** Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine ** A Miners Journal **

[GhostMiner]

The crew's road up to the Eastern Drift Mine & dig site. Direction is heading northeast of their camp. 

[GhostMiner]

A look at some of the old channel material.

[GhostMiner]

The crews old workings along the base of the faultline. Circa 1936. Jed must be back in his tent drinking Irish whisky. 

[GhostMiner]

The glory hole. Circa 1936. This is where the real Jed was murdered for his gold. Camping here alone at night is a creepy experience and that's putting it mildly.

[GhostMiner]

Cheers from GhostMiner. Circa June, 2022. More to come.

[GhostMiner]

   June 24   1937     Part Four

 

   I headed back down to camp to tell John and Hudson to be on high alert and explained what had just happened but they were already armed and nearly up to the dig site. They had heard the gunfire. So Hudson went back to his post and John went back to the creek to work the tom. 

   Will and I worked down into the gravels taking out bucket after bucket of rich material. After an hour I took a pan over to the tub and it was loaded with gold like I had never seen. There were small nuggets and plenty of pickers and the entire bottom of the pan was covered in coarse gold. We dug like we hadn’t dug in a long time and worked until dark. We had gotten down to country rock in several areas and were working west across the kettle. The digging was slowed a bit by rounded river rock but we were able to get 90 buckets out.

   John was still washing gravels in the tom past dark and we finally knocked off work for the night and cooked up a supper of bacon and beans. We would help John finish up in the morning and get the results of our day's work. 

   We sat around the fire past midnight drinking whisky and beers and talking about the gold and also our new found problems with the sheriff. We all decided that if we had to make a stand against him we would do it as a team. I wasn’t sure what the sheriff had planned in his evil mind but I was ready for anything. We all were.

   TO BE CONTINUED ...............

[GhostMiner]

Gold from the crew's old diggings at the journal's eastern drift area.

[GhostMiner]

   Our camp just east of the crew's old camp. This was Sept 2012 and we were unaware of what had happened on some of the claims. At this time it was just my son in law and me and we were exploring one of our claims. We broke camp in early October after sampling as many areas as we had time for. Right after we left the temps went from 70's & 80's to below freezing and there was a foot of snow.

[GhostMiner]

   June 25   1937     

 

   This morning we were all up bright and early despite our late night. I made coffee for the crew and spiced it up with some good whisky. We had some biscuits and bacon and got ourselves over to the creek to help John finish up the wash. By the time we were ready for the weigh it was nearly 11:00 AM and we could hardly wait for the results. Well, I can say the pan was worth waiting for. We had small nuggets and pickers along with plenty of coarse gold and a little fine for good measure. All told there were 26 ounces. We all sat around camp and placed the pan where we could all look at it. I told the crew that we had a lot more of that gravel to work and I didn’t know how big the kettle might be. We were on track for a big season once again.

   Hudson and I went up to the dig site and Will stood guard. The heat was starting to come back and by early afternoon the temperature was pushing 100 degrees. We took a short break but it was too hot to eat. We filled buckets and hauled them down to John until nearly dark. We ended our day with 75. Every test pan was rich and there was no sign of an end to the kettle. The bottom gravels were brimming with pickers.

   When Hudson and I got back down to camp we were bushed. I grabbed two cool Lucky’s out of the creek and we sat near the camp fire and downed them. I went back over and got us two more and we sat with the crew and talked about our strike. I rolled a smoke and filled my cup with whisky. It had been a good day. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ....................

[blackjack]

Wow, I'm only 20 pages in but will read the rest for sure, for me doing the research is part of the thrill of finding gold. I can only imagine the excitement of finding a journal like this, I can relate to this story by GhostMiner, but certainly can't tell one as fascinating as this one is. I got hooked on research in the late 1970's when trying to find the location of a place called Top Camp on the Ashburton River in Western Australia, it was a place known for large nuggets but was only worked for a short time for various reasons, I decided it's where I wanted to go. While it was a known field the records at the mines department didn't give an exact location, the best clue I could find was a creek 25 miles S/W of Prismiod hill which was on the maps. Long story short my dad and I loaded my FB Holden, towed a trailer loaded with two trail bikes and did the 2 day drive up there. we had a choice of three possible creeks and chose the middle one. We chose right, the thrill of being the first prospectors to be there for nearly 100 years was better than the gold we found. I've been hooked on the research side of what we do ever since. For those that are interested the creek is called Fords creek, a tributary of the Ashburton river east of Ashburton downs station.  Recently I have found out that Bailey, of Bailey and Ford the discoverers of Coolgardie worked the diggings. I'd love to hear from any one who has been in there as well.