Hill End historian completes photographic challenge

But Hill End historian Malcolm Drinkwater feels he has put the final piece in a puzzle by using the famous photographs from the Holtermann Collection to painstakingly map the businesses of the booming Hill End gold rush community of the 1870s.

Mr Drinkwater has identified the businesses in the Holtermann photographs on a series of boards and mapped their locations in the thriving, bustling Hill End that was gripped by gold fever.

He began the job in his 1982 history book Hill End Gold, and says he has now completed it.

And why?

“Because I wanted to prove the population myth, I wanted to satisfy my own curiosity and it was a challenge,” he said as he picked up the completed boards in Bathurst recently.

“Anyone could have done this 30, 40 or 50 years ago, but they did not.

“I have completed my milestone.”

The population myth, according to Mr Drinkwater, is the idea that Hill End could not possibly have been as large at its height as Mr Drinkwater believes it was.

“One of the criticisms that the powers that be have given me is that there could not have been 30,000 people in the area,” he said.

But Mr Drinkwater’s work with the Holtermann photos has identified 51 registered hotels in 1873 – enough for a sizeable population by anyone’s standards.

The photographs – taken by Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss and financed by former gold miner Bernhardt Otto Holtermann – that are enlarged and reproduced on the boards also reveal quirky details, such as the children hiding around a corner here and there so they can ensure they are captured for posterity.

Mr Drinkwater says the boards will make their home at his History Hill museum just outside Hill End.

The Hill End historian says his family museum is constantly changing and evolving and, to that end, he is interested in buying any items from the goldfields to add to his collection.

“Our priority is to collect, preserve and display pre-1900 gold rush history prioritising Australia,” he said.

Mr Drinkwater’s comprehensive history books Hill End Gold and Hill End Hearsay are available at the website www.historyhill.com.au as downloadables.