HERITAGE PLACE REPORT - City of Greater Bendigo

HERITAGE PLACE REPORT
Greater Bendigo City
for the disenfranchisement of Chinese holding a Miner’s Right. 34 Chinese herbalists and shop keepers
continued to operate businesses in Ironbark well into the 20 th century. 35
Cornish mining technology was essential in Victoria mining in the years after 1860 and the influence
of the Cornish permeated into other aspects of social and cultural life in the Victorian central gold
fields. 36 Cornish mining practice and managers became prominent in the quartz mines of Victoria. It
was the Cornishman's traditional skills of shaft sinking and stoping and the tribute system, which was
well known in Cornwall that were in immediate demand. This historical process relates the area and
Victoria to an international context that had its beginning with the collapse in the summer of 1866 of
the Cornish copper mining industry. It resulted in a massive exodus of Cornish miners and their
families, who introduced their mining labour practices, tributing system, technology and culture to
new areas around the world.
The Carlisle United/Garden Gully heritage precinct is particularly associated with John Boyd Watson,
a mining magnate and investor, who was born in September 1828 at Paisley, Scotland. 37 His family
settled at Windsor near Sydney where Watson became a currier (a person who dresses and colours
leather after it is tanned). He moved to Sydney but in 1850 left for the Californian diggings. On his
return, he set off for the Victorian gold fields, and in late 1852 reached Bendigo Creek. He was quick
to realize the potential richness of the Bendigo reefs, and was amongst the first to erect a crushing
battery. Watson's initial quartz-mining venture was the Old Chum Claim on New Chum Hill. Next,
with a partner he bought a claim in Paddy's Gully. With others he floated the Cornish United Co. and
in the late 1860s secured an interest in the adjoining Golden Fleece, Kent and Garden Gully claims,
later buying and amalgamating them under one lease as the Kentish Mine, which he owned until
1889. It produced huge amounts of gold in 1871-80, one reef alone yielding about thirteen tons of
gold valued at some £1,500,000. He owned much property in Sandhurst and his extensive Melbourne
holdings included the freehold of some of the most valuable inner-city properties. He was a founder,
director and principal shareholder of the Federal Bank and a large shareholder in the Melbourne
Tramways Co., the Deniliquin and Moama Railway Co. and a Sydney steamship company. He had
mining and pastoral interests in Queensland, owned wharves in Sydney and in 1879, with a group of
Sandhurst investors; he launched the Sydney Daily Telegraph. In the history of quartz mining at
Bendigo, George Lansell, in the development of deep quartz mining a handful of other speculators —
such as Ernest Mueller, John Boyd Watson, Edward Isaac Dyason, Barnett Lazarus, Carl Roeder and
the Hunter brothers — reaped substantial rewards from the Ironbark quartz reefs and mines located
along the Garden Gully line of reef. 38
34
Bendigo Chinese Association Museum, publication Chinese Footsteps, 2000 p. 36
35
Ibid. p. 40 Quinn store in Milroy Street, also evidence from Bendigo rates books.
36 nd
Fahey, Charles, From St Just to St Just Point, Cornish migration to Victoria, Cornish Studies, 2 Series Vol
15, University of Exeter, UK pp117-140 for survey of Cornish migration to Bendigo and Ironbark.
37
On-line Australian Dictionary of Biography provided most of the information on John Boyd Watson,
summarised in Australian Post mining stamps
38
Charles Fahey For the wealth of Bendigonians in the last two decades of the nineteenth century see J. C.
Fahey, ‘Wealth and Mobility in Bendigo and Northern Victoria 1879–1901, Unpublished Ph.D., Melbourne
University, 1981
Type of Place
Hermes Number Heritage Place Report
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