Clarke, William Branwhite:

$800 · Offered by William Reese Company

RESEARCHES IN THE SOUTHERN GOLD FIELDS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. William Branwhite Clarke (1798-1878) was an English clergyman and geologist who emigrated to Australia in 1839. "The first trained geologist to settle in Australia, he moved out rapidly from Sydney on horseback in a widening arc collecting rocks and fossils, and in 1841 discovered evidence of gold. His interest in mineralogy was keen and he publicly predicted that the country would be found wonderfully rich in metals, a prediction verified in the rush to the New South Wales goldfields in 1851. During 1851-3 Clarke was engaged by the government to conduct a geological and mineral survey of New South Wales and, on foot and horseback, traversed some 60,000 square miles from the southern Alps to northern New South Wales and into southern Queensland. On this reconnaissance Clarke opened up important mineral resources in the colony, describing the metalliferous districts and the stratigraphy and structure of the country in twenty-eight reports to the government and preaching, burying, and baptizing at the diggings as he went" - DNB. He would eventually become a household name in the colony. The folding map shows gold localities in the basin of the Snowy River and Upper Murrumbidgee, 1851-52, which were chiefly discovered by Clarke.

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