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Martin Prisk Pascoe on arrival in victoria started my Australian Pascoe line. Probably due to his mining past he encouraged his decendants to either continue or develop an interest in his profession, but in Australia it was Gold Mining.
Below is a map depicting his and his immediate family's movements.
Just click HERE or on map to enlarge.
BALLARAT
Ballarat is Victoria's largest inland city. It started back in 1838 when a squatter called William Yuille camped on the shores of the Black Swamp, now known as Lake Wendouree. "Balla" "Arat" was derived from the meaning, resting or camping place.
Gold was discovered at Poverty Point in 1851 by John Dunlop and James Regan who found a few ounces while panning in the Canadian Creek. By the following year there were around 20,000 diggers searching in the shafts of the Ballarat Goldfields. Due to this population explosion, Ballarat was proclaimed a town in 1852. By 1855, Ballarat was a municipality, a borough by 1863 and a city in 1870.
In the year 1858 the second largest gold nugget ever found in Australia, the "Welcome Nugget" was found at Bakery Hill, Ballarat. By the 1860's, the prospect of finding gold in Ballarat East had nearly diminished. By this time, many of the alluvial mines in that area had declined and companies were formed to start much deeper mining in the West and South of Ballarat. To establish these mines, heavy equipment was needed. Foundries such as the Phoenix Foundry were established to cope with this demand. By now, the town was supported by industries such as flour mills and agriculture related companies.
CRESWICK
Located on the Midlands Highway, a scenic fifteen minutes drive north from Ballarat, is the picturesque and historic township of Creswick. Prior to white settlement the area was inhabited by the Wemba-Wemba people. The first European settlers were the Creswick brothers who established a large sheep station in 1842.
The first gold was discovered at the future townsite in late 1851 or early 1852. 11 metric tonnes of gold would ultimately be extracted. A major contributor was the Madame Berry mine, reputedly the richest in Australia. The first hotel was licensed in 1853 and a townsite was surveyed in 1854; the year the rush peaked with some 25 000 on the local fields.
When the superficial gold was garnered, attention was turned to the deeper channels, particularly by the Chinese who, in the late 1850s, established their camp (known as 'Chinatown') on the land now occupied by Calambeen Park.
From the early 1870s to the early 1880s, deep-lead mining was undertaken to penetrate the basalt (formed by lava) and access the old gold-bearing river beds underneath. Once a reef had been reached it was pursued for kilometres underground. One such mine was the Australasia No.2, which became the site of the country's worst goldmining accident in 1882 when the shaft flooded killing 22 men. Early in the 20th century hydraulic sluicing and dredging were utilised.
It is difficult to imagine that during the goldrush of the 1850's this peaceful, unpretentious township had a bustling population in excess of 25,000 eager to make their fortune. Today the remains of that era are evident all around Creswick, offering visitors a rich and varied experience of one of Australia's first gold mining districts.
As the old forests were destroyed by the mining, Creswick became the site of the state's first tree plantation in the 1880s. One reputable and fine achievement of Creswick has been the pioneering of landcare. The Victoria School of Forestry, which opened in 1910, established many of the pine plantations which surround the town today.
Creswick today is a small but bustling, self sufficient rural town possessing convenience, natural beauty, art & culture.
MURCHISON
<>The Aboriginal Ngooraialum tribe (about 200 strong) occupied the land around Murchison before being devastated and dispossessed by the arrival of Europeans.
The first white men in the district belonged to the party of explorer Thomas Mitchell which crossed the Goulburn River to the south at what became Mitchellstown. The first Europeans to pass through the future town site were probably the drovers Joseph Hawdon and Charles Bonney who were overlanding sheep and cattle from Mitchellstown to Adelaide along the river system in 1838. <>The site became a river crossing used by gold miners traveling between the Bendigo and Beechworth fields in the early 1850s. Later a hotel and a punt service over the Goulburn River was established.
A township, the first in the Lower Goulburn Valley, began to develop around the crossing which was surveyed and named in 1854 after a Captain John Murchison. A period of fairly rapid growth ensued. A truly spectacular event in the town's history was a meteor shower in 1969 when fragments of the rarest known type of meteorite fell over a wide area to the sound of explosions and blinding flashes of light. An American analyst discovered five chemical components found in the genes of all living matter, thereby increasing the possibility that life could develop or have developed elsewhere in the universe.
VIOLET TOWN, BOHO, WARRENBAYNE
Violet Town is on the route between Melbourne and Albury and is 150 km., north-north-east of Melbourne. It is between Euroa and Benalla and is bypassed by the Hume Freeway (and former Hume Highway) to the south.
