They're shouting GOLD all over, Downunder

In this chapter:

The convict who tried a ‘fool’s gold’ trick – twice;

The real gold rushes and the birth of the swaggie;

The arrival of the Chinese goes off like fireworks, so here comes the White Australia Policy;

Grog and mayhem on the goldfields;

Duck for cover! It’s the bushrangers;

Defiance, death, and Justice – the Eureka Stockade;

… And to finish, a delightful interview I had with an old bloke who in the late 1890’s used to tramp up through the snow, past the gold mining camps, to the top of Australia’s highest peak carrying the mail.

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:00

They're shouting gold all over down under. In this chapter, the convict who tried a fool's gold trick twice. The real gold rushes and the birth of the swaggy. The arrival of the Chinese goes off like fireworks. So here comes the white Australia policy. Frog and mayhem on the gold fields.

SPEAKER_05 0:40

And through Australia, sunny climb, a bush ranger did run.

SPEAKER_07 0:48

Duck for cover, it's the Bush Rangers. Defiance, death, and justice, the Eureka stockade. And to finish, a delightful interview I had with an old bloke who in the late 1890s used to tramp up through the snow, past the gold mining camps, to the top of Australia's highest peak, carrying the mail.

SPEAKER_13 1:11

I'm 91 now, and I used to take when I was about 15 years of age to Topakosy Oscar to Rag, which kept the name of Bob Harrison Lee's been dead years. And we used to go every full of the moon to the top.

Cheating secured his freedom – almost!

SPEAKER_07 1:27

When I was growing up as a kid in the 1950s, it was said that Australia rode on the sheep's back. We were a land of bars and moos, which was music to the ears of the farmers, the rural district townships, and wool and meat exporters. And so it was also from the very early days of European settlement. But there was something else from way back in the colonial times that caused ordinary humans to behave like ravenous dogs. And it began with a hoax. In 1788, the very first year of our first official settlement, a convict in Sydney Town claimed to have found gold. On the way to being escorted to the spot where he said he'd found it, the crafty schemer slipped away from his jailers. He was found the next day and given fifty lashes for his trouble. But believing he was onto a good luck, he then produced a sample of what he said was the gold. This time, on the way to the site where he claimed he'd found it, he was warned that if he was lying, he'd be put to death. So he confessed that his gold was actually a concoction he'd created using filings from a gold coin and a brass buckle. This time he was punished with one hundred lashes. But hey, at least it escaped being put to death. Later that very same year, charged with breaking and entering and theft, he was hung by the neck until dead. Back then, many paths led to the gallows. Gold was found here and there in the colonies over the next sixty years, but the gold fever virus began in earnest with a real rush in Orange in New South Wales in 1851. It was soon all on, especially down in Victoria, where the gold fields in Ballarat and Bendigo, Castlemane, and very quickly in other parts of the state, made the state incredibly rich. Immigrant ships were soon bulging with digger hopefuls. The Victorian rush would dwarf the finds in New South Wales, accounting for more than a third of the world's gold production in the 1850s. Moving around the country on foot quickly became a symbol of our search for wealth, or at least for better opportunities.

SPEAKER_05 4:19

When first I left old England short such yarns as we were told, how folks in Far Australia could pick up lots of gold. So when we got to Melbourne town, we were ready soon to slip. And by the captain and the mateful hands abandoned ship. With my swag on my shoulder, black billy in my hand. I travel the bush of Australia like a true native man. We steered out course for J-Long Town, Mr. Ballarat. With some of us got mighty thin, and some got sleek and fat. Some tried the luck at Bendy Go and some at fiery cream. I made a fortune in a tie, and I spent it in a week. With my sweatily in my hand. I traveled the bush of Australia. I can shoot on the hand. The squatters treated us so well. We made a regular beat. With my square on my shoulder, blackly.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

In those days, uh whilst I was stationed at Port Augusta, there was men carrying the swags. And it it used to be a saying, Oh, you're all right if you get to the west, there'd be a job in the west. Well, we had droves of these fellows from all over Australia carrying their swags across the east-west line uh to try and make Western Australia. Well, at the pick particular time, of course, the fattlers along the railway line had had their wages reduced considerably, and it was only a wage from which the fattler and his family could exist on. But there were so many droves of these uh travellers travelling along that used to be coming along and l uh looking for a handout in the way of a meal.

