Gold for the Taking
Rudi Paoletti's "Gold for the Taking" book
A Pictorial history of the Heyday of the Walhalla - Wood's Point Gold Belt: 1860's - 1960's
Gold for the Taking was published for all Australians who were saddened to see our history fade away. The book compliments Rudi Paoletti's other publications and maps, as all the townships, hotels, mines, restaurants, shanty's, etc, are plotted on his maps for all to rediscover and absorb once again in our history.
During the mid to late 1850's gold miners were making their way up the Big and Goulburn Rivers striking payable ground at regular intervas. Parties of adventurous prospectors kept advancing up the wild and remote valley to the junction of two main headwater tributaries of the Gulburn River where some phenomenally rich gold was discovered in 1861. This was at what we now know as Wood's Point, named after a pioneering storekeeper of the district named Harry Wood. Prospectors eventually found their way across the Great Dividing Range and into the southern watershed where more rich gold strikes were made.
The succession of gold rushes created enormous interest in the mountainous district into which no white man, and probably few, if any Aboriginals, had ever ventured. Supply routes were established via Jamieson, Warburton, Seaton, Traralgon an Moe as thousands of people flocked to both the Upper Goulburn and the Upper Thomson watersheds. For sixty years or more from 1861 the region's population was far greater than that of today's. The best evidence to prove the existence and apprearance of these once imprtant mountain villages is in the limited photographic records that have survived time.
The publication is based purely as a pictorial history lesson not a historical text lesson.
Descriptions and dates are only added if I am sure by markings, writings, etc on the photos provided to me. However, like everything else, there may be slight errors, your contribution is always welcome.
The photos have been scanned as is, and not doctured or cleaned by computer, left in their natural state like they should be.
