1878 – Jack McDougall senior told his grandson Jack, that before the flood the river was quite a defined, deep river within the valley with spacious river flats. After the floods the river levelled out, rumbled and rumbled over rocks and boulders particularly around Shot’s Creek. The Cardrona Valley had been reshaped by nature and had become a very different landscape.
In the spring of 1878 nature reared a fierce and ugly head bringing two floods within three days. The fallout made mining in Cardrona even more difficult. These floods were massive events causing strife and hardship throughout the province. At the Lower Township the Try Again, Pirate and Empire claims completely collapsed.
The owners lost everything – all their equipment, tools and pumps. The extensive hydraulic sluicing claims at Branch Creek washed away in ruinous carnage. The Anglo-Saxon (formerly Bolton and Party) and Atlantis with many miles of headraces were utterly ruined, as were the mining paddocks, gardens and family homes close to the river. Walter Little lost a good 10 acres of his land.
The large amount of unsupported drives under the roadway and worked out areas typically eight by ten feet left “unblocked out” in the shallow workings by the Chinese miners, coupled with the honeycomb of deeper tunnels and drives by Europeans either side of the river, caused wholesale collapse and subsidence with roads and tracks being obliterated. Home and hearth did not go unmolested.
Robert Studholme’s substantial house was undermined and had to be abandoned while Mr Lafanachi’s All Nations’ Hotel decanted to such an extent that unsupported bottles slid from the shelves. It was said that in order to obtain a six pence worth one was required to take the glass in hand while filling it, for if left on the counter it would not hold a fair nobbler on account of its slant. Such devastation at this time can only be speculated upon and the hardships faced by the people of the Valley immeasurable.
The spring of 1999 brought another disasterous flood to the Valley, however times had indeed changed. Though the river engulfed roads, bridges, fields, trees and fences, most residents escaped with their homes intact.
________
First published in “Cardrona – 150 Years in the Valley of Gold” by Ray O’Callaghan.