The Worst Gold Mining Disaster in Australian History: The New Australasian Deep Lead No. 2

The Creswick Mine Disaster: Australia’s Worst Goldfields Tragedy

If you spend enough time reading about Australia’s gold rushes, you’ll find plenty of stories about fortunes made, wild towns springing up overnight, and nuggets the size of footballs being dug out of the ground. But hidden amongst all the glitter are darker tales — moments when the drive for gold turned deadly. And none of those tragedies looms larger than what happened at the New Australasian No. 2 mine in Creswick, Victoria, in December 1882.

It remains the worst gold mining disaster in Australian history.

Life on the Victorian Goldfields

By the 1880s, the wild chaos of the first gold rush was long gone. The days when prospectors could scratch a fortune out of a creek bed with nothing more than a pan were mostly over. Gold was still there, sure, but it was buried deeper underground in what miners called “leads” — ancient riverbeds buried beneath layers of gravel, clay, and basalt. To get at it, you needed capital, big timbered shafts, pumps to deal with water, and gangs of men working long shifts underground.

Creswick, just north of Ballarat, was one of those towns that had sprung up during the earlier rushes and stuck around. By the 1880s it was a bustling little place, with pubs, churches, bakeries, and a main street lined with shops. But the real action was underground. The New Australasian Company operated a shaft just outside town, sinking deep to chase the buried wash dirt. It was tough, dangerous work, but it paid a steady wage, and hundreds of families in Creswick depended on the mines.

*Image depicts the location of the New Australasian No. 2 Mine Shaft. The yellow lines are the deep leads the miners were chasing. The blue lines are the present day streams.

The Geology of The Creswick Region

To understand what happened, it first helps to visualize the land as it was millions of years ago, when this river the New Australasian company was chasing was at surface level. This is the Australasian Deep Lead. A once mighty river system. Saturated with vast amounts of gold. Long before it was buried beneath layers of volcanic lava, the ancient river have wound through wide valleys, its sandy bed laced with gravels where water slowed and gold settled out. It’s worth seeing the old river system versus the modern replacement streams. This is the drainage pattern today. This is what it looked like prior to the flurry of volcanic eruptions that covered this entire landscape in up to 50 meters, or 164 feet of lava. So when eruptions smothered the landscape, this river was sealed underground, preserving its auriferous gravels for millions of years until miners of the 19th century uncovered them. What’s striking is the contrast between the ancient rivers and the streams that replaced them. The old rivers were broad, deep, and powerful, capable of carrying huge volumes of sediment. They existed for around 30–50 million years before being buried by lava flows that largely began within the past 6 million years. These weren’t small creeks — they were broad, energetic rivers, sometimes kilometres across, carrying vast amounts of sediment and gold eroded out of the highlands. They look oversized compared to the rivers you see in the same valleys today.

When volcanic eruptions later poured out lava flows, those old river systems were blocked, buried, and diverted. Water had to find new paths, and the replacement streams cut across the tops or around the edges of the basalt plains. By that time, the overall landscape had flattened — erosion had worn the mountains down, relief was less dramatic, and rainfall/climate was shifting toward drier conditions. The new rivers simply didn’t have the same catchment size or energy as their Tertiary predecessors.

The Australasian Lead, and, the greater Berry Deep Lead proved to be one of the richest of these deep ancient river systems, yielding extraordinary amounts of alluvial gold. Contemporary reports estimated that over 300,000 ounces were extracted from its channels, and the gravels were often so rich that returns of several ounces per ton were recorded—fortunes for those who struck the right runs. It became a focal point for companies such as the New Australasian No. 2, whose efforts to tap the lead made Creswick one of the most productive alluvial goldfields in Victoria.

Shaft No. 1 and Shaft No. 2 locations of the New Australasian Deep Lead Gold Mine. The yellow lines are the buried river they were chasing. The brown rectangular square represents the horizontal drive they dug to chase the river north.

The Night of The Disaster

The night of the disaster didn’t seem all that different from any other. A crew of 41 men descended into the No. 2 shaft to start their shift. Only 19 would emerge from the darkness above ground again. They were a mix of old hands and younger lads, many with wives and kids waiting at home. Like most underground miners of the time, they worked long hours in hot, humid, and cramped conditions, chipping away at rock by candlelight.

Their job that night was to keep driving a tunnel forward, chasing the lead of gold-bearing wash. But here’s the thing, as you might’ve deduced from the name, this was the second shaft this company sunk in order to reach the auriferous deep lead. The first? Well it wasn’t too far away. It was abandoned. After the company was reorganised some years earlier, a new shaft was sunk, and the old workings of No. 1 were deserted. This left roughly 1,000 feet or 305 meters of ground unworked between the end of the old drive and the new shaft. From No. 2, the old river channel, or ‘gutter,’ was followed northward, and by then the gold-bearing wash dirt faces stretched about 2,500 feet or 762 meters. More recently, the directors decided to drive south from No. 2 in order to recover the 1,000 feet left behind from No. 1’s workings. It was in this south drive that the sudden inrush of water took place.

