For another snapshot if you like, from an independent viewpoint, of life at The Devils Kitchen (or Piggoreet), written by the official correspondent (reporter) of the Australasian Newspaper on the 8th of Oct 1864, at an unusual time when the paydirt of the Try Again mine actually ebbed downwards. The article was titled

COUNTRY SKETCHES
(FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT)

"THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN".

The Devil's Kitchen is the not inappropriate name given to a wild romantic gorge situated some half-dozen miles to the south-ward of Scarsdale. Lying away from the road, it attracted little attention until the Main Scarsdale Lead was traced past it, when the miners soon made its wonders known, but, at the same time, broke its charm of solitude. The approaches to it are bad enough, in all conscience. The path is very like one which leadeth to destruction, as the entrance to Satanic dominions should be, but as for its being broad and pleasant, any traveller thereon will emphatically deny the statement. Still, as we proceed we passthrough some beautiful country. The whole of the district is of basaltic formation, and when this is the case, the surface is generally found well greased, and of a peculiarly park-like appearance. The country here is no exception to the rule. Pleasant vistas of timbered hills and turfed dales are beheld—the sombre gums relieved by the presence of an unusual quantity of lightwood, by far the greenest and the prettiest tree produced by Australian forests. Traversing scenes like this, we suddenly open upon the course of the Wardy Yallock Creek, running through a deep sloping cleft in the rocky strata below us. At one spot the stream flows through a narrow defile into a crater-shaped basin nearly surrounded by perpendicular walls of broken basalt. This is the Devil's Kitchen—in truth, a weird-looking place—a huge hollow hemmed in by beetling cliffs. A space of some sixty acres is enclosed in this way by frowning, rugged, moss-covered walls. On one side, a wide sloping cleft permits us to descend, and view the scene from the interior. Gaining the lower level, we find the swollen Wardy Yallock Creek flowing in a broad channel, foaming against the boulders with which the surface is strewn. We cross the stream where it rushes noisily down a miniature rapid, balancing our-selves upon a pole which has been thrown across the main channel, and then jumping from boulder to boulder."

Later days of the Try Again Gold Mine at Devils Kitchen - Courtesy Boyles Break 'O Day site.

Review the official records of the Victorian Heritage Database for Break O Day Gold Mine at Rokewood.

Family Shareholders in the Break O Day Gold Mine at Rokewood in Apr 1865, including family members William Calvert and Thomas Broadwood.

"When fairly inside, we can appreciate better the height of the stone walls which confine us. Their towering, broken, half moss-grown sides cause a sense of personal insignificance. We can see better how exposure has blackened and browned, has cracked and gnarled, the surface of the rock, how a light moss has covered each projection, and how in one part the cliff rises up sheer from the interior level crystallised into long thin streaks. It was only natural that the straggler who first penetrated into so wild a glen should bestow upon it a name of dubious import; it may be that the suspected and unpleasant degree of truth in the designation. The lofty encircling cliffs, the rippling stream, the opening defiles, workup together, with a bright sun overhead, into an effective picture. To enjoy the scene properly, however—to enter into its wild peculiarities, solitude and silence are needed, and both, alas! have fled from the spot. In the cleft already mentioned two mining companies have effected a lodgement, lured to these depths by the prospect of having so much less basalt to sink through than they would if they commenced operations on the level of the country above. They have deep shafts, clanking engines, and dirty heaps of tailings."

Piggoreet Township about 1 kilometre from the devils Kitchen, photo taken 1866 - Courtesy State Library of Victoria.

"The 'Try Again' are down into a gutter of rich washdirt; the Alpha have struck deep ground, and have equally encouraging prospects. Little, therefore, do the miners repent of their intrusion. The Devil's Kitchen is literally paved with gold, and have the treasure they fully mean to. As for destroying the picturesque, they are hardened enough to contend that they have given life and animation to the place—a miserable delusion, for an artist could make nothing of their three-cornered, propped-up wooden buildings, and the miners themselves will by no means pass for the genii of the scene: cutty-pipes and knowing short jackets forbid the delusion."

