore. In early land titles in New South Wales, mineral rights were a part of the freehold. The Prospectus of a new company, 'Mitchell's Creek Quartz And Gold Mining Company'—capital of 30,000 in 6,000 shares—was issued in late 1869. 3,000 shares were to be offered to the public. 3,000 fully-paid shares were to be issued to the proprietors, Gordon and Montefiore, who were both on the new company's board.
The company was eventually formed as The Mitchell's Creek Mining Company, in 1870. Sinking of the shaft took longer than expected and, although the crushing plant had been completed, crushing had still not commenced by July 1871. A report, from October 1872, describes three 5-head stamper mills with amalgam plates, with the material then passing through a buddle to capture gold bearing pyrite. There were plans to erect a roasting furnace and Chilean mill to treat the pyrite ore. Water for the gold recovery processes was pumped from Mitchell's Creek.
Despite a significant investment being made, and the deposit being of significant size, the venture did not prosper. In 1874, creditors sued the company and obtained an sheriff's order to put the assets of the company—mine, land and equipment—to a public auction to be held on 16 April 1874. In July 1874, Gordon and Montefiore made what was left of the company insolvent.
A report by W.H.J (John) Slee, Inspector of Mines, in 1877, noted that the mine was being worked by tribute miners, and that pyrite ores were being accumulated, using buddles, for future treatment. The mine was still being worked in February 1880, when a miner Thomas Ingall was killed there in a rockfall.
Interregnum (c.1881 – 1888) The mine remained idle for some years. Extracting gold profitably from the sulphide zone ore in the mine had proved too difficult. As gold extraction technology developed during the 1880s and 1890s, the mine presented an opportunity for those who could invest in means of successfully treating the sulphide gold ore and expanding it.
Operation as a large mine (1889 – 1908) Four partners—James Dick (1823 – 1902), a Scottish gutta-percha manufacturer and mining investor, James. M. Findlay, Thomas. M. Dalveen, and Phillip Davies, a mining expert, who put together the syndicate and who was their general manager—put in £16,000 each. They bought the mine in the latter part of 1888, commenced operations in June 1889, sinking the No.1 shaft and installing new equipment. They continued to operate as a partnership, Mitchell's Creek Freehold Gold Estate, rather than setting up a company.
In 1890, Slee reported favourably on the mine and its new management, stating, "I am not aware of any quartz vein in New South Wales which can be traced with such regularity as to thickness and length."
Initially, the pyrite gold ores were sold to Clyde Chlorination Works. In late 1894, a gold chlorination plant was commissioned allowing treatment on site of pyrite gold ores from deeper levels of the mine. Prior to the chlorination process being applied, 40% of the gold in the pyrite ores had been lost and, reportedly, it was the sale of old tailings for reprocessing that allowed the mine to be profitable, virtually as soon as it had reopened in 1889.
In 1893, an agreement was made with Australian Gold Recovery Company to recover gold from old tailings heaps. They planned to apply the then relatively new McArthur-Forrest cyanide process, under the direction of metallurgist Peter McIntyre, who was one of the Forrest Brothers' assistants. The cyanide process largely superseded the chlorination process.
By 1895 there were two shafts on the main Mitchells Creek lode. There was a third temporary working known as 'Snow's shaft'. In late 1895, Slee reported again, noting the increase in stamper mill capacity from 15 heads—installed in 1890—to 25 heads, and that the mine was "being worked on sound commercial principles". By that time, Findlay was general manager; Davies had sold his share to Dick, and was no longer involved from around 1895. Findlay died in 1897. James Dick later became the sole owner, when he bought out Dalveen, in 1900.
In 1901, the mine commissioned a new 40-head stamper battery, near the No.2 shaft, and ore from both shafts was conveyed there on a tram line. By September 1902, the expansion of the Mitchells Creek Mine was completed. A new poppet head, winding engine, and electric lighting had been installed. There was a third permanent shaft on Dick's Reward reef, 600 to 700 yards north-west from the Mitchells Creek main shaft.
