The following story is published with the kind permission of Dennis Aartsen and is an excerpt from his four-volume set of books, Hotels of the Barrier Ranges.
Black Dennis
On the 28th of August 1911, a passerby stopped by a modest shack just north of Coolgardie on the Bonnie Vale Road. He found the occupant had died perhaps some days earlier. This man’s death softly declared the end of the life of a colourful personality who had entered the world in Barbados, West Indian Islands, in 1840.
Dennis Trinidad, was by birth a British subject and had been christened into the Roman Catholic faith. As he matured into a young man, he initially chose a life at sea, travelling to many of the larger and more notable ports of the time. He eventually found his way to Port Adelaide, South Australia. Here he adopted to disembark and to pursue a new life within the mining industry at the age of 26 years. After working on the South Australian mining fields for a time, his travels brought him to the new mining fields of the Barrier where he quickly found work as one of the first sailors on the newly developing big mine of the proprietary company.
A convenient plot of land in the Broken Hill township was available, so Dennis pegged it out just northwest and adjacent to the track that was to become Argent St. He attracted immediate attention as his first action after settling in was to raise a tattered red flag on a pole above his canvas tent. This red flag was to be the focal point for directions given to travellers searching for a particular site or resident.
The main hub of activity was still further NE around the Bonanza Hotel. However, the construction of buildings of varying sizes and quality were following the route of the mail track, which had been cut through the mulga scrub with funds contributed by the new Progress Committee. This track went right past his new home on its way to the Pinnacles. The reason for him leaving the mines employment is lost in the fog of history. However, Black Dennis was to continue the occupation of his Sergeant Street site and to earn his bread from a variety of activities. Word quickly got around Dennis could produce real sentences and was happy to write formal letters on others behalf friends, lovers and families for a small fee. His neat, legible writing had a few flourishes but were very well constructed. Samples of his work could have convinced potential customers who came in with coins in hand to have their messages written by him.
When he was not scribing, his other tactic to earn a few pennies was to rush out of his tent, ringing the cries of the bell to herald, one of his impromptu performances, playing his banjo and singing typical songs with a focus on the old cabin home. Dennis had even represented many in court and had worked up a relationship with Wyman Brothers. Wyman Brown, a past Warden mining registrar who was to later move into politics. However, these were tough times and Dennis sought to survive by illegal means. He fell foul of the law after being caught and summoned by Pierce Croak for breaking and entering his dwelling house at night with intent to commit a felony. The charge resulted in Dennis, then age 49 years, serving time in the Silverton Gaol when he was unable to pay the fine. This court appearance raised his profile in the eyes of the police who then had good reason to eject him from his camp late in 1889. As reported later, it was a sad blow when the law, which he had so befriended, showed an ugly right hand and shifted him from his unauthorised squatteridge.
Less than 12 months later, Dennis retreated to the fastness of the loose camps and sports grounds known as Stevens Creek. There, over the next six years, he established his shanty. He named the it the ‘Travellers Rest’, where he maintained a veritable curiosity shop, sold cool drinks and pies with secret ingredients he had cooked on a portable pie oven. Of course, Dennis resorted to selling the occasional flask of whiskey, everyone did it. That saw him firstly beat a charge of ‘Sly Grogery’ by intimating through his lawyer he was to counter charge the two informants with break and enter. These two failed to appear in court when they decided the reward was less attractive. When the spectre of a gaol sentence hung over them, Senior Constable Nolan said he believed his witnesses were tampered with, but on advice from the bench, he withdrew the case. He then attempted to have the liquor confiscated, but again the bench declined to do so and Dennis left the court with three bottles of booze under his arm.
Barrier Miner 25 February 1896, page 2
“BLACK DENNIS.”
The Barrier is likely to shortly lose one more of its oldest identities; for Dennis Trinidad, otherwise “Black Dennis,” of Stephens Creek, is going West. Who has not gone to the Creek with a picnic party is not familiar with the stentorian voice and the ebony features of the landlord of the little shanty in the Creek? Time was when the heart of Dennis was light and happy as every mans should be; but evil days have fallen upon him, and as he strummed his banjo on Sunday preparatory to singing one of his ditties he remarked that “it was like taking a dose of medicine against his will” to have to sing.
An intelligent man is Dennis, and one who has in his life played many parts. He is now grown old, but it is easy to imagine that his appearance as a youth was like unto that man’s described in his own melody:
Oh, I am as handsome a man
As ever you did see;
My teeth are white as ivory,
My skin like ebony.
My hair is crisp and curly,
My heart is firm and true;
But I will throw myself away,
And marry lovely Loo.
What if the old banjo is out of tune and the singer’s voice is raspy, the happiness on the old man’s face as he warms to the work atones for all!
But once again the eyes of the police were on him and it was within the next 12 months, in 1891 Dennis was fined £30 for selling liquor without a licence. This amount of cash was well beyond his capabilities and so he served a sentence of three months detention in the Silverton gaol. In the gaol records he was described as stout, 5 foot 6 1/2 inches, black skin and eyes, hair turning grey. He was listed as a labourer aged 51 years.
In 1896, word was circulating that he had had enough so was going to chase his future over in the gilded West. Dennis was planning to dismantle his home of the past six years, all the materials and his paraphernalia to fund a move in his search for a better life. In the new goldfields of WA, Dennis Trinidad emerged on the bustling Coolgardie goldfields on the 31st of May 1897 when he was granted a miners right to legally prospect for gold. This town was quickly growing into the third largest city in WA behind Perth and Fremantle.
He quickly established the rhythm of a prospector as he tramped the dry, pockmarked landscape between Coolgardie and Bonnievale. Results from his fossicking, digging and dry blowing of perspective sites encouraged him to take out further miners rights in 1898 and 1900. However, Dennis encountered an ignorant official when he applied again early in 1902. The accompanying letter with this application described him has an African. A stop was immediately placed on the application as the onus went back to Dennis to prove he was eligible. He went into the officer made a statement to the fact that not only was he an English subject, having been born in Jamaica and spoke the language, but had also held numerous miners rights over the past five years. The accompanying letter going back to Perth described Dennis is as respected person who had been in the West Australia for some years. The Warden of the Dundas Goldfields wrote from Norseman to the Under Secretary of Mines in Perth to advise the issuing of a miners right to Mr D Trinidad on the 24th of September, 1902.
There are no records of Dennis applying for more prospecting licences. However, this period of Coolgardie’s history saw momentous activities. It included the arrival of the railway with the accompanying politics sprooking the value of such facility to the advancement of the region. Even though there was some some serious movement away from the town, perhaps the rise in activity, enabled Dennis to once again use his skills as sailor to remove the necessary to tramp the unforgiving countryside on tired legs in search of the elusive spec.
The probate for Dennis Trinidad, Dry Blower listed his possessions as not exceeding £2 and the curator made a formal application to use the funds, which threatened to be liable to waste, to use to be used to offset the cost of administration or probate. This was granted. Thus ends another small blip in the history of Broken Hill on its colourful and turbulent past, a blip that when you dig a little later into the crack. A blip that, when you dig a little into the crack surface, reveals another participant in that story that launched so many lives and so many businesses of note. Some still exist today in various forms.
Dennis TRINIDAD is buried in the Coolgardie Cemetery in the Roman Catholic Section, he has no headstone. During his lifetime he was described as African, Indian and Aboriginal.
Kalgoorlie Miner 29 August 1911, page 8
Moya Sharp
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