MINING HISTORY
HOLTERMANN’S HILL END GOLDEN PHOTOGRAPHIC NUGGET HISTORIAN GARRY DUNCAN TELLS AUSTRALIAN MINING ABOUT BERNHARDT OTTO HOLTERMANN’S COLOSSAL DISCOVERY DURING THE 19TH CENTURY NEW SOUTH WALES GOLD RUSH.
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hen Edward Hammond Hargraves found gold on February 12 1851, he and his guide John Hardman Lister began the Australian gold rush in the Central West of New South Wales. It was at Radigan’s gully four kilometres upstream of the junction of Lewis Ponds and Summer Hill Creek that a few specks of gold would change the course of history for the region. Two months later just downstream, four ounces of gold were found on April 7 1851 where a bar of rock was crossing Summer Hill Creek. Today a nearby obelisk commemorates the finding of gold in the area. It can be seen at the corner of the original site of Store and Lister Streets. The claim, named Fitzroy in honour of the governor, was soon known as Ophir, a reference to the biblical King Solomon’s gold treasure. Speculators came from far and wide to try their luck in hopes of making it rich with over 2000 setting up camp nearby. However, it was nearby Hill End that became even more memorable as a gold rush town. A German immigrant Bernhardt Otto Holtermann (1838–1885) had come to Australia avoiding military service back home. He met a Polish miner Ludwig Hugo Louis Beyers, who became his business partner. They headed west to Hill End and began prospecting in 1861 at Hawkins Hill. They had no success for five years having to support themselves with other employment. In 1871, other investors had found some rich veins of gold, however, these soon petered out and they sold out of the claim. In the following year, during a night shift, a spectacular nugget find would make history. On October 19 1872, a huge quartz rock weighing almost 300kg was found deep down a shaft on their claim. It contained 158kg of gold. This was the largest reef gold specimen ever found in the world.
BERNHARDT OTTO HOLTERMANN WITH THE HOLTERMANN GOLD NUGGET.
Newspaper headlines spread the word attracting thousands of curious visitors eager to try their luck at gold prospecting. The rock contained gold worth 12,000 pounds. It was much larger than a nugget, though it universally became known as Holtermann’s Nugget. Holtermann and Beyers had AUSTRALIANMINING
recently founded the Star of Hope Gold Mining Company, and Luck had already turned their way as they started finding gold at Hill End a few months ahead of their big find making them rich. However, it is the huge nugget Holtermann found that is remembered most today as its preserved in the Holtermann
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photographic collection held at the State Library of NSW. Quick to preserve his golden find for photographic posterity, before the gold was extracted, Holtermann commissioned an itinerant photographer Beaufoy Merlin to photograph his grand discovery. Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss had formed the American and Australasian Photographic Company (A&A Photographic Company) in the Victorian goldfields. Holtermann built them a photographic studio at Hill End to complete the complex wet plate developing process. This began a fruitful promotion method for Holtermann to proudly showcase to the world the amazing mining potential of his newly adopted country. Known as Holtermann’s Great International Travelling Exposition it began by recording the goldfields of NSW and Victoria. This unique Australian photographic outdoor setting has provided a legacy of glass plates that pioneered the recording of Australia’s landscape. In 1875, it extended its reach by making giant panoramas of Sydney starting from Holtermann’s house in North Sydney. It soon became the world’s largest collection of wet-plate negatives astonishing audiences when shown overseas. In 1876, it won a bronze medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and, in 1878, a silver medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle Internationale. Around 3000 of the original 3500 Holtermann glass plates survived the ravages of time. They were found in a garden shed at Chatswood by photography historian Eric Keast Bourke some 80 years after the photographs were first taken. Bourke’s photographic collection was purchased by the State Library of NSW in 1963. Digitised in 2011– 2012 Holtermann glass plates remain another true find of golden national significance. AM Garry Duncan is a history writer.