WIIW – Woods Point

Well there were a few answers for this week's WIIW, and although Al has scored a victory for a change there are certainly a couple of answers that are close to the mark.

Old Kitty said: “Some kind of rope stitching for carpet!?”

It is a kind of rope, but you have the scale all wrong… 30%

Linda G guessed: “To me it look like a wire on some sort of insulation, maybe part of your new house.”

It is kind of wire too, but again you have the scale out… 30%

Anne was much closer to the mark: “Looks like a steel cable of some sort, outside perhaps on a rock (moss around it). Might be a piece of old cattle fence?”

You are so close it is a steel cable, it is outside, and it does have moss growing on it!
But it isn’t quite rock and it isn’t a fence. 80%!

Marcy was close too with: “I think the background is stone or cement and the wire is a cable, perhaps electric or telephone? Unused and forgotten I'd guess.”

It is indeed a cable and it is concrete, not rock, and the structure is unused and nearly forgotten. 80%!

So here it is.

This ruinous structure is an abandoned gold furnace at Woods Point in the Victorian gold fields.

I guess the steel cables (we usually call them wire ropes in Oz) were used as a temporary repair before the furnace was finally abandoned with the end of the Woods Point rush.

Hidden in the foothills of the Victorian Alps, Woods Point was one of the more significant early goldfields in Oz. 

 More than five million ounces of gold were mined in the area by 1900.

Then the fields all but failed and the town almost became a ghost town.

I have included a few of the piccies I took there a couple of  years ago.
This is the local post office - still trading!

The former garage (now closed), have you ever seen a smaller service station?

And finally the smallest house (if it deserves the name) I have ever seen.
This tiny miner’s cottage is barely long enough to fit a bed!