Saturday 18 June 2022
Photos courtesy of Amanda, Philip and Erika
Seven walkers, including two visitors made the 13.5km trek to the Bimberamala Gold Mine. This is a Val Harris walk last done in 2017. Most of this area was burnt in the 2019/20 fires but the Bimberamala River valley was spared the devastation.
The mine is in quite a remote part of the Yadboro State Forest so we were surprised to find a camper at the Bimberamala River crossing. We followed a well-used 4WD track, now blocked by fallen trees to within a kilometre of the mine. The mine entrance itself shows evidence of collapse when compared to the photos taken in 2017. The remains of an old stamper are also visible near the mine entrance, abandoned when mining stopped in 1915.
On return to the main forest road and river crossing where we had lunch five additional 4WD vehicles turned up making us realise two things: first- this is a popular 4WD site and second- we should only schedule this walk on week days!
Our overnight camper showed us a video of a large boiler he found on the river 300m upstream of the river crossing. We will do a recce in the coming months to find this artefact and add it to the walk for future walk leaders. I did some post walk internet research and found that the Bimberamala Gold Mine yielded $8m of gold (in today’s value) and that there was an additional nearby Bimberamala Creek alluvial gold working site. This is probably the location of the boiler our friend had pointed us to.
Rob