The Unofficial Guide to the Thames Goldfield - Introduction
Richard (Dick) Wilkins In this series of posts, I will assemble my research on the Thames Goldfields. There is no central theme and I have just picked aspects that interested me, hence the term “Vignettes”. There may well be ten, there could be more or less. Why do it? Very good question, but a few years ago I realised that there are few people left with any kind of first hand knowledge of Thames in the 1950s when it was still “semi-raw” with evidence of the mining days still visible in the town and the hills. Our family was somewhat unique (some would say unusual) in that the Residence Site(s) occupied by my great grandfather Richard Ross from 1867 on Eureka Hill were still occupied by the Ross family until 1966 – some forty years after all other families had left for the township. Richard Ross was an old fashioned patriarch, often called “King Dick” and behind his back some of the family referred to him as a “Prodigious Progenitor”. I cannot claim either ...