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WELCOME REEF MINE SITE
WELCOME REEF DAM MOORMBOOL WEST, STRATHBOGIE SHIRE

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Statement of Significance
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Statement of Significance

The Welcome Reef Gully Gold Puddling Site consists of the remnants of one puddling machine complete with dumps of washed gravels. The puddling machine site is very rare in that the puddling trench still has traces of its timber lining. The site lies close to the remnants of a quartz mine operated by the Redcastle Gold Mining Company in the late 1890s. The site is a good characteristic example of the puddling technology developed in Victoria from 1854 in response to the need to process enormous amounts of clay soil which needed to be broken up to get at the gold. Horses were used to drag harrows around a circular ditch in which the soil and water were mixed.

The Welcome Reef Gully Gold Puddling Site is of historical, archaeological and scientific importance to the State of Victoria.

The Welcome Reef Gully Gold Puddling Site is historically and scientifically important as a characteristic and well preserved example of a site associated with the earliest forms of gold mining which, from 1851, played a pivotal role in the development of Victoria. Puddling machine technology is particularly important in the history of Victorian gold mining as the only technology or method developed entirely on Victorian goldfields.

The Welcome Reef Gully Gold Puddling Site is archaeologically important for its potential to yield artefacts which will be able to provide significant information about the cultural history of gold mining and the gold seekers themselves.

[Source: Victorian Heritage Register]

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