Franco, opal mining since the 20's

SPEAKER_07 9:39

Mr. Gill was referring to the desperation of the depression years of the nineteen thirties, but humping your bluey, which was your blanket roll as well as a billy to cook in, and a bit of food and water, was commonplace from the very early days in the colonies, especially when gold fever was high. Thousands of men over the years from the eighteen fifties right through to the nineteen thirties, doggedly pushed out from one precious metal gem field to another, often with digging instruments over their shoulders, or pushing cumbersome wooden barrows. Those with money might travel by stagecoach, or for the longer journeys take a ship up the east coast, say, to places like Cooktown in the far north. But for the majority, it was the hard, long, dusty, hot, freezing, wet, endless struggle, covering a pitiful few miles each day over the hills and through the mud and sand. And when they got to the site of the rush, that's when the backbreaking work would begin. Backbreaking, and likely as not heartbreaking. Only the lucky ones struck it rich. In chapter seven of this audiobook, we'll cover the opal mining community of Andamucca and one of its earliest miners, Franco Albertoni. Not gold in this instance, but opal. But hey, the same hard work.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

Did you have much success when you first came here?

SPEAKER_12 11:11

No, never got much at all. I'll tell you well, I'll tell you what, this is true, they wouldn't believe you now. The highest price you get for opal was ten pounds an ounce. See? And uh we were here six months, the first time. And we got sixty pounds between two of us. For six months, I don't think that's much. Well, we went away looking for a job, and we had rifles and guns, and we were shooting kangaroos and poisoning foxes and that. And uh weigh seven months. Well, that just uh shows you that we couldn't have got much, we wouldn't have uh stopped away, we'd we'd have come straight. But anyhow, at last it was getting cold, the weather was getting cold, we were trying to poison fox between here and Port Augusta, and they wouldn't bite, and there was no kangaroos. So at last my brother said, Oh, he said, I think we'll go back. We heard about a new place found, this boundary riders over here. We heard about that. And so we come back and now I'm still here.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

Well, you you must have had a bit of success then when you went to to Boundary Riders.

SPEAKER_12 12:04

Oh, not much now. Not much more than Tucker.

SPEAKER_03 12:07

You you opal miners are all the same though, you opal gargers, you never admit if you ever found anything anyway.

Up and Down The River Jimmy

SPEAKER_07 12:14

Some I interviewed, including Franco, I suspect, just made enough money to carry on, living isolated lives far from the complications of more civilised life. There were, of course, those who were very successful. Some, as the song says, made a fortune in a day and lost it in a week. One old prospector I met in Leonora in Western Australia reckons that Jim Escrete was a bit like that, and by crikey, he was also phenomenally successful. Jim was born in 1885, and at a young age started gold prospecting with his dad in the eastern gold fields of Victoria, before heading into Western Australia and the Northern Territory. I'd heard his nickname was Up and Down the River Jimmy. He was like a hovering hawk, sharp-eyed, thorough, and over the course of his life responsible for starting a number of highly valuable mines, mainly gold.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

Did you ever have any luck with your prospecting?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Oh yes, I always got enough to live on. Gold. You get uh five and a hundred weight. Well, that's a hundred pounds a ton. Now it's it's uh twelve or thirteen hundred pounds a ton. Dollars now, that's different. It's double in dollars, but it's a different proposition now. Ten. You know, it was a five at a hundred weight, that was a good price. Of course, wages wasn't so big then. Four pounds you g you could work a week for with a miner and get you four pounds a week.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

It must have been pretty hot working around Marble Bar.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

It is in the middle of the day. We used to work from the evening and over morning, more early in the morning, and have two, three hours in the middle of the day. Make our spin effects humpies.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

What's a spin effects humpy?

