...a place in the KellyGang story
Areas
First licensed to John Brock (6,000 acres)
In 1876 the license was owned by John Pearson Rowe and David Edmund Stodard , ? acres, £171/5 half year license fee
Where did the name Gobur come from
The original aboriginal owners
The first selectors
The Alexandra Times set out the story of Godfrey's Creek, in 1870 called Gobur, from the time of a classic gold rush with all the initial excitement of a new field.
As time went bye the community of tents was replaced by more and more woden buildings.
Gobur was a hard living community, but it soon developed many of the trimings of community, including hotels, shops, a school and church.
Soon the surface mining was replaced by companies who followed the gold underground.
The mines needed machinery and men who worked in
shifts and for wages.
Often the gold in a mine would suddenly run out.
Some of the mine owners made a fortune, many of the minersstruggled to put food on the table.
A similar story is often told in history books, but there are few other contempory accounts.
Follow the Gobur blogg as it tells the communities story
(Alexandra25/6/1869) (2/7/1869) (16/7/1869) (13/8/1869) (3/9/1869) (10/9/1869) (28/1/1870) (29/7/1870) (8/9/1871) (26/4/1872) (7/6/1872) (21/9/1872) (26/10/1872) (10/5/1873) (30/8/1873) (11/10/1873) (8/11/1873) (7/11/1874) (6/2/1875) (13/2/1875) (27/2/1875) (3/7/1875) (7/8/1875) (21/8/1875) (28/8/1875) (18/9/1875) (25/9/1875) (9/10/1875) (16/10/1875) (23/10/1875) (6/11/1875) (13/11/1875) (12/8/1876) (28/4/1877) (16/6/1877) (30/4/1880) (21/5/1880)
Where was the gold field. How was it laid out, details of the mines.
(Alexandra11/6/1869)
The gold rush to Godfreys Creek started in early 1869. the field was discovered by Mr Pennington
The town was laid out by Mr Thompson , the surveyor. The lay out of the town described.
population - at least 1200. It had been 400 a month or so before.
(Alexandra11/6/1869)
The Godfrey's Creek Standard was first printed in September 1869
Wesleyan church
Catholic Church
Races (Alexandra10/2/1871) (Alexandra24/3/1871)
The police court met in Gobur
Burns store
State School
Large numbers left for the Archeron rush in 1870
Atleast by 1872 the Gobur mining field had gone from a gold rush with lots of small scale operators to one or two large scale industrial mines.
The main mine was the New Gobur Company. Its six owners employed large scale machinery to extract gold ore from deap underground. The miners worked foe wages in shifts 24 hours a day. Other mines in town were the Triumph and the Victory. A few other miners went over the old diggings and found a few crumbs (Alexandra27/9/1873)
Population employed in area in 1873, 400
Gobur was a small rural community by the late 1870s, but in the great days of Godfrey's Creek it had twice the population of Alexandra. Its name changed to Gobur in 1870
It had been a gold mining field. O'Callaghan , Rennie, F Lund, Palmer, Doyle (Alexandra30/4/1880) (Alexandra21/5/1880)
Purcell , Wedel (Alexandra18/6/1880)
Alexandra and Yea Standard, Gobur, Thornton and Acheron Express covered some matters relating to the town
On the KellyGang's fastest route from Greta to Seymour. (RC2936)
the Kellys stuck up Messrs Stoddart and Rowe's station, near Alexandra, where
they remained all night. Mr Stoddart escaped by swimming the river, and took
the information into Alexandra.(Argus14/12/78)
allegation was false (Argus16/12/78) (Argus16/12/78)
Where the KellyGang in the Blue Range between Cobur and Longwood before the Euroa robbery ? (Argus17/12/78)
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11-feb-12
Enjoy this wonderful part of our history, but Please respect the privacy of the current owners