Mining Heritage of the Australian Alps - Australian Alps National Parks

3.4 MINING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Mining is an important historical theme in Australia, and mining cultural landscapes exist around the
continent. Outstanding mining landscapes are numerous, and include those of Broken Hill, NSW,
Kalgoorlie, WA, the central Victorian goldfields, the 'moonscapes' of Coober Pedy, SA, etc.
Cultural landscapes exist throughout the Alps, and reflect the hand of man in the environment. No
integrated Alps-wide studies of cultural landscapes have yet been undertaken 7 , and the identification
of mining-related cultural landscapes has been very limited to date.
Mining was a strong modifying influence in the Alps, imposing roads, tracks, diggings, mining
infrastructure and settlements on the landscape, and requiring resources such as timber and water for
its mines, and sustenance for its workers. In general, this study has found that recognisable and
interpretable mining landscapes within the Alps national parks are very rare. They exist in very few
environments, and are restricted to the very highest part of the Alps (open, grassy, lightly-treed areas),
or to the wider, low-lying river valleys. In between, the regrowing forest now cloaks the mining
features, and viewlines are interrupted by the rugged topography.
No outstanding quartz mining landscapes have been located, and this is in part attributable to the fact
that larger scale operations are horizontally-layered in mountainous terrain. Consequently, the
worked levels may be some distance apart, and the processing plant may be situated well away from
the workings. Occupation sites may be close to workings or plant, but may be nucleated in mining
camps that serve a quartz mining area.
In tall, dense, natural or regrowing forest, there will be few opportunities to establish viewlines that
convey the broader aspects of a single operation, let alone its relationship and linkages to associated
cultural heritage features. While mining-related cultural landscapes are immediately visible in areas
such as Kiandra, in other abandoned mining areas they can be cryptic, and their cloak of vegetation
(albeit altered) minimises their value as interpretable cultural landscapes. Integrity, relating to
visibility of the features, is the key factor in assessing cultural landscapes.
For instance, the East Branch of the Ovens River (Bogong Unit, Alpine National Park) contains an
abundance of mining features. There is extensive ground and hydraulic sluicing, abundant large and
small-scale reef mining, settlement sites, linear features including water races, level & inclined
tramways, a network of mining roads, two Department-financed mining tracks etc. However, views
over the valley reveal none of this. The hills that were once stripped bare of timber appear as a
seamless pristine wilderness to the untrained eye, and they have neither value for broad-scale
interpretation nor requirement for landscape-related management action.
David Bannear, in his draft "Conservation Plan for Historic Gold Mining Sites" (1996, DNRE), tacitly
acknowledges this poor landscape integrity in regrowing forested areas:
"Themes evoked by sites in regrowing forests are about adventurousness, hardship
and isolation of mining life. Coupled with the physical effort of getting to a site
today, these images make a powerful experience. The experience is generally quite
site specific with the surviving mining relics alongside regrowing forest combining to
give the place a strong evocation of abandonment, decay and a way of life now
gone."
A number of Alps mining landscapes are identified and described in section 4.8 of this report.
7 "Australian Alps Cultural Landscape Management Guidelines", Jane Lennon & Associates, 1996, p34.
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