Oriental Claims Goldfields
The key to understanding the operations of the Oriental Claims is role played
by water in the sluicing process. Water is an essential element in all mining,
even the most basic prospector has to wash the gold free from the dirt with a
pan. Without the development of an intricate system of water races very little
would have- been achieved. Work in the Claims was dictated by a number of
streams or gullies.
Omeo 1873 Click on image to enlarge Livingstone Creek was the main waterway running the length of the Claims and was fed from three gullies; to the north Bloomfields Gully named after the prospector Tommy Bloomfield, to the south Mountain Creek and in the middle Dry Gully The new goldfield attracted all manner of men including 49ers, Edward D'Arcy Fitzgerald, George Hamilton and Duncan McCrae who were all working Dry Gully in 1857 They were astute miners, having gained experience in America and could see that if they worked together they could gain access to much greater areas of ground. In 1857 they took up claims on a hill at the junction of Livingstone Creek with Dry Gully and Mountain Creek Twelve months later they were working as a co-operative known as the Pioneer Claim and had begun ground sluicing. Fitzgerald and his associates commenced cutting races as early as 1855 which delivered water to Bloomfields Gully and the Pioneer Claims. It was said that it had taken eight men nine months to complete the job. A race of this length cut through much workable ground and led to confrontations with the French party over water rights. Both parties continued to cut races so as to increase their water' flow and therefore enable them to work more ground. Fitgerald was a shrewd operator and not only concentrated on mining but also took up large tracts of agricultural land around Dry Hill and on the western sides of Livingstone Creek. |
This had a two fold benefit, it gave him a second source of income and severly
restricted others from building water races around him.
So successful was the Pioneer Claims manipulation of water rights that by 1873 they had such a good supply of water that their operation was changed from box sluicing to hydraulic ground and box sluicing. This process consisted of bringing large quantities of water onto a site and the directing the water by high pressure hoses onto a suitable ore bearing face. They were the first in the district to undertake this form of treatment and it primarily meant that they could work much larger quantities of dirt. This type of treatment process also played havoc with the environment washing large quantities of dirt into the creeks and changing the landscape. After fifteen years of operation, the ground on which they worked had been washed away to a depth of fifty feet, the waste was carried away by the creeks. 
Hydraulic sluicing at Oriental Claims Click on image to enlarge The success of the Pioneer Claim saw another co operative of five shareholders being formed in 1876, known as the Oriental Sluicing Company The Company consisted of George France and Zepherim Champagne of the old French Company and Gilbert Hadden, Christopher Rodgers and Clarke. The area obtained by the company consisted of two leases comprising 34 acres and a purchased right of just over 25 acres. It was situated to the south of the Pioneer between Mountain Creek and Livingstone Creek. In fact they were wedged between the Pioneer and the private property purchased by Fitzgerald. The members quickly got to work and cut a race six miles up the Livingstone Valley, it was completed the same year but was in operable as it passed through private property The owner D'Arcy Fitzgerald persistently refused to allow them to use it until the Mining on Private Property Act was passed in 1884. |
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