Mining has been essential to the growth of the Australian economy as well as satisfying the demand of society by supplying raw metals and minerals for production of goods for use in society. Over the past three centuries, Australia has experienced mining booms across cities and towns, as well as significant developments in mining methods which has made Australia an efficient mining country. Ballarat, derived from "Balla" "Arat", Aboriginal meaning for "camping place", is one city of which has seen this mining outbreak in early years, located near the Yarrowee River and among the lower western Great Dividing Range, Victoria's largest inland city experienced one of the great mining booms of Australia.
Ballarat was one of the first early cities to be exposed …show more content…
The simple and widely-known technique of panning involved the use of a pan in which sand, soil or gravel and water were swirled around and out of the pan and leaving alluvial gold inside the pan. This technique was inefficient thus other more effective tools such as the cradle was developed. The cradle was essentially a large wooden tool where soil was placed into the hopper, a steel mesh separated the gold from debris such as rocks. Water would be added to the hopper and the entire tool would be cradled to wash away soil from the gold. Shaft mining was also introduced as a more complicated method of mining when gold became scarce in shallow depths under the surface. Mine shafts would require the excavation of fifty cubed metres of soil with shafts created with depths of up to fifty metres. A pulley system and a minimum of three workers were required to work on the mine shaft, first miner would shovel soil into a bucket, another would operate the pulley system to transport the buckets to the surface where one or two other miners would use the cradle to separate the gold from the