The White Australia Policy

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Oh, it's just uh a bit of timber, wattled with timber put up and put spin effects on it. You're gonna lay lay it down like that, it'll turn the rain, you know. Oh, good and cool. Oh, good little camps. Spin effects.

Groggy, bloody mayhem

SPEAKER_07 14:24

Right now, let's go back a few generations before Jim Escrete to the first days of the gold rushes. And look at the group that would become the reason for the infamous White Australia policy. The Chinese. What a threat they were to our way of life. These fellows really knew how to work like hell to power the ground cooperatively and to turn that effort into success, putting a giant dent in the egos of the other miners in the process. And besides, these Chinamen were about as foreign in both lifestyle and appearance as you could possibly get. In just twenty years, between 1851 and 1871, the Australian population quadrupled from 430,000 people to 1.7 million as migrants from across the world arrived in search of gold. And the largest non-European group of miners were the Chinese, most of whom were bonded laborers who suffered discrimination from the government and from fellow diggers. It's estimated that in 1855 there were 20,000 Chinese on the Victorian diggings. This Wikipedia extract summarizes the tensions between the Chinese and the rest. Most gold mining in the early days was alluvial mining, where the gold was in small particles mixed with dirt, gravel, and clay close to the surface of the ground, or buried in the beds of old watercourses or leads. Extracting this form of gold took no great skill, but it was hard work, and generally speaking, the more work, the more gold the miner found. Europeans tended to work alone or in small groups, concentrating on rich patches of ground and frequently abandoning a reasonably rich claim to take up another one rumoured to be richer. The reality of the diggings was that relatively few miners found even enough gold to earn them a living. The Chinese generally worked in large organized groups, covering the entire ground surface, so that if there was any gold there, the Chinese miners usually found it. They lived communally and frugally and could subsist on a much lower return than Europeans. The rural background of most of the Chinese diggers suited them very well as alluvial gold miners. They were used to the long hours of hard outdoor work as a member of a disciplined team, accustomed to simple sleeping quarters and basic food, and were satisfied with a much smaller return of gold than the majority of Europeans. Tension between the two groups first surfaced as petty complaints. Europeans made stereotyped claims that the Chinese muddied the water holes. They worked on a Sabbath, they were thieves, they had insanitary habits, they accepted low wages and would drive down the value of labour. Because the Chinese were distinctive in appearance, language, and dress, they became classic targets for xenophobia, and surly resentment became systematic hatred. So that's the background. In the eighteen fifties and eighteen sixties, there were demonstrations, riots, and targeted attacks against Chinese gold miners. In eighteen eighty-five, the colony of Victoria, where the majority of Chinese were landing, imposed a poll tax of ten pounds a head on every Chinese arrival. Ten pounds was a massive amount, say over two thousand dollars today. This tax reduced the earning capacity of shipping companies, so instead of landing Chinese in Port Melbourne, they dropped them off at robe in South Australia. This was a huge inconvenience for the Chinese, heading for the Victorian gold fields, making it a 400-kilometer journey on foot through possibly hostile country, at the scarcity or expense of obtaining food and water, and while carrying all of their belongings. But there are some spectacular examples of this working in the favor of the Chinese. In 1857, a group of 700 Chinese miners, forced by that poll tax to travel overland, were on their way to central Victoria when they stumbled upon a fabulously rich patch. Their foot journey was over. This discovery led to the founding of Ararat, the only Australian town founded by Chinese people. Forty-six years later, in 1901, Australia would change from being a collection of British colonies into a nation of its own, although still hanging on to Britain's coattails. And guess what? Discrimination against non-whites was high on the new nation's agenda. One of the earliest acts of the new federal parliament was to create its finger in your face, up yours law, the White Australia policy. As the first Attorney General of Australia, and later to become our second Prime Minister, Alfred Deacon stated, put in plain and unequivocal terms, means the prohibition of all alien colored immigration. And more, it means that at the earliest time, by reasonable and just means, the deportation or reduction of the number of aliens now in our midst. The two things go hand in hand and are the necessary complement of a single policy, the policy of securing a white Australia. Of course, this attitude wasn't just affecting the so-called alien coloured. From the beginning of white settlement, it had affected Australia's indigenous population. Remember them? The ones who've called this place home for over 60,000 years. Although in their case, as we'll hear a little later, the superior white race, both directly and indirectly, countenanced not just deportation, but by various means and to various degrees, elimination. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go back and have a bit of fun on those early goldfields.

