After the discovery of gold in Victoria, one hundred and fifty years ago, there was an initial period when the fossickers hunted for alluvial gold. Armed with a shallow dish, the gold seekers sifted the sand and detritus of the river banks looking for specks and nuggets. Smooth nuggets of gold indicated that the gold had sat at the bottom of the watercourse for a long time and water had worn off the jagged edges. Rough nuggets indicated that a 'mother lode', usually buried to some extent, was nearby.

When the initial alluvial gold rushes were over, the hunt for the precious metal went underground and all of a sudden the demand for gunpowder became a fact of life for all mining communities. The main problem was that the only product available was, by today's standards, unstable and readily ignited by even a small spark. To safeguard their gunpowder and their lives the miners dug storage chambers into hillsides. While most of their diggings are now lost in the undergrowth, an example of this gunpowder storage can still be seen at the Morning Star Mine in Woods Point.

Around Victoria there were major storage facilities built at about fifty different locations where bulk storage of 'black gunpowder' was desired. Every important entry to Victoria had its gunpowder magazine. Sale, servicing the gold fields in the High Country from Omeo to Woods Point was of great importance to the area, hence the facility to store twenty six tons of black gunpowder.

Sale's Gunpowder Magazine was built to a standard design. It was calculated that, as it incorporated walls that were strengthened as they grew higher, any explosion should blow off the roof while the walls would remain comparatively intact. This measure would save the community from a major loss of life. In Sale it was built a considerable distance from the City, giving our early settlers an even better percentage survival rate. The design appears to have been a standard wherever miners from Britain were active. In Canada, we have been told that several examples still remain. Computer studies there suggest that in fact the explosion of a full magazine would completely destroy the building and the bricks would act as projectiles, destroying the surrounding community.

Built in 1864 as a Government Magazine, it was closed by the Government in 1881. It was then used for five years as a storage for gunpowder by local merchants. In 1886 it became an ammunition depot for the Victorian Military Rifles and then the Victorian Rangers. In 1924/25 it was sold as a dwelling. Modifications were carried out by the new owners to make it more suitable for that purpose but it went basically unchanged until it was re-purchased by the Shire of Wellington in 1995.

While a doorway had been knocked in one wall, a window in another and then a room divider installed, the project to restore the building itself was not too enormous a task. Today, a close examination will show where the extra doorway and the window has been bricked in and the ventilator restored . You will notice that the honey coloured flooring is the original Baltic pine, complete with wooden dowel fastenings. Metal nails could have caused a spark. Outside, the buttresses have been rebuilt and the slate roof restored.

Due to its design, i.e. solid walls with thicker parts at the top of the walls providing insulation, on the hottest day of summer this building is one of the coolest places in Sale.

This article copyright © John Cribbes. Used with Permission