Sunday 25 February 2024
Photos courtesy of Rob and Donna. Walk report courtesy of Walk Leader Rob.
The weather was perfect for the 6 kms walk to the Black Diamond Mine. We followed old logging roads down to Currowan creek and what was probably a track built by miners in the late 1890’s to the Drive close to the creek. The Drive, a horizonal shaft into the hillside, was tall enough to walk into but had 15cm of water and mud so we just admired the diggings from the entrance.
We then headed uphill with some bushbashing to 5 vertical shafts. Using the “timed dropped rock technique” we estimated that the deepest shaft could have been 15-20m deep. Quite the effort for ‘pick and shovel’ effort. The dropped rock bounced off metal at the base of the shaft.
We then proceeded along forest roads to a property boundary that had been bulldozed in 2019, probably as part of the bushfire efforts which made our hiking down into a steep gully a lot easier than the club walk back in 2018 who had to bushbash this section of the walk. We then returned on a long abandoned logging road back to the cars.
When I started to write this walk report I did some internet research and looking at the Ulladulla Metallogenic Map Sheet found that we were actually at the “Phoenix” mine site. The mine was active from 1890 – 1915 but there is no record of how much gold, if any, was extracted from the area.