SPEAKER_06 21:31

With my swag upon my shoulder, black belly! In my hand. I'll travel a mocha Australia like a trobom native man.

SPEAKER_07 21:46

Grog, fair dinkum, mate. In the colonial goldfields, some reckoned it was safer to drink than water, since the local creek water could give you diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, typhoid. Hell no, mate. But was the grog safer? Well, it could be a matter of name your poison, literally. In eighteen fifty three there was a government inquiry into Goldfield's sly grog, and its findings so-called brandy could be laced with tobacco and pharmaceutical spirits, and a cocktail, by the honest name of blow my skull off, contained vertigo medicine, spirits of wine, opium, caine pepper, rum, and a heck of a lot of water. Righty. Given the diabolical state of the local water, perhaps it was that ingredient that was the most risky. These early gold mining communities were tender cities, and the tents offering liquid stuff and other delights were easy to find, except on those occasions when the licensing police paid a visit, which was frequent, given that for a first offence the fine was a whopping fifty pounds, and half of that would go to the arresting officer. A good luck for men who often had a criminal background themselves. And since for a second offence there was no fine but months of hard labor, and this put no money in the pockets of the licensing officers, they resorted to blackmail instead. And being the kind-hearted souls that they were, even though they were acting outside the law, they would often burn down the tents and all of the possessions of the sly groggers, totally depriving them of the basics of survival. On the gold fields, of course, the Chinese had their opium dens. Good-time girls were freely available at a price, and gambling, you name it, there was a tent for everything. Not everyone was impressed with all this jolility. In her book, A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-1853, Mrs. Ellen Clacy wrote, There is more drinking and rioting at the diggings than elsewhere. The privacy and risk gives the obtaining of it an excitement which the diggers enjoy as much as the spirit itself. Mrs. Clacy also described the amiable female, a horrendous person encountered on her trip around the diggings. Whilst her husband was at work farther down the gully, she kept a sort of sly grog shop and passed the day selling and drinking spirits, swearing and smoking a short tobacco pipe at the door of her tent. A dirty, gaudy-coloured dress hung unfastened about her shoulders, coarse black hair, unbrushed, uncombed, dangled about her face, over which her evil habits had spread a gentle Bacchanalian glow. Whilst in a loud, masculine voice, she uttered the most awful words that ever disgraced the mouth of a man. Ten thousand times worse when proceeding from a woman's lips. Of course, there were also general entertainers on the goldfields. The most famous was Charles Thatcher. This fellow could act, and he could sing. Well, sort of, and he knew how to work up a crowd. What has secured his legacy, though, is his songwriting. Charles Thatcher chronicled colonial life in many rollicking, memorable songs, including light-hearted parodies. Thatcher's Ditty Big Pole the Grog Seller would have gone down a treat with the miners.

SPEAKER_04 25:55

But Ollie's good look and Ollie is young. Ollie is possessed of a job, but I'm innocent face on the fine.

Fear and loathing: the bushrangers

SPEAKER_07 27:22

A few decades later, in the eighteen nineties, a whole new era for gold in Australia suddenly blazed brightly with the discovery of the metal in the Kulgardi-Kalgooli region of Western Australia. Ridiculously big nuggets were among the finds. Before long, the Western Australian gold fields stretched hundreds of kilometers out from Kulgardi-Calgooli. And remarkably, in the middle of the 2020s, the gold keeps coming. It's been estimated that if Western Australia were a country, it would be the fifth largest gold-producing nation in the world. We'll get to the Western Australian gold stories in the next podcast series of Red Duster Tapes. But among those whose lives were not directly impacted, there were also large dollops of admiration and even adulation.

