Yambulla

Mining and growth of the village The area was part of the Towamba Goldfield, proclaimed in 1881. In 1900, mining began near to where the mining village would begin to develop in the same year. Locals named the new settlement Ladysmith, in honour of the Siege of Ladysmith in the Second Boer War, and named the main street Haugh Street, after a local mine proprietor, James Haugh. There is also a then newly-named settlement, Ladysmith, near Wagga Wagga, and the village's official name became Yambulla. It was sometimes spelled as 'Yambula'. By the end of 1900, the village had a population, reported to vary between 150 and 200 people, and already had three stores, a post office, butcher's and baker's' shop, a news and mining agency, and a bootmaker's shop. Later there was a school, a hotel called the Federal Hotel, and an establishment offering billiards and bagatelle. Land was set aside for a police station, In early 1901, the village had yet to be surveyed by the government and there was an informal "rival township", named Spion Kop, for a nearby hill that was, in turn, named after the site of the Battle of Spion Kop. It was about a mile from the Yambulla village—to the north west—and closer to many of the mines. The rival settlement apparently did not last. Around the same time, the population of the area reached around 300.The mining village of Yambulla was described in February 1909 as being, "romantically situated in a valley, surrounded on all sides by hills of considerable height, Mount Poole being the highest. Their sides are thickly wooded. The township is small, and the houses are dotted about in the most picturesque fashion".) upstream of their confluence, It also lay between the quartz reef mines in the surrounding hills network. Around 1905, a telephone line was constructed from Towamba, using trees, where available, to support the wire. In 1906, the local federal parliamentary representative and Postmaster-General, Austin Chapman, visited Yambulla and spoke to a large gathering, at the village's School of Arts, consisting of people from the village and surrounding districts. Residents of Wangrabelle lobbied him to extend the telephone line from Yambulla to their village. The village was connected to Towamba by an unsealed road, which continued beyond Yambulla, to the mining settlement of Wangrabelle, just over the border in Victoria. The route was part of what was known as the 'Old Coast Road', from Candelo to Orbost. During bushfires or floods, there was a risk of being isolated. Isolation led, at times, to shortages of food and other supplies. The shortages led to locals harvesting wildlife, such as wallaby and 'badger' (wombat), for meat, and substituting the leaves of a plant that they called 'wild musk' (Olearia argophylla) for tobacco. Miners used wombat skins for leather and to make buckets in which to lift the ore from mine shafts. Despite its remoteness, reportedly, no deaths occurred at Yambulla, before March 1908, when a five year old girl died. A miner died after being extricated from a ground fall, in March 1909, followed, in September 1909, by the accidental death of the postmaster's three year old daughter from burns. In 1911, prominent citizen, storekeeper and mine owner, Joseph Meradian, an Armenian migrant, died as a result of a stroke, at the age of just 41 years. The main mine was the Yambulla Gold Mine, which operated from 1900 to 1912 and produced 234 kg of gold. It was the largest and the most sophisticated of the mines in the area. In 1909, its main shaft was 245 feet deep. There were alluvial gold workings, using hydraulic sluicing, in the area. but one was powered by a water wheel, using water from the Wallagaraugh River. The water-driven battery had three stamper heads and was made and operated, by a man named Jansen. to be processed in a smelter. John George Gough (1848 – 1907), one of the founders of the Labour Electoral League, the first labour political grouping in Australia and a direct predecessor of the Australian Labor Party, was involved in Gough's Battery and other gold mining ventures at Yambulla. Miners went on strike, demanding a minimum of 8s. 6d. per shift, and formed a branch of the Amalgamated Miners' Association, in April 1909, initially with 40 members. The new branch was affiliated to the branch at far distant Wrightville, another gold mining settlement, near Cobar. By June 1909, the miners had won higher wages, in all mines on the field, and the union had 60 members there. A representative of the Yambulla branch attended a conference with representatives of other branches in the Cobar district, at Cobar, in October 1909. In 1909, one newspaper article carried a prediction that Yambulla would soon grow, "very probably to the extent that the town will shortly become a busy mining centre, and compare favourably with the speedy growth of the township of Canbelego when Mount Boppy broke out." followed by the sale of its plant in late 1913, significantly lowered gold production at Yambulla. As mining waned, the village declined. By 1914, the population was down to 80 people and the village still had its school, post office, and hotel, but its last store had been pulled down and taken to Towamba. The village had lost its branch of the Amalgamated Miners' Association, which at one time reportedly had 80 union members. Some mining was still taking place in early 1916, but activity had virtually ceased by 1918. The post office closed in 1918. The school had a precarious existence, first opening in 1901, it first closed in 1905. It seems to have reopened in 1906. A new school building was constructed in 1910, but no teacher was allocated to it. The school reopened in 1912, closed again in 1916 and reopened yet again in 1917, before finally closing in 1918. The school building was approved to be pulled down and taken by bullock team to Maharatta (near Bombala), around 1920. The building eventually became a classroom at Bombala Public School. After completion of the road between Eden and Genoa (Princes Highway), around 1918, Yambulla and Wangrabelle no longer lay on the best route between those other places. but had yet to be sold in August 1920. A report in 1931, stated that the hotel building "survived for some years as a guest house for occasional travellers on the through road to Wangrabelle, it too became unprofitable and was sold and removed from the locality". The fireplace of the hotel survived into the early 1950s at least. The dedication of the school grounds was revoked only in 1973. In 1985, allotments of land, totalling 5,539 sq.m, in the old village site, were resumed for forestry purposes. The name of the locality officially became Yambulla, since at latest 1975, and that was confirmed in 1996. Relics from the old village were lost when the school at Genoa was destroyed by fire, during the catastrophic 2019-2020 bushfire season. == Publications ==