While driving through Acacia Hills on your way to Devonport, you cross over a small stream called ‘Coal Creek’, which flows into the Don River at nearby Bott’s Gorge. This insignificant sign, ‘Coal Creek’, on the roadside is the only visible indication of the first mining venture, not only in the Kentish municipality but on the entire NW coast. It became the catalyst for scores of other coal mines to open around the Mersey estuary, most of which were short-lived, but led to the first settlers coming to the Kentish Plains. This is where we commence a few articles on some of Kentish’s historic mining ventures, but for those with no interest in fossicking for gold, we’ll alternate them with other saucy subjects.

In April 1851, because of very rough seas, Launceston timber merchants Wm Dean and Benjamin Cocker chose to journey overland from the Forth River back to Launceston. As night fell on the first day, they sought shelter in the rough hut of two burly timber-splitters named Powell and Ayres near Bott’s Gorge. Dean noticed that the hut fire was fuelled by coal and the next morning asked the timber-splitters to show them where it came from. They were taken to a creek where they were shown an outcrop of coal – the first discovery of coal in NW Tasmania. Impressed, Dean & Cocker paid the splitters five sovereigns to keep the matter quiet while they hurried back to Launceston with their specimens.

Dean quickly formed a syndicate of businessmen and sold 1000 shares at £25 each to form The Mersey Coal Co and persuaded Launceston town surveyor Wm Dawson to come and manage their mine. In a rather extravagant way, in June 1851, they purchased 1,700 acres (9690ha) of land, and within three months, Benjamin’s brother David Cocker and William Dean had become the first settlers at Spreyton. While William Dean concentrated on building huts and cottages, purchasing mining machinery and recruiting experienced miners from England for their coal mine at Bott’s Gorge, David Cocker set about building the first steam-driven sawmill near the present-day Spreyton Cider Factory. Then they built a four-mile-long horse-drawn wooden tramway along Coal Mine Flat (now Sheffield Main Road) out to a shipping jetty they erected at Dean’s Point (now the Devonport Golf Club).

So important was this first NW coast mining venture that Governor Denison visited the mine in Feb 1853 to see the first five wagons of coal hauled to the jetty for shipment to Launceston. This was five years before Surveyor Dooley began carving up the Kentish Plains for the first settlers. In Dec 1854, a Wesleyan minister preached at the Bott’s Gorge mining camp to 30 adults and 40 children. The new Launceston syndicate located three beds of coal, but the coal seams were less than half a metre thick and constantly disrupted by fault lines. They drove a shaft down 300ft, but no coal was found. After spending near £20,000 in their futile endeavours, the company wound up, and the miners were paid off in 1857. For several decades, this site was covered by crumbling buildings and foxgloves.

Immediately after the Bott’s Gorge find, other coal strikes occurred along the southern bank of the Mersey River, particularly around Tarleton area, which initially produced well, with towns forming at Tarleton, Ballahoo Island and Sherwood. Well-known Kentish pioneers who owned some of these coal mines were Thomas Johnson Sr, Francis von Bibra, Surveyor William Dawson (who had moved to Sherwood) and John Ramsdale at Dulverton. By the mid-1850s, when the mines were producing 1000 tonnes of coal a month, the population of the Tarleton township rose to 300, with two hotels, three stores and provision for a school. In 1861, government surveyor Charles Gould produced a map of the Mersey coalfields that indicated coal might be found on the Kelcey Tiers, Bonney Tiers and the entire extent of the Badgers Range. 

