What is the mystery of Australia's "Golden Reef"?

Just as we mentioned that the United States would think of western cowboys, China would think of cheongsam and ceramics. When it comes to Australia, people will first think of the almost primitive aborigines and gold mines there, as well as Melbourne, the golden mountain on the back of sheep.

Before the arrival of European immigrants, there were about 300 thousand indigenous and Torres Strait residents in Australia. They live in most parts of Australia. 100 years ago, it was a barren grassland, and only local aborigines occasionally came here to hunt.

1788 65438+1On October 26th, a fleet anchored in Portney Bay near Sydney, Australia, bringing the first batch of immigrants: criminals exiled here from British prisons. They are the earliest pioneers in Australia. Later, immigrants came here one after another to settle down and set up pastures in areas with lush grass. It gradually developed into a small town.

Melbourne, which borders Phillip Bay in the south, is a natural harbor and a distribution center for agricultural products in Victoria. 1837 Britain decided to name this place after the then Prime Minister Melbourne.

1840 While building a road in New South Wales, a prisoner in chains tried to move a stone that was in the way to one side, but unexpectedly found a piece of gold below. When he shows off his discovery, others naturally suspect that he melted the stolen watch or chain. He was flogged by the guards and threatened with death if he told others about his discovery.

Because Australia is a place used by Britain to exile prisoners, the British colonial authorities do not want these exiles to know about the existence of gold mines. But then more and more gold evidence was found. 1842, Paviu Strzelecki, the Earl of Poland, discovered a gold-bearing timely mine in Victoria Mountain. He remained silent on the request of the Australian Governor-General, but he proposed naming the highest mountain in the Australian Alps after the Polish freedom fighter Tadeusz Kosciusko as a condition. The governor agreed to his request.

A few years later, the geologist Father Clark found a fist-sized piece of gold on Bathurst Island. He showed the gold to Governor George Grice.

1848, more gold nuggets were found. A popular delegation applied for a geological survey, but the government rejected their application on the grounds of "not disturbing the people". But soon, the silence was suddenly broken. 1851may 15, Sydney morning post published a news that a man named Hargreaves found a lot of gold on the summer river near bathurst. The news caused a sensation at that time.

Hargreaves, a blacksmith from England, first settled in bathurst, southern Australia. 1849, after the news of the discovery of gold in southern California spread all over the world, he quickly sold all his industries in Australia and boarded a ship to the United States.

There, he found that the slopes of gold mines in the Sierra Nevada mountains were strikingly similar to those in his hometown of Australia. He thought: Australian rocks must also contain gold. So he returned to Australia soon. 1851February 12, he really discovered a big gold mine in Balarat, one hundred kilometers west of Melbourne today. The news came that Melbourne residents came out of the city and rushed to the gold mining area with ox carts carrying clothing supplies; Except for two policemen, all the policemen were ordered to stay in the empty city, and they also joined the ranks of gold diggers. The gold rush swept the country quickly, and people flocked to it. In order to make a fortune, merchants collected labor from all over the world by various means, and ships full of gold diggers made Port Philip a "forest of masts". In the next seven years, more than one million gold prospectors came to this sparsely populated continent, making the population of Australia soar to nearly two million.

Gold miners from all over the world live in tents at night, dig up every inch of land during the day and wash out tiny gold sands with all available tools such as iron pots, baskets, washbasins and wooden barrels. Heavy labor and hard living conditions have caused many workers to die. The political discrimination and economic oppression of the British colonial authorities against the gold diggers caused great dissatisfaction among the workers. From 1854 to 10, gold miners organized "Ballarat Reform Alliance" and put forward a series of political and economic demands. Although the struggle was suppressed, the colonial authorities, forced by workers, gave gold miners the right to vote and cancelled the predatory "trial mining license fee" The blood and sweat of gold miners accumulated wealth for the colonists, and the golden port Melbourne developed rapidly. 185 1 year completed the first railway in China, 1880 completed the ancient Greek parliament building and international exhibition hall.

The "Golden Mountain" on the back of this sheep has several distinct characteristics: First, the gold nuggets are large, and the purity and specifications are beyond the reach of any other place in the world. Gold nuggets weighing more than 50kg can be found here, and even a gold nugget weighing nearly 100kg was found in 1858. Before that, people didn't even think that there was another place in the world where such a big gold nugget could exist. Secondly, its gold reserves and mining volume are amazing. According to records, one day in June of 1852,1/kloc-0, three ships carried seven tons of gold to England.