SPEAKER_05 28:54

It's of a wild colonial boy, John Dillman was his name. He was born and bred in Victoria in a place called Castle mine. He was his father's only hope, his mother's pride and joy, and dearly did his parents love the wild colonial boy. At the early age of sixteen years, he left his father's home, and through Australia's sunny climb, a bush ranger did run. He robbed the wealthy squatters, their stocks he did destroy. And a terror to Australia was the wild colonial boy. In 1861, he commenced his wild career with a heart that knew no danger, no foam and any fear. He stuck up the beach with mail coach and wrote Judge Macaboy. And told him to beware that he'd never the rabbit hearty chap that acted on a square And never to rob a mother of a son and only joy Or else you might turn out more like the wild colonial boy So come away me Hartis will roam the mountains high together we will plunder Together the way we'll rise We'll cross the wild blue mountains and surround the bathroom's plains and will scorn to live in slavery bound down by iron chains one day as he was riding the mountain sight along a listening to the cookaburas pleasant laughing song He spied three mountain troopers Kelly Davis and Fitzroy with a warrant for the capture of the wild colonial boy Surrender now Jack Domin Y saves three to one Surrender now Jack Tolum You're a daring highway man He drew a pistol from his belt and shook that little toy Santa fight but not surrender said the wild colonial boy He fired a trooper care and bought into the ground And in return from Divis received his mortal word Oh shatter through the chores to firing at Fitzroy That's the way they did capture him The wild boy Sun the white Me Haughty We'll run the mountains high Together the way we'll bundle Together the way we'll ride We'll cross the wild blue mountains and scround the Matheus plains And we'll scorn to live in slavery bound down by iron chains.

Ned Kelly

SPEAKER_07 34:59

The Larrican sentimentality that has run through Australian culture since the earliest colonial days has been aided along the way by these robbers' stories of daring and of thumbing their noses at the authorities. The stark truth, though, is that while there may have been instances of a kind of chivalry, overall we're talking about desperados and thugs who generally lived short lives. The golden years of bush ranging, literally, were during the gold rush years of the eighteen fifties and sixties. For the holed up men there were rich pickings in so many places, especially when gold was being transported from the fields to the more established centres. Many of the bush rangers were sons of convicts, most with an Irish-Australian background. There were also often strong nationalist sentiments. Ben Hall, Blue Cap, Captain Midnight, Thunderbolt, police killers like Dan Morgan and the Clark brothers. But the most chronicled of all has been Ned Kelly. His capture and execution in 1880 represents the beginning of the decline in the bloody era of bush ranging. The story of Ned Kelly is complex, involving police intimidation and harassment of the family over many years. It's important to note that the police in those earlier colonial times were mainly ex-convicts who would often take advantage of their privileged status.

SPEAKER_05 36:30

My name is Edward Kelly, I'm unadvastely well. Wherever I may dwell, my friends are all united, my mates and army near. We sleep beneath some shady tree, no danger do we fear. Now the first of my adventures was through my sister dear, who was grievously insulted, yes, put in bodily fear, and when I came to hear of this it made my poor heart ache. I took to the bush to seek revenge or for my sister's sake. I'm young and in my pride I'm twenty years of age I've spent some time in Vanity amongst young girls of old, but now I am a robbing along the king's highway. We robbed the banks and shoot the traps but never run away in Mansfield that fair township where I was bred and born It's oft times I have run those hills from dark till early morn But now I am a robbing loudly my guns do roar It's there I shot Volcana Day which breathes my heart full sore Now the troopers they are all bought out to bring in this notorious gang But the Kellys are in the ridges The police drew up in ranks They're brave there is no doubt of it when they are on their beat But it took ten traps to catch Ben Hall when he was fast asleep I'd rather die like Donnahoo that bush ranger so brave than be taken by the government to be treated like a slave I'd rather die ten thousand deaths as long as I've eyes to say I'd rather die ten thousand times than die on a gallows tree I never would surrender to any coat of blue or any man who wears the crown belongeth to that crew They're brave there is no doubt of it when they are on their feet But it took ten traps to catch Ben Hall when he was fast asleep So come all young men take my advice if you're bound for a Roven life Well settle down and stay at home and get for you a wife Course if you go a robbing along the King's Highway you'll have to fight for all your might or else lay down and die Farewell and Edward Kelly Farewell sons and Steve are two those that blame you are not many those that blame you are but few thirty policemen did outdo you in a manner I am told thirty policem did outdo you for a paltry sum of gold.

