Scott Clennett will present on the following subject:
A Lost Reward - Mt Balfour Tasmania
The Balfour mining field in western Tasmania had its origins in 1875 with the discovery of tin by two itinerant prospectors, as legend would have it, when pulling a wombat out of a hole!
By mid-1887 about six parties were there sluicing for tin but they were hampered by lack of water, and drifted south, and the Balfour workings were generally abandoned. Soon there were only three men working there, brothers Bill & Tom Murray, and Fred Smith. They discovered copper in Tin Creek and gained a copper reward lease in December 1901. Smith soon left to be replaced by William Ford, and a mysterious ‘fourth partner’ who was destined to become the major figure in the future of Balfour. They were slow to benefit from this discovery, and it was 1907 before any mining began.
From 1908, many others had arrived, and a boom was under way, but this had petered out by 1912, with abandonment of many leases, and huge capital losses.
Perhaps the bust happened because of over-enthusiasm for poor prospects, and because of serious difficulties of transport. Two proposals were made for a tramway to run west to coastal Whales Head but only one was ever built. Another tramway from an unsuccessful timber mill hoped to capture the market for bridge timbers and sleepers for tramways.
An ambitious 3’-6” gauge 47-mile electric railway was proposed to run from the port of Stanley, on the northern coast south to Balfour. But it was beset with financial and parochial problems and accusations of fraud, and its formation barely reached half-way, and plate-laying for less than 3/4 mile. It was only ever to be built that half-way as the Government’s Trowutta Railway, opening in 1919, far too late for the Balfour boom.
This page is prepared and maintained by the Light Railway Research Society of Australia Inc. and is copyright © by LRRSA.
