Bendigo General History - Department of Planning and Community ...

1871: Meanwhile the claims on the Garden Gully and Hustler’s Lines continued to pour out a constant
stream of gold. Together with the Garden Gully, the Hustler’s Line must rank among the richest in
the history of gold mining. The most easterly of the three main lines of reef on the Bendigo field, the
very first crushing from its surface outcrop on Hustler’s Hill in the fifties, had yielded 26 ounces to
the ton. 1
1871: The rushes were now history and the men growing grey-haired talked nostalgically of ‘the old days’.
In 1871 the Old Bendigonians Society was inaugurated, its members drawn from the ranks of the
original diggers and proudly referring to one another as ‘men of ‘52’ - a tradition was in the shaping.
The Bendigo they had known and helped build was fast disappearing. The old was being torn down
to make for the new which was often what could be rushed up as quickly as the carpenters could
assemble it. 2
1871: With Parliament involved in interminable inter-party wrangling, completion of the Coliban Scheme
seemed as far off as ever. Four years had passed since Sullivan had undertaken to implement it but by
the early seventies, with increased domestic consumption and an increasing demand by the mining
industry, Sandhurst was in an almost desperate plight for water. The Bendigo Waterworks
Company, of which so much had been hoped, was in serious financial trouble but it was realised that
if the project were to be abandoned, the city’s plight would be even more desperate. Accordingly, in
1871 Council negotiated purchase of the entire assets of the Company at the cost of approximately
£40,000. The works comprised a storage reservoir at Big Hill, a filtration works capable of
delivering 200,000 gallons a day and some twelve miles of mains ... The aim was to provide the town
with a permanent supply independent of the long-awaited Coliban Scheme ... Extensive orders were
placed in Britain for piping, and tenders were let for a new reservoir at Robinson Crusoe Gully. Work
began in August. It was to hold 338,000,000 gallons with a proposed daily output of 1,000,000
gallons ... It was soon apparent that completion of the Bendigo section of the Coliban Scheme would
involve wither assuming control of the Council-owned Waterworks Company or duplicating its
facilities. Accordingly, late in 1872, less than twelve months after its purchase, negotiations began
for the sale of the Waterworks Company to the Government as a going concern. By then, the
reservoir at Crusoe had been completed at a cost of #25,000. The settling ponds an additional
£12,000 had also been finished. Some £24,000 worth of pipes imported from England had been laid.
The total value of the Waterworks Company was £100,000. 3
1871-73: In 1873 nine mines were working on the line whose reefs plunged away directly below the traffic
flowing along Pall Mall. Most important of them was Latham and Watson’s Great Extended Hustlers
formed in 1865. Against an expenditure of £130,000, one reef alone, between the 400 and 600 foot
levels, had returned the owners over £500,000. From their No. 30 reef they had consistently secured
100 ounces to the ton. In 1870 the market value of their mine was £14,000. When the No. 36 reef was
cut in the 463 foot level, it rose within weeks to £560,000. For twelve months (1870-71) the mine
crushed 13,998 tons of stone for a dazzling return of 18,209 ounces of gold. In six months to June
1871 shareholders received £63,700 in dividends. Six yields of over 2,000 ounces each were
achieved in the last six months of 1871. On the same line, another reef (Thompson’s) paid over
£360,000 in dividends and the Great Extended Hustlers Tribute Company formed in 1871 to work the
southern section of the lease, immediately struck good gold in the No. 36 reef and for some time paid
regular fortnightly dividends ranging from £1,500 to £14,000. Its very first crushing of 264 tons
yielded 2,564 ounces of gold. In eight weeks from November to December 1871, the Great Extended
Hustlers Tribute Company crushed 1,107 tons of stone, averaging no less than ten ounces of gold to
the ton. ... Naturally enough, those who could afford it clamoured for stocks on the Hustler’s Line. In
1871 the gross market value of stock in the parent company’s collective holdings - the Great
Extended Hustlers, the Tribs. and a second tribute - was £363,000. However, so prodigal was the
Sandhurst mines at this time, this scarcely compared with the collective value of the Garden Gully
Stock. Embracing some of the richest and most famous mines on the field, this was valued at
approximately £1,324,000. Here on the Garden Gully Line were Bell and Watson’s, the Cornish
United, the Victory and George Lansell’s pride, the Pandora. Here too, was the enormously rich
Kentish Mine from which its owner, J.B.Watson, was credited with taking some thirteen tons of gold,
then worth £1,500,000. At this time, John Boyd Watson was well on the way to becoming not only
the richest man in Sandhurst, but probably in the colony. 4
1 Cusack, 1973, p150
2 Cusack, 1973, p158
3 Cusack, 1973, p166
4 Cusack, 1973, p150