A Prospector Looks Back

THE GOLDEN DAYS
A Prospector Looks Back.

The fever burns in my veins again,
Young blood in my heart doth glow
While reading “The Mail,” Of the outback trail
And of gold where the mulgas grow.

As one of the old brigade who followed close upon the heels of Bayley and Ford in the early nineties of last century, “The Western Mail” articles and stories of the lure of gold hold for me a glamour and romance and carry my old memory back to the canvas towns and mulga of the olden, golden days before the age of motor trucks, gramophones, and the wireless crank.

What a revolution to ancient history does a gold-strike bring, if I may so express my meaning. For countless ages since old Adam’s blunder with Eden’s apple, in many parts of the world gold has rested undisturbed in the solitude of the wilderness until that primitive bush has been invaded by the pioneering spirit of some lone human, projected outward by predestined fate to awaken from slumbers of long gone centuries the golden god so craved by man.

Oftimes as in thought I wander along the old bush tracks of our sun kissed State from Lake Way to Ravensthorpe. I can almost see the footprints through the mulga of the many brave hearts with whom I chummed in the days of yesterday. Where are they now? Most of them have their troubles past and are roaming in happiness in the unknown valleys. And, it may be that when night winds whisper and shadows creep, they come again, to wander round the old dumps, in sadness or in gladness, reviewing in silence the scene of the brave days of their youth.

We are told there is new life on the old fields and that the ‘Old Camp’, Coolgardie, is coming back to its former greatness. But, alas! This can’t be so. It’s but a splash in the pan, kindled by the present high price of gold, while speculators millions are blanketing some of the old fields in a mirage revival which fans afresh the spark of hope that has smouldered for years in the hearts of the few old-timers who stll have faith in worked out mines. Although there must still be untold wealth beneath the surface, it is not in the abandoned mines, “once has beens,” or leases.

However, much sand has blown across the old salt lakes of the West, now silted up but once inland seas, since the day we first rocked the shaker on Fly Flat, but somehow romance still clings around the name of “Coolgardie,” the mother goldcamp east of the Cross. It may interest the present generation to know that the town took its name from the little gnamma hole, or native well, close by, known to the local aborigines by the name of “Coolgady,” meaning “camp of rest.”

Some time ago I heard that poor old Martin Walsh ‘Three-handed-Mart’, we used to call him – died while looking for oil in Africa. I gave to Mart a last farewell on the dump of the Midas Gold Mine, near Leonora, which I was working at the time. He had come out to see me by way of Malcolm, bringing with him the good tidings of the relief of Ladysmith, beseiged in that South African scrap, you may remember!

Martin once had had an ambition for political honours, and while addressing a dust coated throng of Coolgardie dryblowers, advocating a reward to be plonked down by the Government for all and sundry who might find a payable reef, lode or specking patch, Martin shouted:

“An why not, mine? For don’t the prospector go out in th’ wildhurniss wid his pick in wan hand, his wat’erbag in his lift hand an’ his loife in th’ other.” In the loud shout of whisky-fumed laughter which followed, Smiler Hales instantly dubbed him, “Three Handed Mart,” which stuck with him until the end.

And by the way, the last I heard of the well known Smiler (many of you, I am sure, have read his books), he and his son were in Egypt reporting on those ancient mine workings. I was up in the north of Queensland recently to where Billy Frost was shot dead by his mate about five years ago, when about to accompany an aged Afghan out to his alleged gold strike.

The said Ghan was supposed to be the same who, when hunting Tom Dunn’s camels, accidentally found the ‘Wealth of Nations’. Sir John Forrest and brother Alex, were attending a Government House garden party when Sir John received the wire announcing the El Dorado. He and Alex, wired the principal shareholders in the syndicate which Dunn represented. So excited did Alex, become that he ran home without his hat. In those days to see a man in a city street bare of head gear was to watch out for a warder from the nearest mental home. Today many men do not wear hats, and our mental deficiency has increased to the appalling proportion of one in every 251 people and the number in mental homes of the Commonwealth is 20,000 !!!

However, Billy Frost, who has left his mark on many fields, was flat out at the end of his golden rainbow. All he possessed was 30 bob (shillings), and, perhaps, regrets. Who can say? My home here on the beautiful Macleay River, north coast, New South Wales, is the old run of Tom Dunn. The last I heard of him he was night watchman in a Sydney tobacco factory. I met Bob Menzies a long time ago in Perth, and, while rowing crews were battling on the Swan for the Menzies Shield, presented when Bob’s world was brightest, he, poor chap, was battling too. I was flush at the time, and well, you know

“the good old ways in the good old days.”

Mention of the Lancefield in the paper sent me to recall to mind the night in ’95 when Jack Lennon and his mate camped with my mate, Tommy Kilmartin, and me on our show, the Macedon, at Speakman’s Find, which we later sold to the late Graham Price for the Swan Syndicate, an English concern. Lennon was then on his outward-bound lucky prospecting trip, and named his big discovery the Lancefield, after his Victorian home town.

Some years ago I met big Paddy Whelan. He was then striking for a blacksmith on a railway construction job. I have not heard anything of Fred. Merton lately. I knew him and his partners at Pig Well. I was working the Sunday Mine when Fred, found the big thing. He came to my camp for a drink when on his way to Malcolm to raise the wind and register the new find. Two years ago last Christmas a Paddy Whelan was in the public eye. I don’t know if it was my old friend of whom I have spoken, who was leader in what came near to being another Eureka Stockade (the eight-foot sinking at the Golden Mile 30 odd years ago).

I am enclosing my photo. No doubt some of my old friends, too numerous herein to name, would like to see my old dial once again. I would so love to get a line from some of them, addressed 76 West Kempsey, North Coast, New South Wales. Dr. Laver and I correspond occasionally.

The photo, was snapped by my grand-daughter, whose mother was bom on our old Midas G.M., near Leonora, and I am sure my old friend Peter Hill, of that town is a grandad years ago. My other (second) daughter, born at Kookynie, is deputy matron of a big Sydney hospital, with an approximate nursing staff of 145.   –   JIM O’BRIEN