Gold
Gold was first discovered in payable quantities in Australia in 1851 at Orphir near Orange. Perhaps the most notable local discovery of gold was in Golden Gully, adjacent to Budgee Budgee, in 1857 by the Wurth brothers.
Discoveries were next made at Sapling Gully and Log Paddock. Budgee Budgee, 7 miles north of Mudgee, was the scene of a further discovery followed a little later by the Pipeclay diggings.
Local folklore records at one time there was supposed to be about 3000 people on the Budgee Budgee field and a lot of gold was found there. One man was reputed to have found a nugget worth £3000 close to the Budgee Budgee Inn.
Even after the gold was supposed to have run out there were still people going down shafts and finding the odd speck of the precious metal. Mullock heaps could still be seen as late as the 1980s on some properties as well there was evidence of places where miners had washed for gold. Some say there is still gold to be found east of the Ulan (Cassilis) Road.
In her book Telling Tales Out of School Mary McPherson relates a story of a teacher from nearby Pipeclay (later Buckaroo) School who died down a shaft at Pipeclay Creek. It read: ‘Frederick White, a married man who was a teacher at Pipeclay Creek Public School near Mudgee, closed the school as usual on Friday evening June 5, 1874. On Tuesday June 9 the chairman of the local school board wrote to the Council of Education “I beg to inform you no traces (were found) of Mr White at the school at 12 o’clock on Monday 8th June. The local board closed the school and (is) waiting for advice for what to do respecting the school. Search has been made but (there is) no account of Mr White whatever’.
‘The Sydney Morning Herald of Friday June 19, 1874 carried the following report: Mudgee, Thursday. Yesterday an inquest was held at Pipeclay Creek on the body of Frederick White, the master of the Public School. He had been missing for a fortnight and was found in a shaft fifty feet deep, with his neck and leg broken. Verdict accidental death.’
It is not hard to imagine the rumours generated by that event. In 1963 John Lawrence Tierney (aka author Brian James) noted that local oral sources (in this instance gossip?) told him ‘that Fred White had fallen down that mine shaft in Sapling Gully very late at night after a convivial evening at “Fredericksberg” (the first local winery) and the Buchholtz family home.
This was ninety years after the event indicating local stories never die.
Perhaps the gold in Budgee Budgee is now to be found above the ground and not below.
