Bathurst,
in New South Wales. The same year another was obtained near the Turon
river. From that time, the attention of the gold diggers being drawn to
the fact that diamonds existed in the gravels thereabouts, others were
found occasionally in the neighborhood of all the streams emptying into
the Macquarie as far north and west as the Cudgegong river, the
earliest coming from the Calabash and Pyramul creeks. In September,
1859, several were found at Suttor's Bar on the Macquarie river, and
another in October at Burrendong. These discoveries awakened
considerable interest, but not sufficient for several years to enlist
capital for an organized search for diamonds. Systematic work was
begun in the neighborhood of Mudgee on the Cudgegong in 1869 by " the
Australian Diamond Mines Company " of Melbourne, but the results were
not satisfactory. In the first five months' systematic washing in the
Cudgegong district, 2,500 diamonds were found, one weighing 5-3/8
carats. They were mostly colorless, though straw, brown, black, and a
dark green which looked as though it had been polished with black lead,
were among them. In addition to the fields near the tributaries of the
Macquarie from Oberon to Wellington, one was discovered to the
southwest near the Lachlan river. In the early seventies, considerable
work was done in the Bin-gara fields on the river Horton, a tributary
of the Gwy-dir river, to the northeast of the Macquarie, and since then
and now, in the Inverell district, a little further north. Inverell is
situated a few miles north of Bingara and the junction of Copes Creek
and the Gwydir. " The Star of the South " mine, in the Inverell
district, is on a hill of basalt in which shafts are sunk to the dia-
