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Gulgong Gold

The Clays of Gulgong

‘Excavating the White Gold’, Home Rule ‘Bullring’ circa 1950’s (picture courtesy Col Sharrock)

It was a real goldmine!”, Mr. Wal Evans told me when I spoke to him recently. But he wasn’t talking about the shiny yellow metal which brought thousands of people, eager to seek their fortunes, to Gulgong in the early days. He was referring to the white clay which is still being mined in our area and put to many uses all over the world.

In case you didn’t know (and I certainly didn’t) “Kaolin is a soft white clay that is the essential ingredient in the manufacture of china and porcelain and is widely used in the making of rubber, paint and many other products. Kaolin was named after a hill in China, K’ao-ling, from which it was mined for centuries”, so the Encyclopaedia Britannica told me.

Early European explorers in Australia were convinced that the continent held no valuable metals or precious stones because the indigenous people appeared to have no use for them. They realized only later that the brilliant white pigment used as decoration for bodies and caves, was kaolin, beaten to a powder and combined with tree gum or water and used as paint. When prospectors rushed to the goldfields, their main interest lay in digging deep to find the gold. They were not interested in the soil and the white clay which lay between them and their goal and tossed it aside.

Chinese diggers were more astute, having had a tradition of ceramic making in their homeland for centuries. It is said that those on the fields took the kaolin that was regarded as useless, mixed it with other ingredients and used it to make plates and drinking vessels.

But, let’s go back to Mr. Wal Evans and his enthusiasm for the white clay. Wal’s father, Harry, was digging post holes in the ‘30’s when he came across the clays. Wal, himself, had noticed them in creek banks while he was out boundary riding and in 1941 began underground mining and sold white clay as a filler. In the late 1950’s he came across a clay with traces of black which he regarded as useless, until it was tested by an industrial potter who found that, when he fired it, it became snow white. Wal was reluctant to tell me, that when he was told this, his reply was, “But it’s bloody black!” and it thus acquired its present name, “B.B.”

Wal’s mine was on “Summervale” and in those days the clays were mined, spread out on a concrete slab, dried and broken up, crushed in a hammer mill and bagged. He began in the early 1940’s using a horse drawn scoop and transporting the product to Sydney by truck. He told me “I went to Sydney to the factory and saw the men wearing dust coats and I thought, if they can, I can!” So he came home and built his first mill on “Willowvale”, where he processed and bagged the clay. His son in law, Neil Mackrill, told me that Wally’s laboratory consisted of a white tile and a bottle of turps. He poured some turps onto the clay which was spread out on the tile, and was able to trade the colour of the kaolin by contrasting it with the whiteness of the tile.

When Wal was only 27 in 1944, a tragic accident occurred at the mine near “Summervale”. He and William Farr were loading the truck from the open mine when the side fell in, fracturing William Farr’s neck and killing him instantly. Wal was buried for at least half an hour, with his head between his knees which, luckily, allowed him an air pocket to keep breathing. His leg was so badly smashed that Dr.. Alport amputated it below the knee at Gulgong Hospital. Wal Evans showed remarkable courage and tenacity throughout the whole ordeal. He couldn’t be fitted with an artificial leg for a long time because of the wartime demand, so he would rest the stump on a petrol drum and continue to work his mine off the back of a truck. He was not a man to give in easily!

In the late 1960’s Wal built his mill on the outskirts of town and, through an agent, sold to paper mills, paint manufacturers and the makers of Royal Doulton china. Later his mill was sold to T.W. Cox and I 1974 he started Gulgong Minerals on the Henry Lawson Drive, expanding into calcites.

Kaolin mining had begun as early as 1915 in the Home Rule area. The clay had been well known to the locals since the gold mining days of the 1870’s. Mr. Col Sharrock described to me the huge undertaking which took place when he was a small boy in the making of “The Bullring”, an open cut excavation from which a small locomotive hauled trucks of raw material to the railhead at Worobil and from there to customers in Sydney and Wollongong. “The Bullring” was worked by Perry and Newbold General Refractories.

View of the Home Rule “Bullring” 1940’s (photograph courtesy of Fred Ridout)

In 1952, Col began working for Underwoods at Home Rule in the open cut mine, picking the clay out of the face and shoveling it into a skip which was pulled to the top of the open cut by a winch and tipped into a chute. The elevators then guided it to a bunker which held 35 tonnes, to be loaded onto a truck. Sixteen men were working with Col at that time.

The early 1970’s saw changes in the mining process with the introduction of heavy machinery, which meant that many labouring jobs disappeared. Col’s job changed to that of foreman, with responsibility for overseeing the earth moving equipment. Home Rule Fire Clay Pty Ltd was supplying quite a few brick companies and general refractories. Click here to continue reading....

‘Uncovering the White Clay’ Puggoon Mine (photograph courtesy of Kaye Rice)