Sovereign Hill - Normanby Street - Chilean mill and church

The Chilean mill was a machine used on gold fields in an early period of

gold mining Gold mining is the extraction of gold resources by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. However, with the expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surfac ...

. The machine was composed of two rotating wheels that would revolve over a pan filled with gold-bearing rocks. The idea was that the wheels would break open the rocks with gold, so they could harvest gold from multiple rocks at a time. One of the earliest such machines was built in

Ballarat Ballarat ( ) is a city in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 Census, Ballarat had a population of 116,201, making it the third largest city in Victoria. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. Within months of Vi ...

in Victoria, Australia during the

Victorian gold rush The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. It led to a period of extreme prosperity for the Australian colony, and an influx of population growth and financial capita ...

and was combined with a

sluice Sluice ( ) is a word for a channel controlled at its head by a movable gate which is called a sluice gate. A sluice gate is traditionally a wood or metal barrier sliding in grooves that are set in the sides of the waterway and can be considered ...

for extracting the gold. Another such machine in Australia was used, at the Fitzroy Iron Works, to grind clay for making firebricks. The bricks were needed for repairing the many furnaces at the works. The Chilean mill, known in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

as a " trapiche," is still in use in artisanal gold mining in the

Andes Mountains The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S l ...

. In the process, the crushed rock passes over metal plates coated with mercury where the gold inclusions adhere to the mercury. The gold is recovered after the evaporation of the mercury over a fire. The mill sometimes has two wheels driven by a belt attached to a motor, or a single wheel driven by mules, oxen, or other pack animals. Working Chilean Mills can still be seen in Andacollo Chile.

References

Gold mining {{industry-stub

See also

References