North Queensland, Australia has two distinct climates. These are hot and dry, and hot and humid, so it never ceases to amaze me that men and some women will walk across the hottest, driest and most fly ridden landscape on earth in search of gold, it is without doubt a real testament to the toughness and resilience of the early explorers. Now I’ve written about the gold fever before in my story “Is Ravenswood, Queensland’s next gold rush destination?”https://digitalswaggie.com.au/?p=31(opens in a new tab)
This story starts just after that time when the gold in them there hills was getting difficult to find and required more investment in stamping batteries and other mining infrastructure. During this time more and more prospectors came to the fields, but those with an adventurous spirit went looking for bigger, better and easier deposits.
The name Hidden Valley alway intrigued me, questions that popped into my head were things like “Why was it hidden?”, “Who hid it?” and “If they wanted it to stay hidden why did they add it to the map?” Now I tried to answer these questions a number of years ago, but due to an overheating problem in my four wheel drive I decided that going down fifty kilometres of dirt road might not be a good idea so I nursed my injured vehicle home to Townsville.
A couple of years later I decided to try again, this time the adventure started with the drive up the Mount Spec road from the Bruce Highway to the village of Paluma. I have mentioned this road before in my stories of Crystal Creeks. However, the road up the range is actually the last part of this story. It all began when the above mentioned gold miners were looking for the tributary head waters of the rivers that fed into the Burdekin River in the hope of discovering more alluvial gold.
As it turns gold wasn’t discovered in those hills, but Tin was, and Tin was a valuable commodity in the heat of the Industrial Revolution. It was first commercially mined in North Queensland is what is now called the “Star River”. The Star River is west of Townsville just over the Great Dividing Range and about a hundred or so kilometres north of Ravenswood. Unfortunately it is not accessible today as it is in the middle of the Army’s live firing range. It is one of the reasons why the Harvey Range crossing was built and the Port of Townsville constructed. The tin prices were high and many miners changed from Gold to Tin mining. The settlement of Ewan near the Star River was established, which consisted mainly of bark huts. Ewan provided a staging point for miners exploring further North.
Prospectors used aboriginal walking trails to move around the country as these often led to water holes, a much needed resource for explorers. It was in 1876 during one of these expeditions that tin was discovered north of the Star River in what was to be called Cloudy Creek. Today Cloudy Creek feeds into the Paluma Lake (Dam).
The interesting thing about exploring these places is that you get to see the topology of the land and often sit scratching your head. “They did what?” “here in this country, WTF”.
One of the prominent families to exploit this area was the Benham family who in 1889 found a clearing on top of a hill and established a small tent village, they called this village “Cloudy Clearning”, no doubt due to the misty weather that greeted them. They managed to build a track from the tent village through to Cloudy Creek. In 1934 Cloudy Clearing was gazetted as Paluma Village and the road that goes out to both Hidden Valley and the Paluma Dam is the same track established all those years ago.
In order to maintain their tin mining interests the Benham family prospected many of the rivers and valleys in the area, eventually naming some of the rivers and peaks, one such peak was named Mount Spec after speculating on what they might find there. They named a creek “Four Ton Creek” after extracting four tons of tin ore. While they may have been great miners and adventurers, as you can see they had limited creativity for place names.
Around 1901 most of the alluvial tin had been extracted and tin prices were declining. The cost of extracting the ore and transporting it to Townsville was becoming prohibitive. However, the natural beauty of the place was becoming known to more and more people who recognised the opportunity to escape the oppressive humidity on the coast for the cooler mountain air and tropical forests.
At about this time the Benham family moved operations and established a store and village at Hidden Valley. It was through Hidden Valley and out to Ewan that most travellers accessed the mining areas, so they established a store and soon a pub was set up as well.
In 1913 the Benham family discovered tin in a rock seam just behind the Hidden Valley pub and brought a mining battery and began extracting tin once again. This continued until the first world war, when tin prices again dropped.
These photos show the buildings that currently exist at Hidden Valley, there is quite of lot of cattle throughout the area. There is an honest beauty about these areas, knowing the history makes travelling even more interesting.
There is a dichotomy between the cool forested areas around the Paluma National Park and the sparse dry areas west of the Great Dividing Range. They are connected through the rivers and creeks that flow down from the tropical rain forests and breath life into an otherwise lifeless parched land.
Hidden valley is one of those areas that if you blink you miss it, and you might think it is hardly worth the effort. But like all good mysteries finding out what drove people there and what “Hidden” gems lie in not only its unique topology but its vibrant history makes the adventure even more interesting and exciting.
I’m definitely going back to explore more of this amazing place, may be on my motor bike so I can explore some of the smaller roads and tracks and hunt down some of those old stamping batteries and mining sites. But only during the winter time when temperatures get below 30 degrees centigrade.
Happy and safe travels – Digital Swaggie:)
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