Shattered Dreams: recollections of the Palmer Goldrush 1874-1875*

First-hand accounts of life on the Palmer Goldfield in its heady and hectic formative years are few and far between. For many years historians and archaeologists working on and writing about the Palmer have had minimal primary material at their fingertips. Letters from miners on the diggings were those gems that one hoped for, but rarely sourced. Apart from the plethora of newspaper reports and archival material, the most significant, published, first person recollections of the later stages of the Palmer rush are those of JH (John Harrison) Binnie, My Life on a Tropic Goldfield, self-published in 1944 and recounted over 60 years after the events. John Binnie details life on the Palmer where his father, Andrew, ran hard rock crushing plants from 1875 until 1882. John, then six-years-old, his mother and siblings had joined their father in 1876.