It is worth mentioning that during the Balarit gold rush, a large number of Chinese workers flooded into Australia. About 1857, more than 20,000 people from China crossed the ocean to look for gold there. For this historical reason, overseas Chinese call San Francisco in the United States and Melbourne in Australia the "New Golden Mountain".

The gold rush in Ballarat has just subsided. 1892, a new discovery was made in Kurgadi, Western Australia, which attracted worldwide attention. According to legend, the big piece of gold there is like being put on the ground. Farmers Bailey and Ford were the first discoverers. They happened to find it in order to track down the thief who stole the animal. One day they picked up nearly 15 kilograms of gold on the ground. A new round of gold rush began again, and gold diggers from all over the world immediately flocked to Kurgadi.

Lewis lasseter, a sailor from Victoria, left the ship where he worked around this time. At the suggestion of an old friend, he went to the MacDonald Mountains in central Australia, eager to find rich ruby deposits there.

According to his estimation, the mcdonnell Mountains extend all the way to the seaside, but he has struggled for more than forty days in the bushes and boundless desert, and still hasn't seen the sea. He walked to the rest of a mountain range, and when he looked up, he could see nothing but the mountain. A few miles away, he could see nothing but the red cliff. But the goddess of fortune seems to like him very much, and at the same time, she doesn't give him gems, but also compensates him in other ways. One day, he found a pile of neatly arranged stones, which seemed to be used for the upcoming road construction. But after looking carefully, he noticed that the color of the stone was strange, and it was green. At the same time, he also saw that the road was not being built here, but the structure of these stones was naturally so strange. He took some stones and split them-there was a thin layer of gold inside! He ran excitedly along this rock peak for several miles until the rock disappeared underground. What he found was a real Huang Jinguo!

He walked nonstop in the desert for several days, but he couldn't find horse feed, and the horse soon died. He walked on alone. In order to save energy to carry water and food, he had to give up a lot of gold and take only a few. A few days later, the water was finally finished, and he was still turning endlessly in the sand dunes.

God won't close one door, but he will open another. An Afghan saved him. When he woke up, he found himself in a tent. A few days later, he recovered quickly under the care of a topographic surveyor named Harding, who had studied his dike samples. Harding was very excited about this discovery. He urged lasseter to tell him where the reef was and asked to go treasure hunting with him.

1900, they set off with a group of camels loaded with materials and equipment. Lasseter rediscovered his golden reef. According to the general law of this discovery, the two men inserted a stake in the ground to delimit their "share". Harding roughly measured the reef, which was about 15 meters long and 4 meters wide at its widest point, with some places protruding from the ground by two meters. They went home with a certain number of samples.

A few weeks later, they returned to the camp. Then Harding found that his watch was 75 minutes slow, on the one hand, because he didn't know when it began to slow down, on the other hand, he used this watch to position himself. So they realized that they had returned to the state when they set out a few months ago: they still didn't know the location of the Golden Reef. However, it is impossible to go back. First, the supplies were almost cut off, and then there was no money in the pocket. There is only one possibility to find the golden reef: find someone with strong funds to do it again.

But at this time, people are busy in the nearby Kurgadi and Karl Gulkin mining areas. No prospector is willing to give up the wealth he has determined in front of him and go to a distant desert to find a gold reef with unclear location. Although they showed gold samples everywhere, no one was interested.

In the desert, Harding's unlucky pocket watch slowed down, which cost weeks of hard work. This mistake has left lasseter with no peace.

19 16, the treasure hunt has finally turned around. The Australian government decided to invest in finding the golden reef, and they learned about it through Harding. But unfortunately, the two camel expeditions they sent not only failed to find the golden reef, but also were attacked by the aborigines, which caused heavy losses. World war I1914-1918, this matter has come to an end for the time being.

Lasseter, who couldn't resist the temptation of gold, appeared in the headquarters office of McDonald's in Sydney on the first day of 1930, which is an influential workers' organization in Australia. He asked to talk to john ashbery, chairman of the trade union.

During the conversation, lasseter told Bailey the story of Golden Reef and asked the government to provide financial support for his action plan. Bailey began with a grain of salt, but after sending someone to investigate the matter, from the analysis of topographic surveyor Harding and the dike samples entrusted by him, it was found that lasseter's statement was in line with the facts. In addition, a geological expert confirmed that it is indeed possible that the large ore belt in Karguli extends all the way to the middle of Australia, and the Golden Reef is exposed in lasseter. John ashbery, chairman of the Australian trade union, was finally moved by lasseter's sincerity. He decided to invest in a joint organization to look for the world's largest gold mine-the missing Golden Reef. John ashbery also specially looked for relevant personnel to calculate, and according to the analysis, he came to the conclusion that the Golden Reef was worth 2 billion dollars. Such a sum of gold can save Australia from the global economic crisis.

