Plant arrived in Australia, aged 17, in 1862 after living briefly in America. He initially worked on a rural property before turning to prospecting in the southern and central mining fields then moving to the newly discovered Ravenswood field in 1869. He took out a mining lease on the productive Black Jack Reef and erected the first ore-crushing battery, the Vulcan Mill, in 1870. Soon after, Plant was amongst the first on the newly discovered Charters Towers field and erected the Venus Mill in 1873. In addition to his successes in Charters Towers and Ravenswood, he also had interests in the Hodgkinson and Palmer fields and in copper, tin and wolfram production in other northern mining areas.
