In the middle of 1896, Bishop Crane called for tenders for the construction of Sacred Heart Cathedral. The competition for such an important work was great. 

Cornish-born miner turned quarrier, Joseph Blight, was ahead of the game. He contacted Bishop Crane in January proposing to "supply the stone direct without the ordinary custom of calling for tenders for the supply of the stone," thus cutting out the "middleman". 

"If however you should decide to call for tenders in the ordinary way, I would suggest that you should safeguard yourself by specifying best granite from my quarry at Harcourt. Merely to specify 'Harcourt Granite' would be somewhat risky, there is a great deal of very inferior granite in the neighborhood of Harcourt as well as the very best granite to be had ..."writes Mr Blight in his correspondence to Bishop Crane dated January 1896. 

Joseph Blight was a Cornish-born gold miner. In 1859 he quarried surface granite which was used to construct the Melbourne to Murray River railway. On seeing the strength and durability of the granite near Mount Alexander he started a new enterprise, "Mount Alexander Granite Quarries" in 1865.

Harcourt granite has been used in the construction of bridges, buildings and monuments across the east coast of Australia. Including Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bendigo (of course), Alexandra Fountain, Bendigo and Parliament House in Melbourne.

Read the pdf correspondence from Joseph Blight to Bishop Crane (1.24 MB) (straight from the Diocesan archives).

Image Above: From Victorian Collections.  The photograph taken in the early 1900s at Joseph Blight's Harcourt Granite Quarry on Mount Alexander depicts the average workforce of the quarry.