Mining Heritage of the Australian Alps - Australian Alps National Parks

INTRODUCTION
This report is a strategic assessment of mining heritage in the Australian Alps that
begins with a thematic study. It has been a monumental task that can be considered
begun, not completed, because mining has been such a complex and pervasive influence
throughout the Australian Alps National Parks and attached Historic Areas.
The difficulty, of course, is in the definition of mining heritage. Other thematic studies, for
example on huts of the Alps, have dealt with discrete objects. That is, there are only so many
surviving huts, and the themed studies have had a beginning and an end. Thematic studies of
the Snowy Mountains scheme and the skifields would be geographically constrained, relating to
developments in particular topographies and altitudes within the Alps National Parks. While
their local impact has been enormous, their influence does not touch the greater portion of the
study area. Grazing and sawmilling have affected a larger area, but they are service industries
that, in historical times, were greatly influenced by local and regional demand, a demand driven
by the massive changes being wrought by gold to the demographics of Australia. Both were
constrained by environmental factors – suitable high-altitude grasslands or wide lowland valleys
for the former, and suitable lumber species & growth characteristics for the latter. Cattle
grazing, in particular, was not labour intensive, and while the environmental influence may prove
to be long-lasting, the cultural heritage is largely tied up in the legends of the relatively-few
cattlemen, rather than deeply imprinted in the landscape.
Mining, on the other hand, is not constrained by topography, altitude or environment, nor is it
influenced by regional or even national demand. There would not be a creek or river within the
entire study area that has not felt the blow of a prospector’s pick and the rattle of a gold pan
some time in the last 150 years, nor a mountain range that has not echoed to the hoof beats of a
prospector’s pack-horse. Nearly a billion dollars worth of metals, principally gold, has been
wrought from the Australian Alps, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Metals production itself
is limited by the existence of actual resources, but perversely, mining activity is not. An
important cultural dimension operated - the lure of gold & other precious metals, and the
promise of instant wealth, drove the level of activity in the early years.
A complex mining infrastructure was overlain on the Alps. A network of tracks, from blazed
foot-trails to formed roads, connected the mining areas and individual mines to each other,
adjacent towns & regional centres, criss-crossing the Alps. Mining settlements, from ephemeral
camps to substantial townships, rose and died in the Alps, their fortunes inevitably tied to the
supply of gold. Support industries such as grazing, cropping and sawmilling grew with arrival of
the diggers in what had been at best lightly-settled uplands and at worst untracked wilderness, in
European cultural terms. As mining became more sophisticated, a new network of water races,
dams, tramways, tracks & treatment sites was added. But as resources dwindled and prices
languished, mining in the Alps slowly strangled. The bush is reclaiming the land, and time
dimming a fascinating page in the golden history of Australia.
The enormous individual contributions made to the mining heritage of the Alps sets it
apart from other European cultural activities. The Alps mining heritage is not collective
– it is tens of thousands of individual labours, each indelibly imprinted in the landscape
because of the very nature of mining. For the vast majority of miners, their Alpine
experiences were but brief episodes in their journeys of life. Yet in the Alps today, their
efforts are still etched in the shallow shafts, tunnels and sluicing works, each holding its
own unique story of hope, toil, frustration, desperation, disappointment or excitement,
that in most cases will never be revealed…..
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