Hi,

I am new to this group and reside in Victoria, Australia. By way of an 
introduction, I research industries which worked in Victorian forests, especially 
mines and sawmills. I was employed for three years by the Historic Places 
Section of the Victorian Department of Conservation in researching and 
surveying such sites and making recommendations for the Register of the 
National Estate. I am now semi-retired and employed part-time in the Steam 
Operations Department of the Sovereign Hill mining museum in Ballarat.

I have been preparing a paper on the Woods Point goldfield in the Victorian 
Alps, which boomed in the early 1860s and then had a brief revival in the 
1890s. The mainstay of the town for almost exactly one hundred years was 
the Morning Star mine. In the  mid-1860s, six water turbines (the first and 
almost only use of this technology in Victorian gold mining) were installed at a 
number of mines near Woods Point. The turbines were sucessful, but most of 
the mines they served were not. Five of these six turbines were installed by 
the same mining engineer, Richard Jenkin Polglase (spelling confirmed by his 
signature and headstone).

  A search of the Victorian Pioneer Index reveals that a Richard Jenkin Polglase 
was born in Gwinear, Cornwall, England to farmer Ralph Polglase and Eleanor 
Polglase (née Jenkin) in early 1817.  He may be the same Richard Jenkin 
Polglase, Engineer of Stepney, Middlesex, England, mentioned as having 
received provisional protection of a patent for improvements to boiler plates in 
March 1854.  He arrived in Australia around 1858 and appears in the Melbourne 
Post Office directories from 1860-62 as a “Smith & Engineer” of 271 Elizabeth 
Street, but is absent from the directories from 1863 onwards, and appears to 
have moved to Blackwood near Ballarat. The earliest newspaper reference to 
him at Woods Point is in March 1866, and he then appears regularly both in 
connection with the installation of the five water turbines and at least one 
steam-powered battery, but also in connection with speculation in mining 
shares and leases.  By August 1867 he was in financial difficulty.  He was 
declared insolvent in Melbourne on 17 January 1871.  Since 1866 he had been 
accumulating debts, mostly small amounts for stores and labour, but also for 
some money advanced as loans.  In an effort to earn some money, he hired a 
battery on Dry Creek above Red Jacket to crush for the Commercial Reef Gold 
Mining Company, for which he would take a share of the gold produced.  
However, little gold was won and, in October 1870, floods washed away the 
dam feeding the machine. By this time, a debt of £200 6s 10d to A. K. Smith’s 
Carlton Foundry was too large to be left any longer, and it was Smith who 
enforced the insolvency.  There was also a debt of £140 0s 0d due to Wright 
& Edwards for the supply of machinery.  Both of these debts were probably 
due to the purchase of turbines and associated crushing machinery.  
Polglase’s liabilities totaled £1,429 13s 10d and his assets a mere £27 15s 6d, 
and he surrendered his estate for sequestration.  A certificate of discharge 
was granted on 26 May 1871.  Richard Jenkin Polglase passed away at his 
residence in Ballarat on 1 March 1878 at the age of 61 having battled a bowel 
complaint for five months.  He was buried in Ballarat the following day, his 
death unremarked in the local press save for a single funeral notice.  The lack 
of any probate documents indicates that his estate was probably negligible.

What particulary interests me is what mining work Polglase undertook before 
his emigration and whether or not he had prior exposure to turbine technology 
(perhaps in Cornwall?). 

I would appreciate any information members of this group could provide.

Kind Regards,
Peter Evans.