Because when the pumps were stopped at shaft number 1 after work was ceased, the water built and built. Turning into a literal underground lake.

Meanwhile in shaft number 2, they continued backwards and forwards at once. A prospecting drive going towards the workings of the old shaft was dug. The drive had been extended about 800 feet, and according to the mine plans the old workings should still have been about 250 feet away and nearly 40 feet higher, so there seemed to be no danger. To be safe, the manager had ordered boreholes to test the accuracy of those plans, and the bores taken just days before showed solid ground.

But at 4:30 in the morning, contractor Henry Reeves was at the tunnel face when water suddenly burst through without warning, rising fast. Reeves and his mate William Mason scrambled to the ladders and escaped to a higher level. Meanwhile, the flood swept from the south drive into the north drive, where about 30 miners were working in the wash dirt some 2,500 feet from the shaft.

The Sudden Inrush

Water roared into the tunnel with unbelievable force, sweeping through the drives and filling the shaft like a burst dam. Miners dropped their tools and scrambled, shouting warnings, trying desperately to race for ladders or higher ground.

But it was too fast. The inrush swallowed up entire sections of the workings in minutes. Darkness, cold water, and chaos closed in.

The Rescue Attempts

Word spread through Creswick at lightning speed. Families, miners, and townsfolk rushed to the head of the shaft. The scene was frantic — women crying, children clinging to their mothers, men volunteering for rescue parties.

The mine managers wasted no time. Pumps were cranked into action to try and stem the flood, but the water pouring in was simply too much. Rescue teams tried to descend, but the drives were already flooded chest-deep, and the water kept rising. They worked through the night, exhausted, trying everything they could.

In the following days, rescue efforts became a grim race against time. Timbering was reinforced, makeshift dams were built, and gangs of men took turns going down to probe the flooded tunnels. Families camped outside the shaft, clinging to hope. Every so often, a rescuer would emerge with news — sometimes encouraging, sometimes devastating.

Who Survived, Who Didn’t

For nearly three days, the mine’s three engine drivers kept the pumps running at more than ten times their usual speed, desperately trying to bring the water down and save the trapped men. But when rescuers finally broke through on Thursday morning, it was too late for 22 miners — one body was still warm when recovered — and only five were brought out alive from the foul-smelling shaft. The funeral the next afternoon was the largest Creswick had ever seen: around 4,000 people marched in the procession, including 2,000 members of the Miners’ Association, while some 15,000 more lined the streets. Nineteen of the men were laid to rest in Creswick Cemetery. An appeal fund for the widows and orphans raised about £20,000 from across Victoria, and within two years Parliament transformed it into the Mining Accident Relief Fund Act, 1884, to assist all future victims of mining disasters. The fund remained in place until 1949, when the last widow passed away.

Creswick, a tight-knit town, was devastated. Almost everyone knew someone who had been lost. Entire streets went into mourning. Shops closed, church bells tolled, and black drapes were hung from verandas.

The Public Outcry

When it happened, the tragedy didn’t just shock Creswick — it shocked the entire colony of Victoria. Newspapers splashed the story across their front pages. Editorials railed against the lack of safety precautions in the mining industry.

An inquest was held, and while it pointed out the obvious — that the miners had driven into old flooded workings — it also revealed the bigger issue: maps and surveys of underground mines were often sloppy, incomplete, or outdated. There were no central records of exactly where every shaft had been sunk, how far drives were driven horizontally, and there was no law forcing mine owners to share information about abandoned workings.

After the tragedy of 1882, when the New Australasian No. 2 mine claimed the lives of 22 men, the company did not abandon the field. Instead, determined to continue working the rich alluvial leads beneath Creswick, they pushed ahead with further development and eventually sank the Australasian No. 3 shaft. The No. 3 shaft symbolised resilience, but also the hard reality that, for many, life had to continue in the shadow of the disaster.

Remembering Creswick

Today, Creswick is a quiet town. But the story of the New Australasian No. 2 disaster hasn’t been forgotten. There’s a memorial near the site listing the names of the 22 men who lost their lives. Visitors sometimes leave flowers there, a small gesture of respect for the miners whose ordinary day at work turned into one of Australia’s greatest tragedies.

When you stand there, it’s sobering to think about what those men went through. One moment they were doing their job, swinging picks in the dark. The next, they were fighting for their lives against a roaring torrent of black water.

But in the face of unimaginable grief, the people of Creswick came together. They mourned together, supported each other, and remembered their dead. That resilience is as much a part of Australia’s goldfields history as the nuggets and the riches.

Here's the video we made on this on the OzGeology YouTube Channel: