Hill End - Culture and History

Alluvial gold was discovered at Hill End (then known as Bald Hill) in 1851 and there were were 150 miners on the site within a month. The first stamper battery in Australia was set up around 1856 by the 'Old Company' which employed Cornish equipment and miners, although initial returns were unremarkable. The stamper battery was located near the township of Tambaroora (5 km to the north of present-day Hill End), reinforcing Tambaroora's position as the major settlement. By the early 1860s it had a population of some 2000 people.

By comparison Bald Hill had only a few hundred residents, a hotel and two stores when it was surveyed and gazetted, mistakenly, as 'Forbes' in 1860. It was renamed 'Hillend' in 1862.

At the time the Old Company had rights to all reef gold in the area but when it departed in the early 1860s opportunities were opened up. Steady work began on sites such as Hawkins Hill and in 1870 worthy returns began to occur. As word spread of the escalating profits in 1871 speculators moved in en masse. They turned syndicates of self-employed reef miners into floated companies with the miners reduced to employee status. They also bought up barren land around town and sold worthless shares to unknowing Sydneysiders.

In October 1872 the Star of Hope Gold Mining Co. uncovered what was, at the time, the world's largest specimen of reef gold. 'Holtermann's Nugget', as it was known, weighed 286 kg and measured 150 cm by 66 cm with an average thickness of 10 cm. That week alone, over 700 kilograms of gold were carted away from Hill End by the gold escort. In all the amount of gold extracted at Hill End was greater than any goldfield in NSW other than Canbelego.

By the end of 1872 Hill End had overtaken Tambaroora as the major settlement. There were over 8000 people, making it one of NSW's largest inland towns with more than a kilometre of shops, five banks, two newspapers, a brewery, 27 pubs, over 200 companies in the field, and stamper batteries pounding ore 24 hours a day. New businesses proliferated while land prices and rents ballooned.

Overcrowding was a major problem as the town boundaries had been set in 1860 when the population was small and all around it were mines which prevented geographic expansion. Infrastructure was virtually nonexistent and deathly diseases were rampant. However, the influx of money led to rapid improvements. By March 1873 there were four churches, a hospital, improved roads, decent business premises, a public school, three banks and two newspapers. Substantial brick, weatherboard and corrugated iron buildings replaced the makeshift wattle-and-daub huts.

For all that, Hill End proved to be truly a boom (and bust) town. Part of the problem was that the fingers of too many investors had been burned on the stock market. Shareholders, desperate to sign on in 1872, were desperate to back out in 1873. This reduction of financial input was exacerbated by company promoters who had left town with all spare cash leaving no capital for prospecting and development at a time when there was a need to dig deeper, as gold on the upper levels was becoming exhausted.

By 1874 cash was scarce on the fields. Miners received a share in prospective profits rather than wages. Hence businesses suffered. Stores closed and the population went into decline, from 8000 in 1872 to 5000 in 1875, 4000 in 1876, 1200 by 1882 and 500 at the turn of the century.

Some miners hung on, literally scraping a living by sifting through the surface. A few larger mines had some short-term success via amalgamation and deeper shafts but none lasted long due to flooding and lack of funds. Sheep, cattle and agriculture helped keep the town afloat through the hard times.