 It became a focal point for quartz causing operations at this time, with the erection of a crushing battery at the base of the hill, probably the first in Australia.As late as 1856 this is evidence that Indigenous peoples lived amongst miners at Black Hill, with some oral history accounts of child minding during the Eureka Rebellion.By the mid-1860s the hill became known as the "White Cliffs of Ballarat" due to the open cut mining operations which exposed cliffs of sandstone.