-----Original Message----- From: Peter Flecker [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, 10 February 2001 10:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Hodgkinson Goldfields At 07:50 PM 2/10/01 +1100, boggan kathryn wrote: >While researching my mother's great grandfather I saw >on his marriage certificate he was married at >Hodgkinson"s Goldfields Beaconsfield. He was a >publican there. I have tried to find this place on a >map but no luck. Does anyone now where it may have >been and any thing about it? Gold was found by JV Mulligan 17.1.1876 on the Hodgkinson R. N.W. of present day Mareeba. Hodgkinson R. was named after W.O.Hodgkinson who was around at the time but also on the early part of the Burke and Wills expedition, Mining Warden of the Charters Towers Gold Field and founder editor of the Mackay Mercury. Anyway if you look at a map of the northern part of the Atherton tableland you may find the Hodgkinson River. It is usually an oversized puddle. That is all you will probably find of the area. According to Glenville Pike's self published "Pioneers' Country" 1976, "Townships flourished around the principal reefs. Few people now remember or have ever heard of the Townships of Wellesley, Waterford, Watsonville (not the one near Herberton), Stewart Town, Union Town, Beaconsfield, New Northcote, Old Northcote, which once flourished but died as the gold ran out." British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone became Lord Beaconsfield. The Principal Towns on the Goldfield were Thornborough and Kingsborough. I can't find the reference but as I remember it in one of Pikes books the last surviving town was Thornborough, the school closed in 1923 which was the end of the Goldfield although with the 1930's depression the General Grant and Tyrconnell mines had on on again off again existence, the Tyrconnel finally closing in 1942. Since Tyrconnell was mentioned I would like to point out that today it is operated as a Heritage tourism venture with working quartz crushing battery. They have a web page at http://www.tyrconnell.com.au/ Phillip Charlier, http://www.infocus.to/irvinebank