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Way Back When...  People  Places  Events

Lefroy
 
Peter Cox

East of George Town lies the small hamlet of Lefroy. Few visitors today could guess that this was once the fifth largest town in Tasmania and the site of the second richest goldfield in the state.

Gold was believed to have been discovered near Lefroy in the 1840s by a convict. The area was known as Nine Mile Springs, and during the 1850s mining expeditions to the area found small amounts of gold. These were often inspired by gold rushes to the Den, about 10 km to the south.

It was such a rush to the Den that brought Samuel Richards to the area in 1869. Finding no gold at the Den, he moved north into the hills near Nine Mile Springs, and in a valley near the top of what he called Specimen Hill found gold. He quietly worked his find for several weeks, but there were others prospecting near Specimen Hill, and when they found out they moved to jump Richards' claim. He quickly applied for a lease to protect his claim, and the news of this brought the first rush to Nine Mile Springs. A township quickly developed beside the present main road from Bell Bay to Bridport, and dozens of miners pegged out claims there and at nearby Back Creek.

Samuel Richards's discovery at Specimen Hill had been of alluvial gold. However most of the gold at Nine Mile Springs came from quartz rock beneath the surface, where some thirty parallel reefs were spread over 5 km. The only way the gold could be extracted was by crushing, and most of the discoveries could only be mined by companies. With the heavy expense of sinking shafts, keeping the underground water out of the mine and erecting necessary machinery, the mines proved unpayable. This was to be the story of Lefroy as a goldfield. New discoveries of gold would bring a rush of miners and capital. New companies would be formed, machinery would be erected, and quartz mined. But when crushed, most yields were unprofitable and the mines were abandoned.

Nevertheless there were a few spectacularly successful mines. The first was the Native Youth mine, discovered in 1872, about 2 km to the north of Specimen Hill. It was worked for almost twenty years. A new town for Nine Mile Springs grew up around the mine, and the old site was abandoned. In 1881 Nine Mile Springs was named Lefroy after the Acting Governor of Tasmania, Sir Henry Lefroy. In 1879 the Chum reef was discovered. Here two mines, the New Chum and West New Chum, paid out dividends of £58,000 and £21,000 over about three years.

The most successful mines were the New Pinafore and the Volunteer, both discovered in the early 1890s. Until the mid 1890s these two mines yielded spectacular profits. By 1898 The New Pinafore mine, on a share capital of £480, had extracted over 41,000 ounces of gold, valued at almost £125,000, and paid dividends of over £70,000. For a few years Lefroy was the richest gold field in Tasmania, and the population of Lefroy rose to about 2,500, with only Hobart, Launceston, Beaconsfield and Zeehan being larger.

By the late 1890s the last boom in mining at Lefroy was over. While many mines found rich gold close to the surface, below 150 metres the yield of gold deteriorated, and the mines became unprofitable. The New Pinafore, Volunteer and Native Youth mines sank shafts more than 300 metres in a vain attempt to find gold at depth. The Volunteer mine was closed in 1899 and the company transferred its operations to Mathinna. The New Pinafore struggled on till 1915, surviving for its last twenty years from the gold found in the tailings of its crushing battery.

Illustration: Lefroy at the beginning of the 20th century. In the centre of the picture is the Pinafore dam and battery, with the business centre of Lefroy behind

An edited version of this article was published in The Examiner Saturday, 7 January 2006, p.25 as

“Few clues to Lefroy's golden era”

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