Major Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales, passed through the Violet Town area in Spring, 1836, on his Australia Felix expedition. He noted in his account of the expedition that several streams and chains of ponds were crossed and one, from which flowers were growing, was called Violet Ponds. That site was one of two (the other being Mitchelltown) which were surveyed in 1838 as sites for townships. Violet Ponds was chosen as a site for policing the overland route to Melbourne, particularly after the Faithfull massacre in 1838.
However, the surveyed site was flood prone, and a more suitable location to the south-east was settled in 1852 for the township, by then the area was being crossed by travellers to the north-eastern gold fields. It was also known as Honeysuckle, adopting the name of Honeysuckle Creek (formerly Violet Ponds, but being noted for Banksia/honeysuckle rather than violets) and the name of the Honeysuckle pastoral run.
Gold was also an intergral part of the area in and around Violet Town as was farming and colletion of timber to be shipped to Melbourne for building. Martin Prist settling for a time in the area is further evidence of his endeavours to find wealth. A story told by my father was of a vein of that precious metal in the hills near Violet Town. It was supposedly discovered by his father or fathers father. Unfortunately, it was lost due to a bushfire that ravished the area and destroyed the landmarks.
CHILTERN
The first Europeans in the area were the party of Joseph Hawdon who was engaged in overlanding cattle to Port Phillip in 1836. He apparently shot a 'black' dingo thereabouts and Black Dog Creek was named in its honour. Consequently, this name was also applied to the settlement when it first emerged.
The first squatters took up land there in 1839 and a bush inn was established in 1844. A few other buildings developed around the hotel, although it was later transformed into a police outpost. As such it was apparently frequented by Robert O'Hara Burke, of the famous Burke and Wills expedition.
A township reserve was declared on the creek in 1851. The site was surveyed in 1853. At around this time the name of Chiltern, from the Chiltern Hills of England, had come into use. Town allotments were sold in 1854.
However, this settlement was abandoned when John Conness's discovery of the Indigo gold lead was announced in 1858. As prospectors poured into the area, a new Chiltern was established around the miner's track which ran parallel to the New Ballarat lead (now Conness St) and along the route from Beechworth to the Indigo lead (now Main St). The original Star Hotel was built at the intersection of these two routes in 1859.
In the first bloom of the rush there were allegedly some ten to twenty thousand living around the town. The local diggings turned up the largest nugget of the Ovens goldfields. However, the alluvial gold soon dwindled and attention was turned to deep quartz reef mines which required the capital of a company. Consequently the population thinned to a manageable level.
By 1865 there were about 2200 residents and 400 domiciles. Agriculture and vineyards were under way, there were two steam-powered sawmills and highly profitable quartz-reef mining was ongoing. Buildings included 12 hotels, a post office, a telegraph station, the Federal Standard newspaper office, three banks, a court, a court of mines, five insurance offices, a reading room, a coach office and a newsagency.
By 1888 there were still twelve hotels although the population had shrunk to 1243 and the number of banks to two. Gold mining continued to turn a profit until the early 20th century. The last reef was abandoned in 1911. Mine director Charles Harkin formed the Chiltern Vineyard Company in 1912 to provide employment for those made redundant.
RUTHERGLEN
Rutherglen is a small town in north-eastern Victoria, Australia, near the Murray River border with New South Wales. The town was named after the Scottish town of Rutherglen which lies just outside Glasgow.
Back in 1824 an exploration party led by Hamilton Hume and William Hovell traversed the local area on the approximate route of the present Hume Highway.
The area was first settled in 1836 by James Lindsay Brown and Thomas Clarke at Gooramadda, John Foord and John Crisp at Wahgunyah and Joseph Bould at Boorhaman.
In 1858 Gold was found in the local area at Chiltern and Cornishtown. This started a wave of prospectors sinking duffer shafts along the quartz belts. A group of Indigo diggers spent several weeks digging a hole in the heart of Rutherglen (next to where Tuilleries now stands). On Saturday, September 9th, 1860 they finally struck gold starting the 'Wahgunyah Rush'. Within weeks thousands of people moved to Rutherglen. By December of that year seventeen deep leads and seven reefs of gold had been found.
Since the Rutherglen Post Office opening on 1 November 1860, it has developed into a major wine producing area, with 17 wineries all located within a short drive from the town centre,the best of which are highly regarded by wine critics.
By the 1880's the rush had slowed a great deal, many people moved away from the area and more and more mines closed. One mine now called, 'The Great Northern' closed in 1886. Jack McKay and John Hicks purchased the site believing that they would find gold. The previous owners had abandoned the mine at 216 feet with no success. Jack and his party cleaned the old shaft and only had to dig 6 feet before finding Gold. They found a lead of fifty foot wide by three foot thick. This mine was then sold to a Ballarat company for 14,000 pounds. This became one of Victoria's largest Gold mines producing over 107,000 ounces of gold with profits exceeding 190,500 pounds. This started a second rush that lasted until World War I.
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