Samuel Scotson - As written by his son Sam He left England in 1849 and went to South Africa. Spent two years there with the Boers and Kaffirs mostly Big Game Hunting. When the Victorian gold boom was getting known in 1851 he came to Australia. He had been a student of Architecture in England before he left there, and got a job with the building contractor and to use his own words I found the contractor was making ten pounds to my pound so started contracting myself. Very soon the gold fever got him. He decided to build himself a wagon instead of a bullock dray; he bought six horses at one hundred pounds each and decided to take the load of goods to Bendigo. When he got to Forest Creek, food was very scarce as gold was found there as well as at Bendigo. The miners practically swamped his load of food so he got no further. Incidentally he had two barrels of oranges left and was wondering what to do with them. Apparently the miners did not know what the barrels contained. He mentioned it to a man standing by who said What! No trouble to get rid of them. He yelled Oranges and he and Dad sold the two barrels in half and hour at one shilling each. He always claimed that his wagon was the first horse drawn wagon to reach the gold fields. He employed a driver and he rode a horse ahead to select means of avoiding getting bogged as the tracks through the timber were practically quagmires. I think he got to Bendigo the next trip because the Warden or the Bank engaged him to convey the gold to Melbourne owing to horses being faster. One trooper travelled with him and the rest of the escort rode ahead or behind the wagon. He probably did not continue very long as a teamster as he acquired a gold mine at what was known as Fossickers Point. It was at the junction of Golden Gully and a gully or creek that came from about Specimen Hill, on the left side as you faced South. A short distance up Golden Gully from the Point was Ferrons Reef afterwards owned by a gold mine company called the New Era. Dad was for many years a director and ( I think ) Mr. Thos. Elsbury was the manager. Later he was succeeded by Mr. Michael Bell. The mine was at one time the second deepest mine in Victoria 1100 feet. ( I think the deepest mine in Victoria at the time was the Magdala at Stawell. ) The New Era had a 30 head stamper battery. The company cleaned up fortnightly and at each clean up a director had to be present and as a small boy I often accompanied my Dad when it was his time to be present and that was very often as he often represented another director who could not attend, but all this occurred many years after Dad had first tried his luck as a gold miner at Fossickers Pt. He must of had some sort of crushing plant because one day he showed me a sort of open cut where he used to burn the quartz before he could crush it. Apparently Fossickers Point soon differed out, as he then had a mine at Wattle Gully, I think it was called Wattle Gully South - It was round the point of a hill about West of the W.G. United but he told me it was a failure. His next venture occurred at Mopoke Gully (where I was born in1972). He bought a mine or claim from Ludlow a mate; as it promised to develop well he decided to install a (then) big plant for treatment consisting of an 18 head battery. As far as I can learn the venture must have had its origin about 1855 or a little earlier, ( I have no authentic record of the date ) He could not obtain suitable plant in Australia and had to send to England for the engine and battery. He crushed many thousands of tons prior to 1865 and then let the mine on tribute to September 1869. During that period (4 years and two months) 3,095 ozs. of gold were obtained and valued at approximately four pounds per ounce. Although I have an old pocket book giving many details over that period the tonnage treated is not mentioned. As far as I can remember from things he told me as a youth, after his mine ceased operations, he tried other reefs around for several years, treating ore raised at the plant. One venture still exists - a tunnel driven into the big hill ( just south of his home ) and an open cut on top of the hill and connected to the tunnel, this saved hauling vertically. I can just remember the battery working as a small child, probably 1876. He sold the whole plant to Thompsons Foundry and it was removed about two years later. That finished his private mining; later he was offered a job to go to the Raub Hole in Malaya which was then being opened up; owing to having a large family (eight of us) he decided against this and took over the management of the Eureka Phoenix mine at the foot of One Tree Hill (near Chewton) which he managed until it closed down probably about 1885. He then took over the Insurance and General Agency business of the late J.M. Corbett. The large store room attached to the office he never used personally, but let it to another, ( I think a Mr. Allen ) as a produce store. He died in 1903. He took a keen interest in politics and it seems quite evident he was a fighter by the tone of his speeches at meetings of what was in early days called the Mining Board incidentally constituted to uphold the rights of small mine owners and incurred the animosity of several higher ups including a man called Froomes and another called Palmer. He was a Life-long friend of the Thompson brothers (especially the elder David) who originally owned the local flour mill before starting out the famous Thompsons Foundry. I can remember many incidents which he described to me. but what is here stated is merely the base of an industrious and adventurous career. NB. According to Helena Beard (Scotson) her father died at Trentham near Daylesford of Dysentery. Is buried in the Vaughan Cemetery.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 08:24:22 +0000
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