GoRV - Digital Magazine Issue #86 | Page 74

For a fascinating insight in the history of Tingha , the Wing Hing Museum in the main street is a must-visit . It is an early 19th century store that was owned by the same Chinese family for more than 80 years . The building and fittings have remained intact from the early 1900s , and it is one of the few buildings left in Tingha from the tin-mining boom era . The interior of the store remains as it used to be , containing items from Tingha ’ s Chinese and tin-mining history .
Today , its a quiet place , with fewer than 1000 people living in the district , yet the town supports a school , several shops and a caravan park . Most people who come to Tingha do so to fossick for gems and crystals that have ‘ grown ’ in the sandy surface soil over millions of years before being dug up when the miners were looking for tin .
Most fossickers head to the Tingha plateau reserve , an area around the small settlement of Stannifer , about 10km from Tingha . This area was also mined for tin many years ago , which has left some interesting scars upon the landscape , including massive deep trenching with huge piles of sand piled beside the pits .
Some of these pits extend for hundreds of metres , 50m wide and very deep . Most these days are full of water but there ’ s still plenty around and you can crawl down inside to sense the vastness of what the miners did .
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