THE AMAZING-Beaconsfield Mine and heritage Centre

Thursday, 27 January 2022

Having recently started as an Administration Assistant at the Mine Museum, I am delighted to see the response of people coming to the museum and the surprise they all get when they walk through the silver doors. My own experience of first visiting the centre was to marvel at the work that has been done at every turn and the creativity in the displays throughout the museum. I tell the customers that come in the doors, "Welcome to this fascinating place". They are pleasantly surprised and agree when they return “yes it is fascinating, thankyou”.

Some of the amazing things I have found about since I have been here:

'Gold' is related with similar words in many Germanic languages and means 'to shine, to gleam; to be yellow or green'.

The symbol Au is from the Latin word for Gold- Aurum. The etymological ancestors to this Latin word Aurum have words that mean glow and dawn. In some publications it is stated that aurum means 'shining dawn'. 

Gold has been discovered on every continent on Earth and gold has been mined for over 5,000 years.

Recently it has been suggested that gold and other elements heavier than iron may also be produced in quantity by the rapid neutron-capture process in the collision of neutron stars.

Most of the gold that is in the Earth's crust and mantle has in one model thought to have been delivered to Earth later, by asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment, about 4 billion years ago.

Of course there are many incredible stories and facts that I have learnt about the Beaconsfield Mine. Here are a couple:

The Beaconsfield Mine was most profitable in the years 1877-1896 and made 500,000 pounds during that period – that is something like $80,000,000 in today’s terms!!

Beaconsfield Mine is the wettest goldmine in the Southern hemisphere where 36 million litres per day of water needed to be pumped out. A very expensive process!   The human interest story of the Mine Disaster in 2006 is of special fascination to those that did follow the media story at the time and for those that have newly heard of this amazing rescue effort that happened in this mine. The fact that Todd Russell and Brant Webb were able to be rescued is nothing short of miraculous and terribly sad that Larry Knight did not make.  A tragedy never forgotten.

Lastly, I have learnt that the spirit of the Beaconsfield community lies in these walls and is present in the close knit community scarf exhibition and in the volunteers and locals that support all these stories staying alive.