At left, Devils Kitchen photo taken about 1910, with one mine standing, probably the Port Arthur Consols mine at the end of its heyday - Courtesy State Library of Victoria.
At right, the same Devils Kitchen site taken about a hundred years later, Courtesy Joan Hunt.

"All that the dreamy lover of nature can do, is to shut his ears to the miners' noise and his eyes too their presence. For one thing, he can turn his back upon them, and peer through the lofty gorge through which the Wardy Yallock flows away, and he can then mark the beautiful view afforded by the gradual shelving of the massive sides of the cleft. As these banks become less abrupt, their face of decomposed rock is covered with verdure, while their summits are crowned with timber, in the rifts of which a few bark huts, the homes of toiling miners or hardy wood-cutters, do not appear out of place. If tired of gazing, he can rest at the foot of the overhanging cliffs, and speculate as to the creation of the chasm—can surmise whether it was hollowed out by the ceaseless action of flowing water, whether it was the crater of some olden volcano, or whether it was formed at once and for aye in that mighty and awful operation of nature which spread a flood of liquid rock 300ft in-depth over the rivers and plains of an earlier world."

Neighbouring Wardy Yallock Creek - circa 1880 Courtesy National Gallery of Victoria.

"As matter of course, there being profitable claims about, a juvenile township has started into existence just outside the cauldron. It is a little place, consisting of a score or two of wooden houses, built on a hilly site, more picturesque than convenient. An odd sort of conflict has gone on with the Government departments as tithe name to be given to this rising settlement, the residents declaring in favour of an adhesion to the expressive selection from Satanic nomenclature first adopted, and the powers that be hesitating to sanction so broad a reference to a region hardly mentionable to ears polite. Some curious complications certainly did arise with the early and popular name. The Council of the Church of England, for instance, must have been astonished, if not perplexed, at the application forwarded to them for a 'lay reader for the Devil's Kitchen,' though of course they lost no time in securing a position in so vital a part of the enemy's dominion. The, too, the must have felt compromised."

John and Jane Liddell's property next to 3 blocks of land owned by Mathew Clementson, (an ex-neighbour from England), at the top end of town - Piggoreet Parish map of about 1860.

"Beyond this point, however, were brought to bear, and now the name of the Kitchen is to be mentioned no more, but that of Piggoreet is to be sounded instead. It is a name we shall hear more of in time to come, for the place is sure to flourish. It is one of the many infant settlements a traveller meets with in Victoria which has a prosperous future before it—gold at hand to give immediate wealth, and fertile acres waiting to be turned to profitable account. The tend about b a rich black loam, the depth of which the cart sticks mid the sticky bind demonstrate in 'rather an unpleasant manner. The mining resources of the district are very groat, and though much has been done to open them recently, It is evident that their development is now only commencing. Already, however, an extensive quartz reef is being worked in the locality, and on the Beared ale Lead many companies are In active Operation. At Piggoreet and in Its neighbourhood there ate now 'twenty-three mining companies, working twenty-eight engines, possessing a paid-up capital of £116,000, and 'giving direct employment to 760 men. As the district prospers so will its scenic curiosity, which we have attempted to describe here, be more and more broken into and destroyed, till the Wardy-Yallook becomes a sludge channel, and the 'Devil's Kitchen' a receptacle for tailings."

End of article - The Australasian Newspaper, 8th Oct 1864.

From Joseph Richardson born 1721 at Alston, U.K.

From John Armstrong born in 1705, Haltwhistle U.K.

From William Calvert born 1791 at Kirkhaugh, U.K.

From John Clementson born 1692 in Garrigill, U.K.

From William Coulson born 1760 in Cumberland, U.K.

From Robert Cochrane born 1778 in Eglington, U.K.

From Thomas Bell born 1806 of Allendale, U.K.

From Edward Hewitson born 1794 in Kirk Linton, U.K.

From James Broadwood born 1796 of Northumberland, U.K.

From Joseph Parker born 1810 at Allendale, U.K.

From Nicholas Vipond born 1655 in Alston, U.K.

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