Death to the scabs!

SPEAKER_07 41:37

Gold emboldened the self-serving robber class, but gold was also responsible, thanks to an uprising by gold miners in Victoria for several significant world-leading social advances. The main action in the story was very brief and a terrible tragedy. But the story of the Eureka stockade rings through the years for all Australians. Here's a quick summary. While gold would prove to be the making of both New South Wales and Victoria, most especially the latter, initially it was a great big headache for both of them. Before gold in 1851, the population of Victoria was a mere seventy-six thousand people. But gold fever, which saw shipload after shipload of immigrants arriving, would mean this rising in just ten years to five hundred and forty thousand. There was no infrastructure to support the swelling numbers. The governments of New South Wales and Victoria had a desperate need for funds. So together in 1851 they agreed to institute a gold miner's license of thirty shillings per head to be paid monthly. This was a pretty hefty fee. It's roughly equivalent to seventy-eight dollars a month today. And since the majority of prospectors would probably have been looking rather than finding the precious metal, it would have been an odious burden, especially when the gold became harder to find. In the first year, finding alluvial gold was relatively easy pickings. In 1852, for the 35,000 miners on the Victorian fields, the average find was five ounces per head. Just two years later, in 1854, the number of miners had almost tripled, and the average find had plummeted to just 1.5 ounces. From 1853, it was clear that trouble was brewing. The allegations to the Governor Latrobe met with no sympathy, and regular license hunts by the police inflamed attentions. Unfortunately for the authorities, the population of the Goldfield. Wasn't made up of the meek and the compliant. Many brought with them knowledge and experience from being involved in anti-authoritarian conflicts in both Britain and Europe. Then there was a murder at the Eureka Hotel in Ballarat. The proprietor was accused and acquitted. The miners sensed injustice. The hotel was set on fire, and several men were arrested. Tension with the police reached a dangerous level. The new Victorian governor took offense when a delegation demanded he take action. So he responded by sending 150 additional soldiers to Ballarat. On November 29, at Bakery Hill, the miners gathered once more. A newly created flag was hoisted. It featured the stars of the Southern Cross on a navy background. With the unfurling of this flag, a new and enduringly powerful symbol of the fight for freedom was born. The flag of the Eureka Stockade. With this gathering, the police decided their authority needed to be reimposed. Provocatively, the next morning, they took the deliberate action to scour the diggings on a license check. It was November 30, 1854. For the miners there, there would be no turning back. Led by their new leader, Peter Laylor, the miners, their women, their children, marched once more to the top of Bakery Hill, and there they all swore an oath. It was now all on. Timber was gathered from mine sites, a stockade was built. Behind it both men and women began practicing military-style drills. This inflamed the commissioner of the Ballarat Goldfields, Robert Reed. Early in the morning of Sunday, December 3, 1854, almost 300 troops and police, some on horseback, attacked the stockade. It was all over in just 22 minutes. But 22 protesters, including one woman and five soldiers, were dead. Out of 113 arrests, 13 of the stockade leaders were sent for trial in Melbourne. But sympathy for the miners was strong in the city. And after jury trials, all of the accused were released. In 1855, after a commission of inquiry, there were significant changes. No more license fee. Instead, there was an export duty and a one pound a year miners' right. A heck of a lot better than thirty shillings or half a pound a month. The backlash against the police and local authorities was profound. Half of the police on the goldfields were fired, and the commissioners, many of whom were seen to be corrupt, were replaced with a single warden. The democratic system of government in the young colony was also served. Twelve extra people were added to Victoria's legislative council. Four were appointed by the Queen, and eight were elected from those people who held a miner's right. The hero of the Eureka stockade, Peter Laylor, was one of them. Just a few short days of rebellion, just twenty two minutes in front of police and army guns, achieved much almost immediately. But the Eureka stockade would be part of much more profound, much wider reaching societal changes. Migrants to Australia were bringing new political ideas to the young colonies and resulted in a number of world-leading social experiments, such as the secret ballot, the eight-hour day, and the formation of the Labour Party. The emerging power of Labour as a force for positive change was part of a worldwide movement.

