Gold's future gleams |
| GOLD has been running in the Meads family's veins for about as long as Les Meads can
remember. His grandfather and father were involved in Gympie's gold mines and Les, now 83, worked for several years at Cracow's gold treatment plants. But he's still amazed at the new millennium resurgence in the region's gold industry. Gympie Gold Pty Ltd is striking paydirt in old, disused mines which no one thought could be worked again. The high-tech methods the company uses today are a world away from the tough work of yesteryear's miners, but Les still cannot believe the once-flooded shafts are working again.
"He'd also haul cord wood to Weller's Bakehouse – it was cut in two-foot lengths and it'd sell for so much a cord," he said. Les has fond memories of the bakehouse where baker Fred Weller would mix the dough in huge troughs overnight ready for the next morning's bake. The horse team was pastured on the Meads' family farm – 32ha at Monkland, separated by the North Coast rail line. As youngsters he and his four brothers and sisters attended the Monkland school. Les spent several years in the air force as well as working at the Cracow gold treatment plant. His last and most enduring job was as an engineer/driver with the railway and he retired in 1982 after 32 years.
He remembers the area when it used to be a little creek just down from Archibold and Runge where he would work treating the gold mine tailings with cyanide, shovelling sand into trucks for transport to the treatment vats. He used to get paid six shillings a day working a 44-hour week. In those days the mullock heaps were a constant feature of the Gympie landscape and children would climb them and slide down the sides on sheets of iron. |
A capsule of our country's spiritThe day Uncle Bert flew inWhat work really meansWhat's in a name |
Les
said his father used to work in the mines before he was old enough to recall many details
but he will always remember his dad's team of 15 draught horses which used to haul timber
to Gympie's mills. They are pictured at right, hauling a boiler from the Gympie gold mine.
Les, right,
says the biggest change he's seen in Gympie involves the city's landmark duckponds at the
southern entrance to the CBD.