Some Crow Mountain history
History Notes - Crow Mountain
(Written August, 1979)
Barraba’s first mining boom was over 80yrs ago with the gold discovery at Crow Mountain, 12 miles from Barraba.
Crowley and Hagan found gold for the first time in “The Dodger”. The vein they found was very hard to keep track of because it wound in and out, so they called it “The Dodger”. They could not keep track of the vein, so they sold it to McKenzie and McNair, who got £10,000 worth of gold off it.
Some men came in and dug a shaft on the very top of the “Dodger”. They were making a fortune, but foul air got in and they had to give up on it.
Even before 1885 when mines such as “The Dodger” had attracted a thriving village of 200, in the 1860s, those who had visited Crow Mountain were able to show people their little bottles of gold.
Gold mining at Crow Mountain is centred on rocky outcrops of mostly serpentine rock. The “Wet Shaft” was first dug as a series of trenches in 1891 and named the “New Find”. The party who dug the trenches didn’t have much success, so it was then abandoned. Later another mining party took up the claim and sunk a deeper shaft only to find they had sunk it into an underground stream.
The once thriving town of Crow Mountain is now only an empty post office and few remains of huts, some still in good shape. Scrub has once again taken over and almost all the site of the old diggings and village have been obliterated.
The descendants of Crow Mountain frequently visited this village where, if it was Sunday, church services would be held. And if it rained, nearly all the 200 people would be out next day looking for more nuggets. Or if it was fine, there would be horse races or tennis on a rough court with the residents gathering around to do a bit of gossiping.
Their ancestors would also remember the continual boom of the ore crusher ½ a mile down the creek, crushing the quartz rock for the extraction of gold drawn from shafts. This construction still stands between thick scrub with mounds of dirt around it to remind us of the history to be found. But there are still ‘old timers’ like Nick Brown and Wally Dwyer who are still able to call to mind the many stories of the old diggings and early mining days where they would be seen fossicking for gold. Even though they never struck it rich in gold, they have struck it rich by storing the knowledge and history of Crow Mountain.