Weighing the Riches

Throughout the nineteenth century the various goldfields near Rockley all experienced a number of rushes as miners reacted to new discoveries and went in search of the latest Eldorado.

Stores were established on the larger fields to supply miners with life’s necessities and where miners could sell their gold. Scales such as this one would have sat upon the shop’s counter. As the scales were designed to be dismantled and stored within the drawer during transit, they were also carried around the fields by gold-buyers.

Unlike miners, gold-buyers in NSW during the nineteenth century were not required to obtain a license so it is not clear when or which Thomas Hackney used these scales. The three Hackney brothers were substantial land owners in the Rockley district but the youngest brother, Thomas Paine, was not known as buyer of gold. Thomas Charles a son of Henry Hunt Hackney is one possible owner, as is his cousin William Hackney Wong. William followed his father, Ah Sat Wong who owned at store at Tuena by establishing a store in Burraga. As William also held the mail contracts for Isabella and Arkstone he was well-placed to buy gold at his shop or at the goldfields.

When William closed his Burraga shop in 1912, did these scales go to the property of Henry Hunt and Thomas Charles Hackney, Buck Burraga? (After all, the homestead was said to be crammed with curios.) Or did the cousins, Thomas and William, work together buying gold from miners seeking their fortune around Rockley?

These scales weighed up the riches miners wrought from the earth and their ownership has in turn unearthed a family history rich in connections between the pastoralists on whose land gold was found and the Chinese miners who came in search of that gold.