Summary

This photograph depicts four men posing in front of the entrance to a shaft mine for gold or tin mining. The miners appeared to be dressed in collared shirts, moleskin trousers, leather boots and felt hats and are surrounded by their reef mining equipment, including items that they most likely constructed themselves from locally sourced timber. The ore they were mining would have been bound in a vein of quartz, which needed to be extracted underground and then carted to a local battery for crushing and condensing. The crushed ore and tailings from the condensing process would then be carted to a plant for treatment, most commonly cyanide extraction. While many batteries would crush ore from independent mining claims, in addition to ore from the mine the battery was affiliated with, many mines would only treat crushings and tailings taken from the mine's own land. Batteries and mines that would accept ore from independent and small cooperative claims often charged heavy fees for their services. These practices, combined with a lack of railways and roads, meant transporting mined ore could be outrageously expensive, making it very difficult for independent or small cooperative claims to be mined successfully.

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.