Category - South Coast Industries

Alluvial gold was discovered in September 1851 in the Araluen Valley. Almost overnight, thousands of prospectors moved to the area.

Within a year an estimated 100,000 ozs of gold had been recovered, earning the area a reputation of being one of the richest goldfields in Australia...

Roads, railways and tramways in New South Wales - all being extended over long distances in the second half of the 18th century - required blue metal. Enormous quantities of it.

Basalt in the Bombo-Kiama area was abundant, could easily be quarried and crushed into blue metal, and could then be shipped with relative ease to major centres such as Sydney. So, from the 1880s, Bombo-Kiama became the primary source of supply of blue metal in NSW...

The history of the South Coast timber industry is particularly interesting because of the of the changes that occurred to it over that time: it was an industry that was gradually transformed from a labour-intensive, manual industry to one that became highly mechanized; it changed from being based on small, family-led enterprises to one dominated and operated by large companies; a reliance on bullocks and horses disappeared as trucks and specialist mechanical timber-getting equipment were introduced; there were significant periods of ‘boom’ and ‘bust’; and the gathering and production of some timber products simply disappeared completely over this period...

A brief history of South Coast dairying: