Summary

This photograph depicts a miner posing with his horse at a shaft mine, most likely for gold (or perhaps tin). He appears to be dressed in a Crimean shirt, moleskin trousers and a felt hat. The wood structures in the photograph were most likely constructed on-site from locally sourced timber. The winch and pulley system used to raise the mined ore from underground is known as a "whip," which is constructed by erected a tall timber pole with a pulley at the top with rope threaded through the pulley and attached to the ore bucket on one end. The other end of the rope could then be attached to a horse's harness. Using horses (when possible) saved the miners from needing to hand-turn a windlass themselves, as well as allowing more ore to be raised per bucket. The dirt and debris raised from the shaft (known as "mullock") underground was often saved so that it could be processed using alluvial mining techniques such as dry-blowing, sluicing, cradling or panning, in order to extract as much gold as possible.

The Oaks Goldfield encompassed roughly 1500 km2 and was located about 48 kms south of Einasleigh, Queensland along the Copperfield River. It was completely surrounded by the Etheridge Goldfield and was only designated as a separate goldfield for administrative purposes. While the Oaks diggings, known as "The Knobs," was only 5 km2, the mining population peaked at 1,500 individuals, which is roughly three times the number it could support. The reported output of alluvial gold from December 1907 to December 1909 is 19,000 oz.

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.