RECHABITE MINE SITE

INDIGO SHIRE, INDIGO SHIRE

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Victorian Heritage Inventory

Statement of Significance

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  • History

    RECHABITE MINE SITE - History

    The first claim was registered on what was then called the Teetotal Reef in 1869. From 1870, crushings were carried out at O'Dwyer's Cead Mille Failtha battery. The numerous quartz claims on the Teetotal reef were amalgamated in 1873 and the reef was renamed the Rechabite. The mine gave patchy returns over the next few year: occasionally very rich, often poor. In 1876 the Rechabite Reef was held by 20 shareholders; it was divided into just four shares the next year. The mine seems not to have been active during this period, as its pumping machinery was sold to the Wallaby Co. at the end of 1875. In 1881, the Rechabite Co. (re?)opened a crushing mill and commenced working on a large scale. Within months, they had plans to replace it with a larger one. At the end of 1882, the shoot of payable stone being worked in the Rechabite mine ran out, and mining was suspended. In 1884 the Rechabite mill site was re-registered and the abandoned ground was taken up as the Old Rechabite Reef. An expensive tunnel was commenced in 1886, with the intention of cutting the reef at a lower level, 'where they know rich stone lies', but the reef was not struck in the place expected. The mine was flooded out in 1887, and the claim was repeatedly suspended pending the erection of pumps. In 1889 an amalgamation of the adjoining Rechabite, Wallaby, and Marco Polo companies was mooted, to enable the purchase of pumping machinery which would drain all three mines. It is not clear whether that proposal went ahead. No further mention of the Rechabite Reef has been found.

    Heritage Inventory Description

    RECHABITE MINE SITE - Heritage Inventory Description

    Visible featuresinclude open stope with adit,large mullock heap, open adit,benched platform - overgrown with blackberries, and abenched track (whichruns west above creek).

    Heritage Inventory Significance: National Estate. The site has network values, as part of the Nine Mile Historic Reserve. 'The Nine Mile Creek Historic Area is significant for its outstanding diversity of gold-mining sites which represent nineteenth-century methods of both alluvial mining and reef mining (including open cut reef mining), the two main types of gold-mining carried out on Australian fields. (Criteria A3, B2) 'The area is associated with an important era in the history of north-eastern Victoria and it reflects the industry which supported Beechworth, Yackandandah and other towns in the region for a substantial part of the second half of the last century. (Criterion A 4) 'The way in which the mining sites blend in with a rugged creek valley heavily clad with native timber gives the place aesthetically important landscape qualities. (Criterion F 1)' (Australian Heritage Commission, file no. 004656 2/08/245/0001/02)

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