Dargo - Crooked River Goldfields
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The constant demand for high returns was one of the reasons why only a few mines were worked consistently over a period of time. In most mines too little capital was reinvested in exploratory work and as a result when the good gold ran out there were no other options for the company but to close down as no other ground had been proved. The first gold escort that left the Crooked River, arrived at Sale on June 27 1865 with 4,600 ounces of gold. The escort continued to run on a regular basis until the late 1870s, by then most of the gold was coming from the Good Hope mine As early as 1866 returns from individual mines began to fall. The Jeff Davis Mine which had produced 3,868 ounces in 1865 could only produce 154 the following year The Mining Registrar also noted a fall in the mining population from 1,242 in' 1865, to 725 in 1866, although for the remainder of the 1860s, the mining population remained in excess of 600. The- decline in the mining population also resulted in a decrease in the business community. Of the four banks that opened in 1865 only the Bank of Victoria remained in 1866, the newspaper also ceased to operate. The decline was not only evident at Grant, by 1870 the towns of Howittville Winchester and Hogtown had disappeared. One correspondent wrote that or' originally £350 would 19 have purchased one allotment at Winchester, now the same amount would buy the whole town. Alfred Howitt visited Grant in 1874 and described it as a deserted village, 'A great number of houses arc empty The windows of most of them arc boarded, the glass ill them is broken. the once busy streets are now silent, and the pathways are thickly covered with broken bottles, rusted sardine cans, iron hoops, staves off barrels and fragments of bush furniture.' |
In 1874 the population of Grant was 112 while those residing on the Crooked River numbered 114. By 1883 when the Court of Petty Sessions was finally closed at Grant, the population had fallen to ninety. In 1890 the state school was closed , although it appears the Department was not informed for an Inspector visited the school in 1902 to close it and found it blown down. At this time he reported there were six families living in the town. No doubt a major reason for the decline of the field was its geographic location, lack of water and no close farming land meant that all supplies had to be carted in. Speculation was also carried out on a grand scale, in 1865 the Mining Registrar commented that although 257 reefs had been registered ' not fifty of these are actually being worked.' Certainly this discouraged the genuine miner who could not obtain some ground. The two large towns on the Crooked River, Talbotville and Bull Town existed for a much longer period. Bull Town finally disappeared in the 1890s but Talbotville, surrounded by large river flats suitable for farming, continued on till the last residents l& in the 1940s. Around the turn of the century, there was always someone attempting to start one of the old mines. They usually camped in one of the deserted houses but were only ever small time operators. The last residents left Grant in 1916, Mrs Wilson and her daughter resided in the old Bank of Victoria which by then functioned as a Post Office and hotel. She had kept the post office open by writing the required number of letters to herself Of all the gold towns the only one to survive to the present is Dargo and ironically it was never really more than a stoppover town but had the advantage of being set in the midst of rich river flats, ideal for farming. A number of industries have flourished briefly in the valley since the demise of the goldfield, but it is agriculture that has guaranteed the future of the town. |
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