Shoad

The earliest mining consisted simply in collecting shoads — a means of gaining a livelihood not yet totally discarded.

Eluvial wolfram was known from the Mount Carbine area 50 miles northwest from Cairns before 1895, but the black shoads were at first thought to be manganese (hence the name Manganese Creek for the little creek at the village).

Where the fynding of these affordeth a tempting likelihood, the tynners go to work casting up trenches before them, in depth 5 or 6 foote, more or lesse, as the loose ground went, and 3 or 4 in breadth, gathering up such shoad as this turning of the earth doth offer to their sight.

As mentioned above, many of the important tin streams are well away from any outcropping tin lodes, hence shoad, so Carew oversimplified his account.

In search of alluvial shoad, the miners studied the landscape, the color and nature of earths, and embedded rocks beside streams and rivers.

Before developing a streamworks, the quality, depth and lateral extent of the shoad would have to be tested through strategically placed excavations.

In shoading it is necessary to distinguish between heavy and light ores, and between friable and hard materials.

It is manifest from the position of the neck that the great mass of material removed by denudation in forming the hollow in which it is seen exposed, must have been washed down the stream in question, and had diamonds occurred in that mass it is highly improbable that none should have been left in the bed and banks of the stream where their existence would certainly have been discovered by the old diamond seekers in former generations, who would have “shoaded” up the stream and have inevitably reached the neck.