Pig Oven, Windeyer
Date Published
: Pig Ovens
: Central Goldfields (Vic)
: Windeyer
: c.1850
Two Pig Ovens at former Chinese mining site Clarke’s Creek, Windeyer.
Chinese Cemetery and Oven, Windeyer
“For her 2002 Honours thesis, Lin Johnston investigated the site of a Chinese camp at Clarkes Creek, Windeyer, NSW, describing one or possibly two stone ovens at the back of the camp area. The site, which included a store, temple, garden and dam, was first inhabited by Chinese miners in 1850. There were two ovens located approximately 60 metres from the creek. One oven was ‘a single, in some places double, layer of stones in an oval shape, with what appears to be an opening on the northern side’.
The other structure consisted of layers [of] rocks built up in a circular shape, with two flat rocks at what appeared to be the front opening facing the creek. Considerable areas of baked clay lining averaging approximately 5cms thick, remained on the inside. The structure measured 120cmx96cm, and was about 60cms deep, although debris on the inside concealed the actual depth.
Based on the contextual setting and the domed shape of the features and their baked clay lining, Johnston identified the two structures as pig ovens."
Lin Johnston, ‘“And Numerous Chinese”: A Search for the Individual in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, c1848-1901’, Hons thesis, University of Sydney, 2002, p. 85. In Juanita Kwok, A reassessment of Chinese pig ovens in Australia, Journal of Australasian Mining History, Vol. 21, October 2023, p.101.
