SIR JOHN FRANKLIN MINE SITE

KELLY CREEK TRACK MATLOCK, MANSFIELD SHIRE

All information on this page is maintained by Heritage Victoria. Click below for their website and contact details.

Victorian Heritage Inventory

Statement of Significance

• Additional Place Information

  • History

    SIR JOHN FRANKLIN MINE SITE - History

    Heritage Inventory History of Site:
    The Sir John Franklin at Gooley's Creek emerged during the 1860s as one of major reefs on the Wood's Point/Matlock field. After the quartz mining slump of the mid-sixties, it was one of the few mines in which methodical development of deeper ground continued through the next decade.
    
    Another quartz mining revival took place towards the end of the 1890s. One focus of this revival appears to have been Gooley's Creek where several companies commenced work , including the Comet, Little Comet, Sir John Franklin and North Sir John Franklin. All these companies appear to have erected water-powered batteries. The most successful of them was to be the Sir John Franklin Company. In 1899, this company erected new works, including a tramway and a 10-head battery. The new battery was powered by a 45ft diameter water-wheel. As the new mill was sited on the opposite side of Gooley's Creek to the mine, a high wooden flume had to be erected. This company worked from 1899 to 1909 and produced 6,267 ounces of gold.
    
    The 1930s saw major mining operations kick off on two mines: the Sir John Franklin and Morning Star. The New Sir John Franklin Company commenced work in 1932. It installed new plant consisting of a diesal engine and five-head battery; the old boiler, foundations and smoke stack of an earlier stage being bulldozed to make way for the new plant. The company only had a few crushings between 1940 and 1941; the plant was sold in 1949.
    
    References:
    Holliday, pp. 5-6
    Milner
    Mining Surveyors' Reports, March 1872
    Supple et al

    Heritage Inventory Description

    SIR JOHN FRANKLIN MINE SITE - Heritage Inventory Description

    Features of the Sir John Franklin Mine site are mine workings and the remains of two batteries.

    Heritage Inventory Significance: State. This site is of considerable scientific interest (eg. the self acting tramway, the water wheel and the inact adit and mullock heap)and is an excellent example of workings in a difficult mountain site.

    Heritage Inventory Key Components: Workings - at the head of Jenkins Gully are some open cuts/stopes, trenching and an incline shaft. Battery No. 1 - further down the gully is a succession of short adits and, at the lowest level, a collapsed and partially flooded adit driven initially through river wash, and a large and essentially intact mullock heap which juts out into the main part of the gully. At this site is a Cornish flue boiler, and parts of a steam engine and stamp battery. Near the entrance to the adit, on the northern side, are some rubble masonry foundations which probably mark the original position of the boiler and its associated chimney flue. Adjacent to these structure is a cutting which marks the start of a self-acting tramway. This descends along the western side of Jenkins Gully before eventually crossing it and the Goulburn River to discharge stone at the Gold Bar battery site on the opposite side. Battery No. 2 and water race - just below the start of the above tramway, and commencing at the edge of the mullock dump, is a bench track, running northwards around the spur. It crosses the line of the tramway and, at the point where it crosses the spine of Webster's Spur, joins with the head of a second self-acting tramway formation. This formation generally runs down along the spine of the spur, occcasionally in a square-sectioned cutting, to a battery site on the south bank of the Goulburn River, opposite a small blackberry-infested flat upon which it is thought that Biggs's (1900s) pyrites plant was situated. At the battery site are burnt-out remains of a large wooden waterwheel, 45 ft in diameter x 5 ft wide, with sheet iron buckets, geared first and second motion shafts, and some components of two Roberts 5-head wooden-framed stamp batteries. Water for the wheel was supplied by a race which ran behind the battery and along the southern bank of the river back to Gooley's Creek.

• Location map
• Explore related places
  • Show:
    -- select -- Nearby Places

  • JOHNSON'S REEF WORKINGS

    

    Victorian Heritage Inventory
  • LADY FRANKLIN WORKINGS

    

    Victorian Heritage Inventory
  • NEVER MIND WORKINGS

    

    Victorian Heritage Inventory
• Public contributions