Creek. The gold was patchy and the field attracted hard-working Chinese miners who were prepared to persevere and work in teams, for a modest return on their labour and time. In a remarkable piece of work, Chinese miners constructed a water race, ten miles long, from the headwaters of Currawan Creek—in the catchment of the Clyde River—to carry water to sluice high ground in Broad Gully, on the right bank of the river downstream from the village. Extensive remnants of Chinese mining and sluicing works are still evident on Tantalean Creek. Downstream of the village, just below the junction with Feagan's Creek, the river had cut off a large oxbow, creating a landform still known today as the 'Half Moon', or 'Half Moon Flat'. While the Half Moon was still a part of the river, alluvial gold had accumulated there over thousands of years from the gold reefs around Mongalowe. The shortcut made by the river also created a landform known as 'Sydney Heads', which would become the site of a mining camp. In the early 20th-century, Half Moon would be the location of dredge mining. The Mongalowe field had both alluvial working and hard-rock quartz reef mines. By 1870, quartz reefs were being mined. The reef mines lay to the east and to the north-east of the village, away from the river. The Day Dawn mine was the deepest of the quartz reef mines in the area and reached a depth of 400 feet. It operated from 1884 to 1891 and again from 1900 to 1905 There was at least one ethnic-Chinese owned hard-rock mine, named for the prominent local Nomchong family, who as well as having mining interests were storekeepers in the village and at Braidwood. A goldfield of 'Mongarlowe and Shoalhaven River' was proclaimed on 18 July 1896. Significant mining had all but ceased after 1905. There was a pump gold dredge working at the Half Moon Flat, from 1901 until late 1905. The dredge was removed and taken to Adelong. By 1917, the prospects of any future hard-rock gold mining at Mongarlowe were bleak. However, a bucket dredge operated at Half Moon, intermittently, between 1908 and 1915 and again between 1916 and 1922. During the Great Depression, there was a minor revival in gold mining and mining activity in the area continued sporadically up to at least the mid-1990s. Mining village A settlement arose between the