SPEAKER_10 48:21

Then came the relief of pickets, and up went cheer after cheer, and the man is struck up the lee. Any fancies is worthy could hear.

SPEAKER_07 48:33

And later in this audio journey, chapter 15 is entitled, It's a Terrible Crime to be a Scab. A scab is worse than a murderer. These were the words of former Broken Hill miner Frank Bartley, who will describe the conditions and the historic struggles of the silver lead miners in the late 19th and 20th century.

SPEAKER_10 48:55

You are a scab, loyalist to the mine, you scab your workmates, but not falling into line. You drive the big mine lorry, you bend your head in shame, you're a flame to look at your workmates.

SPEAKER_07 49:16

Australia's huge mineral reserves, initially of gold, made the country a destination for people from all around the globe, and by the end of the nineteenth century the Russians had helped create a wealthy and as a result healthy society. And when we became a nation in 1901, we were free, independent, no longer clinging to Mother England's coattails. Or were we? And we still had God Save the Queen as our national anthem until we got our own in 1974. But back in the fifties, every time we went to the flicks, before the movie could begin, there on the silver screen would be Queen Elizabeth. Like a triumphant member of the cavalry in the cowboy films we were there to watch, Her Majesty would appear on a horse, and we'd all have to stand in the dark as the anthem played to be reminded of who our true rulers were. Crikey, I remember during the Queen's visit in 1963, when our Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, stood up in Parliament and gave this speech.

SPEAKER_11 51:08

All I ask you to remember in this country of yours is that every man, woman, and child who even sees you with a passing glimpse as you go by will remember. Remember it with joy. Remember it in the words of the old 17th century poet. And yes, I love her.

SPEAKER_07 51:57

Well, that completes a very quick overview of Australia's colonial times. Yes, yes, it's been full of omissions. You could think of it as being an erratic flyover by a giant wedge tail eagle, zigzagging like the blazers because it's being harassed by angry magpies. By the way, I do have just one interview that I recorded that concerns those pre Federation days. I'll share it with you now. Then over the rest of this audio adventure, I'll introduce you to characters whose active years played out in the first half of the twentieth century. So to close off our time in the nineteenth century, here's a man, ninety-one years old when I interviewed him, who as a youth in 1887 used to struggle up through the snow to the top of Australia's tallest mountain, Mount Koskiosko, to deliver the mail to Clement Rag, who was setting up the mountain's first meteorological station.

SPEAKER_13 52:53

I'm 91 now, and I used to take when I was about 15 years of age the rag to rag, uh d at least to Topokosyosko to Rag. We kept the name of Bob Aris and Lee, he's been dead years. And we used to go every full of the moon to the top, and it used to take us all day to go four miles from Friday flat, which they call threadbow now. It'd take it to be twenty miles, it'd take us to walk up, so it would. And when we get up there we often get up dark and we used to whistle for the it wasn't far from Cross Yosko, we used to whistle for the dogs. They always left two dogs loose. And it wouldn't be five minutes before you would hear these dogs down to meet us. Well, usually they'd be pleased to meet us. Take us back to trot along and puff and blow, take us back up to the top.

SPEAKER_02 53:45

These were snow dogs, were they? White snow dogs.

SPEAKER_13 53:47

They were I don't know what was the name of the dogs. As big as you could get on their back and they could ride, they could tell me they could judge and carry you. They weren't newfound land dogs, but there was some big snow dog which they used in Russia or some other part of the world. Switzerland or somewhere, I don't know where they were, very kind sort of dogs.

