O'DWYER'S STAMP BATTERY AND ASSOCIATED DAM

The site contains the remains of a stamp battery and associated dam. The site contained a number of nineteenth and twentieth-century artefacts including late nineteenth century glass, ceramic and metal items. 

 

The battery was likely constructed prior to 1895. Snoek describes the site as a 10-head-stamp battery. When surveyed by Andrew Long and Associates a smaller 5-head stamp battery was identified. Snoek’s report dates the operational period as between 1895 and 1905.  

The stamp battery and associated dam is of local historical significance.

The Stamp Battery and Associated Dam site is of historical significance for its association with late 19th and early 20th century small scale gold mining in regional Victoria. 

Gold mining in Fosterville can be characterised as a landscape of boom and bust. Many of the companies were small scale, made very little money, and the Fosterville area was colloquially referred to as the “Poor Man’s Goldfield” (Snoek 1988). Gold miners had to rely on the resources in their immediate vicinity, and the use of pug and hewn timber logs to create the foundation for the stamp battery, lends to this notion. There is no water race or creek within close proximity to the site, so miners would have had to rely on water that they collected to operate the stamp battery. The site is representative of this adaptation to the landscape and the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the local gold miners. Insight into the miners’ lives and the operation of small scale gold mining in regional areas can be gained from this site.