Within a few weeks, "China-Australia Gold Exploration Company" was established. The Government of New South Wales promises to provide railway transportation, reserve fuel, oil, food and equipment free of charge, and the Australian Government promises to give all possible support. At this time, a generous donation was also sent from England: a six-wheeled off-road truck was used to transport the expedition in the desert. In addition, there is a plane for them to use, and lasseter can use it to observe near the Golden Reef.

The team found an experienced guide, Buck. In July 1930, 1 1, the investigation activities officially started. They wandered in the desert for nearly five months, but found nothing. The members of the expedition began to get impatient. They kept asking lasseter. Finally, one night, at a loss, lasseter escaped from the expedition.

It was mid-June+February in 5438, the hottest season in Australia. The guide Buck led his team deeper and deeper into the desert. Buck didn't understand how lasseter could survive after fleeing the team without a large amount of water reserves and water sources.

In the middle of the desert, they found lasseter's footprints. A few days later, they found another saddle. There is a long-extinguished fire beside the saddle. Buck rummaged through the fire and found nothing. But when he checked the saddle cushion, he found a note, which was scrawled and almost illegible. The above is lasseter's account. When he came here, the camel ran away with the food bag, and he was desperate. At the end of the note: "Dig at a place 10 feet from the fire." But there is nothing there. As Dambach walked on, he found a sentence engraved on the rubber tree: "Dig 5 feet deep." Buck dug up an empty rusty 5-pound jar.

They followed in lasseter's footsteps for several days, and finally ended up in the camp of a primitive nomadic tribe. After tracking the tribe for 30 miles, Buck met a group of natives on the third night. There are about thirty of them. They asked the aborigines about the whereabouts of lasseter. An old aborigine with a long beard whispered to Buck that the white man was dead.

The next morning, the old man took Buck into the withered bush. In front of him lay the body of lasseter, next to an empty revolver and his drill. Under the ash pile, Buck found some charred pieces of paper in the soil, which were letters with few lines. Judging from these letters, lasseter was blind some time before his death. Buck just found out that some women in this tribe use lasseter's family photos as headdresses. He buried lasseter and scribbled the name of the deceased on the bark of a nearby oak tree. Because of lasseter's death, the investigation was inconclusive.

193 1 year, another expedition went to lasseter to look for the golden reef. They found lasseter's diary in a cave in the winter canyon of Peterman Ridge. From this diary, they learned about lasseter's last treasure hunt. "I set up a fence around the timely mining area and marked the exact location of the Golden Reef on the map. The map is in my wallet. I buried my wallet in the sand. At 0/0 feet away from the camp fire/kloc-0, my camel fled there, and I left a backpack pad there ... I photographed the sign of the golden reef with my name and date on it and everything else. I put three rolls of film into an empty 5-pound jar and buried it in the sand dunes. "

He went on to write that he seldom found anything to eat in 78 days. He lived with the aborigines and gradually lost his sight. His last words were ... eat ripe figs ... and it's over. A few days before his death, he also carved a sentence on the trunk of a rubber tree with a knife: "Don't dig." With these questions, the expedition searched the sand for months, but still found nothing.

To this day, some treasure hunters are still obsessed with the Golden Reef in lasseter, and the search continues. Some of them went bankrupt, some were driven out of their wits, and some people were still chanting "Golden Reef" to their death.

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However, there are exceptions to everything, there are lucky people, and some people have achieved unexpected success. Although what they found may not be gold, the harvest is still huge. The adventure of the explorer Stanley Hilditch proved this point. A few years ago, when Hilditch was roaming in Western Australia, he found a "holy mountain" of indigenous people in the wilderness1100km north of Perth. They call it "Whale Back Mountain" according to its shape. The mountain is 220 meters high and 5 miles long. After investigation, Hilditch made a sensational discovery: "Holy Mountain" is a large piece of pure iron ore! He immediately took the dike samples to Perth for analysis, and the results showed that there was 68.8% iron content. Since then, Shengshan, with 654.38 billion tons of iron ore, has become one of the largest iron mines in the world. 1967 On April 10, five largest international mining and metallurgy companies signed a cooperation contract for mining minerals. At present, "Whale Back Mountain" is the main raw material supplier of Japanese steel industry.

For treasure hunters, maybe this is just a comfort. However, iron ore can't replace gold after all, so when can people really find the "golden reef"?