Omeo Oriental Claims

The name Oriental Claims conjours up a vision of thousands of Chinese scurrying about with shovels and wicker baskets. In fact, most of the gravel was shifted by less than 50 men working at any one time. Half of them were European and water, supplied by long "races" or channels did most of the work.

To confuse us, the Oriental Company was European while the Omeo Sluicing Company was Chinese. The French were not French but French-Canadian and Duncan McCrae and D`Arcy Fitzgerald were American.

The claims area as a whole produced an estimated 58000 ounces of gold. At todays price of around Aus$600 odd per ounce, this represents a value of around 35 million dollars. As most of the claims area was not worked to its full depth and the ground south of these claims, right to the foot of Mt Livingstone, is of a similar nature, it is estimated that a further 150 plus million dollars worth of gold may still be there.