It appears that the Mining Registrar for the Crooked River subdivision was in error in describing the subject of my query as a “Hunt’s” boring machine. I have subsequently discovered a financial statement for the Good Hope Company (which acquired this technology) which clearly describes it as a “Ford’s” boring machine
This acquisition was made in the last quarter of 1868 drive the new No.4 tunnel (situated 700ft below the first level in the Good Hope mine and 500-ft further to the east of No.3 level), which by then had already been driven some 236 feet. The machine was an early air-operated rock drill invented by Sandhurst man Robert Gray Ford, who was an employee of the Victorian Railways in the survey and engineering department. Although his design was based on the simplification on an existing English rock drill, Ford was granted Victorian Patent 989 on 22 February 1868. Two prototypes were made at Vivian’s foundry in Castlemaine and briefly trialled at a local mine. Mining men agreed that the machine was a great success, and a great advancement over the old ‘hammer and tap’ method of drilling holes manually. A further trial at the Hustler’s Reef mine in Sandhurst in November 1868 (where the machine was by then in regular use) was equally convincing. In any event, a machine was purchased by the Good Hope Company from Vivian’s Foundry, at a cost of £400 ‘complete with fittings and carriage’, and set to work. It would seem that this made the Good Hope only the third mine in Victoria to use an air-operated rock drill.
Regards, Peter Evans
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