But again, like Bott’s Gorge mine, the coal seams proved to be narrow and fractured, with fault lines often causing the coal to abruptly stop. After a few years and the spending of thousands of pounds, many mines ended up becoming unprofitable and gradually fizzled out. By 1866, Tarleton’s population had reduced to 60, and in 1870 only one family was left living in the township. Many of the sacked miners moved inland to buy their own block of land on which they cut timber and searched for coal. Within a decade, these same pioneers covered much of the Kentish district. It seems strange today, but the gritty, gravelly Badgers Range was leased out long before anyone could get their hands on the fertile Kentish Plains. New coal deposits were found, mainly on the Railton-Dulverton side of the Badgers, where it continued to be mined for the next 90 years. In Oct 1882, coal was found on the southern end of the Badgers within a mile of Sheffield and people lit a fire in front of Sheffield’s main general store to test its quality. At times, up to 25 small mines were operating, employing a total of 100 men. By 1935, there were still 50 coal miners employed between Newbed and Dulverton. For a list of these mines, see my Kentish Voice article ‘Dulverton, Railton and Newbed’ for Dec 2021. The last of these mines to close was ‘The Black Beauty’ in 1944. The six small ‘Nook’ mines were on the southern side of Bonney Tiers at the eastern end of Acacia Hills.

For 15 years, from 1931 to 1946, 12,383 tonnes of coal were taken from the two remaining mines at Tarleton. The coal went first to Goliath Cement Works at Railton, then to the Ovaltine factory at Spreyton. It is estimated that 300,000 tonnes of coal were taken from these Mersey River mines.

1859 Gold Rush to the Forth River 

Shortly after District Surveyor James Dooley came to live in Forth in 1858, he went searching for pine timber in the Upper Forth River Valley accompanied by local farmer James Jones. On the banks of both the Wilmot and Upper Forth Rivers, they saw what appeared to be gold specks, but as neither of them had any experience in gold mining, they decided to concentrate on finding pine timber. When Forth’s first resident, James ‘Philosopher’ Smith (later the Hon James Smith), heard their story, he told them they had let a good opportunity pass by which they may deeply regret. Smith, a prospector, wanted to investigate these gold sightings. His whole idea was to find a workable goldfield. The Forth River itself was so full of steep ravines and gorges that to get to its upper reaches, exploration parties from the Forth village had to roughly follow the present-day Cradle Mt Road back to Middlesex Plains to meet the original VDL Co road, then travel eastward down the 

Five-Mile Rise to where it crossed the Forth River at present-day Lorinna.

In April 1859, James (Philosopher) Smith, with James Jones and Jeremiah Johnson, after being held up by some very wintery weather, arrived at the banks of the Wilmot River just as it began to rise. Smith’s party barely had time to secure a small quantity of sand and gravel from holes in the rock before they were forced to retreat to higher ground. With the few pieces of gold specks they found, they were greatly encouraged. But provisions now running low, they were obliged to return home. 

James Smith equipped a second expedition and, this time, reached the Upper Forth River at the present-day town of Lorinna, where gold specks were found in sand beneath the rocks. They followed the river south until they came to the junction of the Dove River and located a lode of galena with a little gold. But their most exciting finds came from following the river a couple miles north of Lorinna, just prior to it entering the long and treacherous gorge called by Hellyer ‘The Forth Gates’, where two walls of rock rise up perpendicularly on each side of the river for about 800ft. Here they panned flaky gold bits from alluvial deposits on the east bank of the river. Excitedly, they called the place Golden Point, for Smith felt sure payable gold must lay close by. 

Meanwhile, the Tasmanian Government passed the Gold Field Regulation Act 1859, offering £5000 to the first person to find payable gold. Farmer James Jones, who had been with Surveyor Dooley on his initial visit, tried to claim this reward for himself but was unsuccessful. On a third trip, to test the value of their gold bearing sites, Smith took a party of five on a 12-day search. They included neighbour James Fenton and close friends Joseph Raymond and Wm Crosby of Don. The party dug several small shafts, and although encouraging finds were made, none were of a size that could make them economically viable. Philosopher Smith was not to be disheartened. He continued prospecting around Cradle Mt and Black Bluff until, in 1871, he discovered the famous tin mine at Mt Bischoff, which forever made him famous.  

Settlers Distracted by Gold Discovery – May 1859

The sensational news of gold in the Forth River reported in Launceston newspapers created lots of local excitement on the coast and disrupted the momentum towards the opening of the Kentish Plains. Two separate public meetings were called for those interested in these new gold finds: Mersey residents met at Thos Johnson’s Dalrymple Inn, Ballahoo, while Forth residents met at Logan’s Inn at Leith. At the meeting held in the Dalrymple Inn on 6 July 1859, a committee was formed to further gold exploration. It comprised Thomas Johnson, George Atkinson Jr, John Harrison, Wm King, H King, Amos Langmaid, Clarkson, Lyons, Roberts, Scott, James Cartledge, John Matthews and Edward Allen. William Dawson, recently appointed surveyor for the Devon Road Trust, offered to extend the rough track recently created up to the Kentish Plains by continuing it up over Mt Claude, south to Gad’s Hill, then down to join the old VDL Co track where it crossed the Forth River at Lorinna. Dawson started almost immediately with many coal miners assisting him. Just over a month later, on 10 August, he arrived back at Tarleton to report the track was complete. Ten miners had pushed ahead of him, and by the time he reached them, they were already prospecting. He said he saw a youth wash 14 specks of gold from one dishful of gravel.

At the Leith meeting one week later, 13 July 1859, it was resolved to cut a bridle track up the west side of the Forth River, roughly following the present-day Cradle Mt Road to avoid trekking through several steep and dangerous gorges in the Forth Valley. Surveyor Dooley volunteered his services to mark out this track, and a committee was appointed to collect subscriptions to defray expenses of cutting it back to Golden Point. At the end of the meeting, James Fenton JP challenged James Jones, who was claiming in the newspaper to be the first discoverer of gold up the River Forth. When Jeremiah Johnson was asked to corroborate or deny John’s statements, he most emphatically denied them. It was some weeks however before Surveyor Dooley could get away from his survey work on the Kentish Plains to open this track.  The first prospecting parties didn’t travel inland from Forth Village until mid-Nov 1859. It was tough work, with prospecting impossible unless the river was running at a low ebb. There were no signs of any sustainable goldfield.

In the summer of 1859–60, the Tas Government hired Ronald Campbell Gunn, accompanied by Surveyor Peter Lette and some diggers, to investigate all mining sites where gold specks had been found. Gunn was a renowned botanist but had limited geological expertise. At the Upper Forth site, he found no gold and was dismissive of Golden Point, causing James (Philosopher) Smith to be very critical of his hasty conclusion. Gunn was more successful in finding an unknown plain behind Ulverstone that forever afterwards has carried his name.

During Nov & Dec 1861, Wm R Bell (son of Robert Bell of Bell’s Parade, Latrobe) and Francis von Bibra made their first prospecting venture inland to look for gold in the River Forth. From Mt Claude, they descended into the Forth River somewhere near the present-day Cethana Dam on the north side of the Forth Gates, where they found gold specks. Then they travelled back over Mt Claude to Lorinna and up the Forth River to Golden Point. In both places, gold specks were not present in quantities large enough to create a payable goldfield. Wm R Bell went on to become a well-known prospector, giving his name to Bell Mt near Wilmot. Again, in May 1865, the Tas Government brought Ed Hargraves, the discoverer of gold in NSW, to examine possible gold sites in the state. At the Upper Forth River, what little interest he aroused soon died out, leaving only a few abandoned prospecting holes to mark their efforts. 

This was the first of several gold rushes into the Kentish backcountry, none of which have ever found ‘the elusive golden lode’, though some prospectors spent their lifetimes looking for it. Of course, today Golden Point, the Forth Gates and all prospects of finding this gold lode are submerged beneath Lake Cethana. Around 1970/71, when the HEC engineers were boring a 2½ mile tunnel from the Wilmot River Dam through these hills into Lake Cethana, apparently they were told, ‘If you strike gold, keep quiet and keep tunnelling.’