SPEAKER_02 54:06

When you used to carry the mail up to the top of the top of Mount Kosyosko and the snow was very thick, how did you get there? How did you snow shoot the snow? Snow shoes. These are something like skis, are they?

SPEAKER_13 54:18

Oh, j well we should call them skis, but you see the old houses with the pale, old-fashioned pail, you'll find odd one about. They were the palen, and they'd get them and put them up a chimney for about three months and smoke them. Well, they'd last you for years. They were slippery, nothing could hurt them, by God, they were hard. Well, we'd have to go and shoot a wild horse every year to get the skin to make the straps to put over our boots to keep them on. And if we'd come back down to Friday Flat where we were camped in about twenty uh twenty minutes. I see the river there at uh Friday Flat at Threadbow. I've see that I suppose there'd be two foot of snow and ice across at about that ice over the water. You'd always get something and break that before you'd walk through. To walk up if you had gum boots, you see that bog in the snow, you'd get one before you couldn't get them off, it froze it on you. From you you should be in down, you know, where you come into the snow. To Zalgetti. There was fellows who had big families there on gold leases. They might be half an acre, you know, with a big flood that come down and wash, and they'd wash in a sluice box. And those Chinamen and all, they were loyal to one of you. You wouldn't go on mine, I wouldn't go on yours. Threadbow. You see, there was a lot of gold got there on this side of the threadbow river. I think there'd be about 25 or 30 acres, MacA boys. He was plowing to grow oats, and he struck the gold just like lead if you throw it about. Well, he went and dug a race into it and he swooshed on the top of that. And God knows what gold he got. But that gold was there at 20 acres and it was thicky leased, did you see? And they got no gold anywhere else. Where did that gold come from? Have you done any digging for gold yourself? Only once I wanted my brother blow Delgeti and I got sunburnt. Oh, I know nothing about it. I got it nearly killed me. I get sunburned through my shirt everywhere from being in the water, you know, turn the sloosh box. It would get in the sand in the river. I don't know how much he got, but I done three or four days ago. Sunburn I left the damn thing, I don't want gold again.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

They must have been pretty tough men to be able to dig for gold in in country where there is snow in the wintertime.

SPEAKER_13 56:37

Well, that's nice. I don't know the name of God in Chyandra, that they were there three or four years, and they lived in tents, and you see the wood that's there. Well, there was all of that d no more wood about Kyandra. It must have been freezing when the snow was there. Well, there'd be eight and ten feet of snow there these days. And you'd see them come up to the in Kyandra there was two pubs, three pubs, and two or three stores. You'd see them come in of a Saturday Chinaman and all. They'd come up there and they'd uh they'd have to get back before dark. Some of them would come four and five miles. Through the snow? Yes. And they owned canvas tents. And where the hell did they get the wood out to keep themselves alive? Oh Sam Mackie owned a frying pan. He came from the north of Ireland. And him and his brother went out there. And Sam made his made a lot of money there. Ah, it's neddy since the first time I shaved, he said. He had to shave because the icicles were getting in his whiskers.

SPEAKER_07 57:45

Thanks to the following musicians for the songs in this chapter of Red Dust Tapes. For Lookout Below, with my swag all on my shoulder, the wild colonial boy, and my name is Edward Kelly. Thanks, Warren Fay. Warren Fay is an Australian cultural historian with an enormous musical output. The Chinese music was by the Melbourne Chinese Orchestra, recorded in 1931. According to the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo, it's representative of the Cantonese region from which the majority of Victoria's Chinese miners came. And Big Pole the Grog Seller came from the Drongo and the Crow, a popular bush band from Victoria's West, who serve up lively songs and ripping yarns from Australia's slums and cities, goldfields and pastoral country, as well as the better known Outback Standards. Now, don't forget, make sure you check out my website, reddust tapes.au. This is John Francis, and Red Dust Tapes saying for now.