This week I start a series of three articles on the once well-known Junction Reefs Gold Mine which was located in a cavernous narrow ravine on the Belubula River near Lyndhurst. Some people refer to it as the Belubula Dam.
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The name Belubula was derived from the local Wiradjuri tribes which means 'stony river or big lagoon'.
A man can be seen in the centre standing at the bottom of the Junction Reef's Dam which remains in place today. Some people think the man is Oscar Schulze, the civil engineer who designed and oversaw the project, however this in not the case.
The dam is very much silted up these days not having been used for over a century.
The unusually shaped cement dam at the time was deemed to be the most distinctive in New South Wales and the first multiple-arch dam in Australia. Most dams were an essential construction project and a large investment for mining companies.
The land where the Junction Reefs Gold Mine was established was once covered with random volcanoes during the Ordovician Period which lasted some 45 million years, over 488 million years ago. The long-term effect was that the area became rich in certain keenly sought-after minerals.
The area accommodated accumulations of gold, copper, silver, nickel, molybdenum, cobalt, iron, barite and even uranium, which have been or are mined in the region.
The Junction Reef Gold Mine yielded primarily gold, silver and copper. The locality is leased these days to a mining company though they are not making any use of the old dam.
Martin Sheahan first discovered gold in 1870 at nearby Mandurama Ponds Creek. This saw the formation a short time after with Martin being part of one of the mining companies.
In the early 1900s the area attracted numbers of Chinese miners who worked the alluvial gold around the Lyndhurst goldfield, wherever they thought they could find colour to eke out a living. In 1901 there were fifteen Chinese miners working near Burnt Yards.
As the mine progressed the nearby miners' settlement enlarged as miners put up more tents and rough shanties which were built of corrugated iron, timber and canvas. The mine was established a little over four miles north-west of Lyndhurst.
The Junction Reefs Gold Mine dam was commenced in 1895 and finished two years later in 1897. Water backed up the river for over one mile and it was estimated at the time to hold 542 million gallons.
This holding capacity gave the company about 16 or 17 weeks of backup water to drive the turbines should the river stop flowing, which was possible but rarely happened. The engineer for the mining company was Carl Oscar Schulze, though he preferred to be called Oscar Shulze.
Oscar Shulze had been born on 1st August, 1848, in Leipzig in Germany. He married Helen Forsyth, a Melbourne lass on July 29, 1885, in Sydney and later had five children.
Oscar lived Switzerland for a while before sailing to the United States to work on engineering projects there.
He then went back to Germany to Leipzig designing bulk grain storage units with specialised elevators.
He was appointed an agent for the Leipzig Printing Press Company and sailed again to America before departing for Australia, arriving on the steamship City of Sydney on September 1, 1879.
The Pacific Mail Company's steamship City of Sydney usually carried the English mails.
The multiple arch dam, 60 feet high and almost 430 feet wide, was constructed from bricks and 6,000 yards of concrete, the latter used for the foundations of the dam as well as the outside walls.
The bricks were required for the buttresses and arches. With a supply of good quality clay to make the bricks the company advertised for brick makers to make their bricks on the site.
