DIAMOND MINING	211
	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-