Gold!!!

Today, we drove to Walhalla, to visit an old decommissioned gold mine, which was started during the Australian gold rush in the 1860s.  A company called Hercules started digging in a mountain, where people have found alluvial gold while panning in the streams near by.  Alas, the company failed to find much gold, and went out of business.  Later, a company called Long Tunnel Extended Gold Mine took up the work, but dug in the other direction.  Surprisingly, they were able to find tremendous amounts of gold - 13,650 kg!  This picture shows a map of the mine.  The longest vertical line represents more than 900 meters below ground level.  In the entire tour, we only saw the first 300 meters of the top level, which took years to dig.

The tools that they used to dig, started out as hammers and chisels (called "taps"), but then got more modern.  What they used next was a steam-powered jackhammer nicknamed "the widow-maker," because it was lethal when it malfunctioned.  Nowadays, they would have used giant drills and whatnot, but they were very productive with what they had.