Summary

This photograph depicts a man using a dolly to crush ore. Hand crushing ore using this method is very tiring work. It was used in areas without a crushing plant or mill nearby or as a means of sampling rocks while prospecting to determine which metals are present. The style and condition of the man's clothing suggests he may be performing an assay of the local rock or is new to the goldfield, as crushing ore in this way for any length of time would have rendered his clothing quite dirty and wrinkled. The dolly was most likely constructed from locally harvested ironbark. Buildings in the Oaks camp can just be seen in the background. This section of the Oaks Goldfield would later become known as Kidston.

With reports of payable gold beginning in December 1907, the Oaks Rush was the last of the big alluvial gold rushes in North Queensland. The Oaks Goldfield encompassed roughly 1500 km2 and was located about 48 km south of Einasleigh, Queensland along the Copperfield River. While the Oaks Diggings, known as "The Knobs," was only 5 km2, the mining population peaked at 1,700 individuals, which is three to four times the estimated number it could support. By August 1908, there were reportedly as many as 180 dry blowers in operation on The Knobs. The reported output of alluvial gold on The Knobs from December 1907 to December 1909 is 19,000 oz., though the actual total would have been much higher. It is well documented that determining exactly how much gold was actually found was impossible because so much gold went unreported. The Oaks Goldfield was completely surrounded by the Etheridge Goldfield and was only designated as a separate goldfield for administrative purposes. The Etheridge Shire was over 38,000 km2 and included the townships and goldfields of Cumberland, Georgetown, Charleston and Einasleigh. Due to the sporadic nature of the ore and the difficulties in mining it efficiently, goldfields in the Etheridge Shire were often designated "poor man's fields," even though well over 500,000 oz. of gold was reportedly mined there by the start of the First World War.

The photographs in this collection were taken by the Reverend Frederic Charles Hall (1878-1926) during the period 1902-1909 when he was the Anglican Curate appointed to Georgetown in North Queensland. Hall's foremost hobby was photography. He used both a half-plate camera with tripod made by J. Lancaster & Son, Birmingham and a quarter-plate Austral No. 3 made by the Australian company, Baker & Rouse. Glass negatives from Ilford and Austral were used; developing was done by the photographer himself and printing by exposure to sunlight.