Groundwater extraction on the goldfields of Victoria, Australia
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Groundwater extraction on the goldfields of Victoria, Australia Peter Davies 1 & Susan Lawrence 1 & Jodi Turnbull 1 & Ian Rutherfurd 2 & Ewen Silvester 3 & James Grove 2 & Mark G. Macklin 4 Received: 30 January 2020 / Accepted: 26 May 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Groundwater supply systems constructed by gold miners in Victoria during the nineteenth century were highly significant in the historical development of water law and water licensing in Australia. Alluvial gold mining required large volumes of water to separate gold from washdirt, but surface flows often failed in seasonally dry conditions. Drought in the mid-1860s prompted miners on the Ovens goldfield in north-east Victoria to exploit groundwater to increase supplies, despite limited scientific understanding of this resource at the time. Analysis of historical plans held by Public Records Office Victoria has revealed numerous ‘source of supply’ tunnels dug by miners to extract groundwater in the area. By the early 1880s, miners were using up to 31 ML of groundwater per day, with much of the water transferred between creek and river catchments. These activities represent an early, large-scale and significant intervention in the hydrogeological environment, several decades prior to economic development of the Great Artesian Basin in northern Australia. Understanding the nature and scale of groundwater use in this period provides vital social and historical context for modern debates about groundwater modelling, extraction and management. Keywords Australia . Groundwater development . Mining . Water supply . History of hydrogeology
Introduction Exploitation of groundwater in Australia has played a vital role in supporting irrigated agriculture and domestic water supply since the end of the nineteenth century. For many years prior to this, however, gold miners were extracting large volumes of groundwater for washing auriferous alluvium. In the early 1860s, miners on the Ovens goldfield in north-east Victoria began tapping large volumes of groundwater and diverting it between creek and river catchments to their sluicing claims. This capture and transfer of groundwater was part of the wider development of water sources in colonial Victoria during the
gold rush for mining, industrial, commercial and domestic uses. While drilling of the Great Artesian Basin from the 1880s is generally cited as the beginning of large-scale exploitation of groundwater in Australia (Blackburn 1999; Habermehl 2020; Lloyd 1988; Muir 2014; Murray 2018; O’Gorman 2012; Robertson 2020), extraction of groundwater by gold miners from the 1860s represents an earlier, significant and largely unknown intervention in the hydrogeological environment. International research on the history of groundwater has focused on a range of issues, including the widespread use of subterranean galleries (qanats in Iran) to distribute water in arid environments (Angelakis et al. 2016; Charbonnier and
* Peter Davies [email protected]
James Gr
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