User:Junior Clarke/Mount Renouf

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An Early History

Gold was discovered in the Mount Renouf area in 1860, by the prospectors Robert Clarke and Private Kenneth Fiddler, who famously trod on a 7 oz nugget, early one July morning. By late 1863 there was enough interest in the area for the government to consider declaring a townsite. The survey was carried out and the townsite was gazetted in 1865. The railway to Mount Renouf was opened in July 1867, before which it was closed but the final section of the line connecting Mount Renouf was not completed for another ten years, by which time the gold rush in the area was over.

The traditional Aboriginal owners of Mount Renouf referred to the land as Yundi Yundi. Diaries from Robert Clarke recount his first interaction with a local indigenous man named Warrigal, who described the area to Clarke as ‘…so nice they named it twice.’ The current name of the townsite however, has always baffled historians. It was originally recorded as Mount Renouf by Surveyor General J S Roe in 1835, although no natural physical feature has ever been documented. The mountain itself is thought by some to have been slowly excavated away during the subsequent gold rush. An absence of any dirt however, brings this theory into question. Some suggest that locals may have dug a large hole to dispose of the excavated debris, but what was done with the dirt dug out from this hole only further adds to the mystery. Dig they dig a second hole to dispose of the dirt from the first hole? No man knows.

Recently discovered personal documents, however found by Fiddler’s descendants suggest another possibility. A letter from Ken Fiddler to a significant personal acquaintance of the Fiddler family, the Honourable R.W. McGurk, makes reference to Fiddler’s trusted horse, when Fiddler writes “… today whilst riding alone, I came close to meeting my maker when my horse fell into a sink hole, of which this area has many. I managed to crawl out with only a few cuts and bruises but sadly my mount, ‘Renouf’ who has been with me throughout this god-forsaken ordeal, broke his left hind leg and I was forced shoot him in the head. Yea verily. We eat tonight!”

Does this letter suggest that the town was named as a tribute to the bond held between horse and rider? Is Mount Renouf, in fact named after Fiddler’s horse, or was there once a form of hillock overlooking the township? Some historians even speculate that the mountain from which Mount Renouf gets its name, was sold and moved to nearby Mt Mowen in the late 1800’s in exchange for livestock and malted whisky. With all these theories plausible, perhaps we will never truly know the real origin of the name, Mount Renouf.

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