Wednesday 5 March 2025
Photos courtesy of Amanda and Rob. Walk report courtesy of Walk Leader Rob.
Seven club walkers, including two visitors, did the walk to the Bimberamala Mine on a bright sunny day with welcome low-20’s temperatures.
In 2022 we hiked to the mine and met a 4WD camper at the river crossing who told us about a boiler on the river bank 300m upstream. I planned to visit the Bimberamala Mine and try and find the boiler he described. On Monday 3rd I led an exploratory walk to the river with Donna, Amanda and Lenore to find the boiler. We started on Browns Gully Firetrail and then onto a very overgrown CPT482/1 track before descending to the river and heading downstream. This was a beautiful stretch of the river with river gums, large pools and rocky beaches plus the odd steep cliff scramble. Two kilometres later while stumbling through thick bracken on a river bend Donna spotted the boiler. I was very relieved to make the find as we were all exhausted from the hike and continuous removal of aggressive leeches in the wet vegetation.
I sent some photos of the boiler to a friend at the Moruya Antique Tractor Association who informed me it was not just a boiler but a full steam engine. An internet search revealed a similar model in a museum in England
On our hike today we visited the mine and our visitors were impressed by the cool breeze coming from the Adit (horizontal mine shaft) which I explained came from the vertical mine shafts upslope that the adit intersected. The mine was too wet to explore and the leeches were starting to come out in full force.
We crossed the creek from the mine and saw the abandoned gold stamper battery. This then raised the question – why was the steam engine that would have powered the stamper located almost 1km away on the river itself down a steep track? Mining stopped in 1915 so this is a 100 year old mystery, but here is my hypothesis. We have seen other stampers at remote gold mines which assume were abandoned when the gold ran out and considering their heavy weight were too expensive to cart to another location. The attached picture shows what one of these portable steam engines looked like so being portable could have been pulled back along the track by horses or bullocks. Why they left it on the bank of the river so close (300m) to the road that could have been used to take it back to Nelligen who knows. Today we view the steam engine as a rusting engine whose wheels and flywheel as well as other pieces of the machine were stolen over the last 100 years.
We have mapped the location of the steam engine and it will be added to future walks to the Bimberamala mine.