HAMMOND, MARK JOHN (1844-1908), gold-miner and politician, was born on 15 November 1844 in Sydney, the elder son of John Hammond, who had arrived in May 1841 in the Moffatt. He attended school in Newtown but at Christmas 1852 went with his father to the Braidwood goldfields. Late in 1853 the family moved to Sofala where Mark became a blacksmith and a successful jockey. In January 1861 at Lambing Flat he lost his money in a hotel venture; in September he joined the rush to Forbes but contracted typhoid and went home. In December 1862 he struck payable gold at Lambing Flat but next year was almost crippled by a scorpion bite and returned to Sofala. In 1868 he joined a mining company at Hill End and in 1872, as a partner of Beyers & Holtermann, his dispirited change in direction of a tunnel led to the discovery of the world ...

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Australian Dictionary of Biography