Albert Goldfield

The Albert Goldfield (or Albert mining district) is an area of 1300 square kilometres (500 square miles) in the outback of New South Wales where gold was discovered in 1880. Gold was found at Mount Browne, which is 53 km (33 mi) south west of Tibooburra. There were other finds at Good Friday, Easter Monday, Nuggerty, Pioneer Reef and Warratta Creek. The Albert Goldfield region is very hot and dry. Summer temperatures on the Gold field can reach 50 °C. Because of the shortage of water, towns were started at Milparinka and Tibooburra where there was water available. Towns at Albert and Mount Browne did not last for long because of the lack of water. By 1881 there were more than 2000 people living on the gold diggings or in the towns. Geologist W.H.J. Slee was appointed resident Goldfield Warden. There was no water in the mine area to use in separating the placer gold. Miners either took their dirt to one of the towns to use water to pan for the gold, or used a method called dry blowing, which is an adaptation of the agricultural technique of winnowing. A contemporary description of the dry blowing process used at Mount Browne in 1881 states that miners there went to work with "a small broom made of twigs and a tin dish". A miner would use his broom to sweep dust and rock fragments from surface exposures of slate and collect it in the tin dish. Once his dish was "about half full

Mine data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).