North Qld Mining History Association

The last quarterly meeting of this mining history group was held in late October at the Herberton Mining Centre with about ten members in attendance.  After a quite a lot of business from the pervious meeting was sorted out, Ivan Searton presented the information he had obtained from the Qld State Archives on the old Tinaroo Tin Mines and then spoke on the history of the Tinaroo Freehold mines.  Also of interest was the news that Col Robinson was working on a study of the old mining dredges that worked on the tin fields and up at the Palmer River Goldfield.  Hopefully there will be a book about the dredges in this.  In order to build up a register of the district's pioneer mining families, it was decided to begin gathering records from the old schools of the local mining towns that would hold lists of names.  This would also be useful in tracing the movements of the families from one mining area to the next as well as been helpful to those working on their family histories.  The meeting closed with the news that Graham Byrns has a large number of old papers on the districts mines which he is willing to donate to the Association.  After the meeting, I viewed the small archive that is been built up at the Centre and it already appears quite impressive.  The next meeting will be held at the same location on the first Saturday of February.