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Water races are the most common horizontal linear feature you can see across the Kiandra landscape. Others are old roadways and tracks. Historic gold mining was a water intensive process and water races were the main method by which miners either intercepted or drew water to their mining claims if they were not working adjacent a river.

The linear feature you will be walking along for this section of the track is one of four races used to deliver water from Bullocks Head Creek in the north to Pollocks Gully in the south (where you will be walking). One of these races has been called ‘Mr Mark’s water race’ but it was probably constructed well before Mr Marks was active in Kiandra as the Manager of the Kiandra Gold Dredging Company in the 1900s. Mr Mark's however, may well have used the water race for his mining ventures at a later date.
The four races were probably built one after the other, each to capture the water leaking from the one above it. The sections of metal you may come across as you walk were placed in gully of the race to stop water leaking into the ground.

In an oral history recording with Klaus Hueneke later day Kiandra resident Bill Hughes, recounts the different methods by which water races were constructed; ‘Races were sometimes dug using a bucket or scoop pulled by a horse. However, the more common method was by pick and shovel.’

Most of the races at Kiandra were constructed by miners of European or Australian origin although Hughes notes ‘that a Chinese gang worked on the Three Mile Dam – about seventy of them there, I understand.’ In setting out the races, miners ‘used what they call a triangle. It’s just a triangle with a weighted plumb bob suspended in the middle of it. All they needed was about 1 inch in 6 feet as long as the water would run.’ Many of the races at Kiandra ‘were only surface races to catch the melting snow.’

Races had certainly been constructed in Kiandra by July 1861, only a year after the start of the gold rush. In January 1862 a notorious court case ‘Hawkins v Cooper’ documented a number of serious allegations of corruption against Sub-Commissioner Cooper including assisting in cases of water theft or denial based on the supply of water from water races. As the Sub-Gold Commissioner of Kiandra, Cooper was supposed to regulate and licence many of the activities of the gold field in a fair and impartial manner, but unfortunately seems to have been quite corrupt.

Image by Damian De Marco.

Site 12 is a section of the impressively large water race leading into New Chum from Three Mile Dam.

Hydraulic sluicing with water supplied from Three Mile Dam lent a new lease of life to mining on New Chum. In 1878, when mining prospects on New Chum looked bleak, only 200 ounces of gold had been recovered from New Chum and only 100 miner's rights issued for Kiandra. In 1883 when the Three Mile Dam was supplying water to New Chum 223 Kiandra miner's rights were issued and in 1885 1,065 ounces of gold were recovered from New Chum.

Pearson (1979) records the following impressive details regarding the capacity, construction and ensuing production enabled by Three Mile Dam;

'Completed in 1882, the dam wall was 45 feet high and 500 feet long. Water was led to New Chum Hill by a 4 mile long race, 2ft, 6 inches x 4 feet in dimensions, which emptied into a 153,000 gallon reservoir above the sluicing. The water was then fed into 20 inch pipes which led to a 14 inch nozzle at the face of the open cut. 700 feet of sluice boxes were laid in the tail race to capture the gold washed from the face. Hydraulic sluicing commenced in May 14, 1883, and was continued day and night in three shifts. The nozzle removed up to 60 tons of dirt per hour, and worked for 3,100 hours, removing 18,000 tons of dirt up until December, when the sluice boxes were ‘cleaned up’, giving a satisfactory return of gold. The reason for ceasing working was that the Three-Mile Dam was empty.'

‘In the following year the Kiandra Gold Mining Company had enough water for 2,997 hours of hydraulic sluicing, washing 169,651 tons of dirt for a return of 933 ounces of gold, and in 1885 the yield amounted to 1,065 ounces. The Three-Mile Dam wall was raised by 4 feet and the races were enlarged in 1886, which allowed two nozzles to be operated for 413 hours before the water supply gave out.'

In spite of the dam, water demand often outstripped supply and increasingly the amount of overburden that needed to be moved to access New Chum's gold meant that the usefulness of hydraulic sluicing was declining. On New Chum tunnelling was again relied on and in Kiandra's river flats dredging became a last ditched effort to recover profitable gold returns.

Image courtesy of the Department of Industry and Investment. HL0041 Box 41-81 slide 41 D.M. Hydraulic sluicing - Kiandra, mid winter - good - Kerry Co. 308 George St Sydney