1/11/2024 - Bourke's mining boom

Did you know that Bourke had its own mining boom in the early days?

Mining fever gripped the town in mid-June 1872 when the local court house was besieged by sixty eager land applicants before it had even opened for business, all keen to claim a forty-acre mining lease. By July, everyone in town had an opinion about the merits of the boom, while naysayers were predicting that the sky would soon fall on the optimists.

Mining shares had been a hot item in Bourke for months when the Melbourne Herald reported that the price of ten pound shares had "rushed up from 15 pounds to 70 and 80 pounds per share", thus providing early investors with an 800 percent capital gain!

Some Bourke residents made a lot of money but the eventual bust produced even more losers. Chapter 15 of All Our Tracks and Ways tells the story of Bourke's mining boom, including how the Reed family was intimately involved in it.

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