In March 1902, the sole owner, James Dick, had died. He left an estate valued at £1,077,000. Although the Mitchell's Creek Mine was a large mine, it was a relatively small part of Dick's Australian mining holdings. He held large stakes in mines at Broken Hill and Mount Morgan Mount Lyell and Gympie. Dick had no children and his wife had predeceased him. Upon his death, most of his immense fortune was bequeathed to charitable institutions and former employees, and therefore the individual mining assets needed to be sold.
In August 1902, reportedly, the mine was under offer in London, for £200,000. It was noted that this was a far greater sum—even after allowing for recent improvements—than had been determined by arbitration in 1900, when the partnership had been ended. The eventual sale agreed by Dick's estate was for £60,000—£20,000 in cash followed by a series of equal periodic instalments. The new venture took over the operation of the mine, but failed to make the first instalment payment, and asked for more time to make the payment. The Dick estate put the venture into receivership, pending payment, but the sale was never completed, leaving ownership with Dick's estate.
At the end of 1903, a new company, Mitchell's Creek Gold Mine Limited, was formed to take over the mine from Mitchell's Creek Freehold Gold Estate. The new owners took control in May 1904. It seems that the purchase was not funded by a capital raising, but by the issue of mortgage debentures. The first interest payment on the debentures was missed. One of the debenture holders, Sir John Neilson Cuthbertson (1829—1905)—representing a holding of 40 debentures of £1,000 each—went to court in England, around April 1905, to find precisely what mortgage security could be accessed. Cuthbertson was a deputy lieutenant of Glasgow. As Cuthbertson had died in January 1905, it was probably either his estate or interests that he was representing that was seeking repayment of the debentures. There was a mortgagee auction in August 1906. However, there seems to have been no sale, because the mortgagees eventually foreclosed on the mine property, in March 1907, seeking to recover a sum of £50,089 10s. 9d. and the interest upon it from 26 January 1907.
During the early months of 1908, it was reported that a large cyanide plant was being installed at the mine.
Reduced operations and final closing (1908 - 1919) In May 1908, the mine closed, putting around 200 men out of work. The main mine had become unprofitable to operate, and the 'Dick's Reward' deposit was stated to be "petering out". Reprocessing of 150,000 tons of tailings was the only ongoing operation, employing only around 30 men at the cyanide plant. In 1910, cyaniding operations continued under the Mitchell's Creek Gold Recovery Company. In October 1910, a new company, Bodangora Gold Mines, No Liability, planned to work the neighbouring 'Dick's Reward' gold deposit. In 1913, the Mitchells Creek mine was once again in operation, with 26 of its miners working the mine as tribute miners. Sources date the final end of mining at the Mitchell's Creek Mine to either 1918 or 1919.
Accidents For its time, the size of its workforce, and that, at times, it operated three mining shifts, the mine seems to have been a relatively safe one in which to work. There were three reported fatalities—in February 1880, in October 1897, and one at another date—and there were some serious injuries to mine workers. However, there were significantly less accidents than at comparable large gold mines, such the mine at Canbelego. One reason given for the relatively low accident rate was that the mine was well timbered, and there were fewer rockfalls as a consequence. Only two of the reported mine accidents were due to rockfalls, and the only such fatal incident took place in 1880, before Mitchell's Creek Freehold Gold Estate took over the mine.
Later alluvial mining In October 1899, a man sinking a well struck a deep lead of gold wash five feet thick, at a depth of 60 feet, in the old Jawbone alluvial mining area. Within a week, reportedly, there were around 100 miners working there, and around 500 miners working there by February 1900. The Jawbone deposit was still producing gold in 1907, when about 30 men were reported to be earning a living there, but records of gold production at Jawbone cease in 1911.
Earlier settlements Lincoln Lincoln was a settlement that arose on the main road between Wellington and Gulgong at the crossing of Mitchell's Creek. The settlement arose in the late 1860s, when Ernest Hoffmeister, a German-born gold miner from Victoria, built a residence, on the western side of the crossing, and began successfully farming a selection of 80 acres. Other selectors encouraged by Hoffmeister's success took up land in the area. The crossing became a favoured camping site of those travelling between the gold fields in the region.