Cortona has purchased the horse drawn Gold Escort coach which is believed to have been used to transfer gold and cash between Araluen, Majors Creek and Braidwood between about 1855 and 1875. The company has generously agreed to pay for the restoration and conservation of the carriage to its original working condition. It will be installed as a central exhibit in the museum in a few months time, using display material donated by the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. The coach will be fully operational allowing it to participate in the annual heritage parade and other public events.
"The Braidwood goldfields of Jembaicumbene, Majors Creek and Araluen were the richest of the NSW gold rush era", commented Cortona's Managing Director Peter van der Borgh. "During the latter half of the 19th Century, many thousands of men and women recovered over one million ounces of gold from the region."
"Such an era is bound to harbour countless tales of endeavour, with few being more legendary than that of Ben Hall and the Clarke gang's attempt to hold up the gold escort at Majors Creek" he said.
"Cortona is delighted to be able to acquire, restore and donate such an important artefact of local history to the Braidwood Museum where it can be shared by all."
Shortly after gold was discovered near Major's Creek in 1851, a flood of prospectors arrived to stake their claims. The wealth generated on the goldfields also attracted people who were prepared to take enormous risks to steal the gold from miners both on the fields and en-route to bigger centres. An armed Gold Escort was established within a few years of the gold discoveries to protect the prospector's interests, and comprised a privately contracted carriage in which a gold bullion safe, a cash safe and a book with a register of the property on board were carried.
The escort was generally in the charge of a professional driver with an armed trooper beside him and two more on the back of the carriage. Four additional armed mounted troopers travelled ahead of and behind the vehicle. The gold safe and cash box were securely bolted to the floor of the carriage.
In Braidwood, the escort would travel every week or so between Araluen, Major's Creek and Braidwood where it would meet the stage coach travelling to Goulburn or Queanbeyan, and these would also have been heavily armed.
In March 1865, the bushranger Ben Hall and his gang rode to Braidwood and joined with notorious local Tom Clarke in holding up the gold escort as it travelled up the hill to Majors Creek carrying a large sum of gold belonging to an Araluen gold buyer Mr Blatchford. Four troopers accompanied the coach, and after a vicious fight managed to hold off the attackers but one trooper, Constable Kelly, was injured. Inspector Orridge rode out from the temporary police barracks at Tidmarsh to assist. The bushrangers fled into the bush.
Many gold escort coaches were two wheeled vehicles but the Braidwood vehicle was required to pass up the treacherously steep track to Majors Creek, where a two wheeled cart would have been liable to tip up. The Braidwood coach has four heavy wheels and a lightweight dog-cart style body, making it fast and stable, and the bullion safe was concealed in the back compartment.
This vehicle is believed to have been used in Braidwood from the 1850s to the 1870s, probably in the ownership of the Malone family who operated one of the stage coach services from Braidwood. It then went to Goulburn where it was used as a light delivery vehicle for about 50 years, finally being purchased in 1965 for an historical collection in rural NSW. It is in remarkably original order despite some minor modifications.
The Braidwood Museum has acquired several important items over the past two years which are enlivening it's important local history collection, including a rare ceramic spoon from the personal dinner service of Quong Tart, the "Perseverance" wool wagon which carted Braidwood wool to coastal steamers in the 1890s, and a fine collection of Chinese blanc de chine libation dishes.