Cabbage is a Fossick-King- by Hugh Schmitt (1984)
Broad Arrow’s most colourful resident, he makes up a tenth of the permanent population – is a character everybody calls ‘Cabbage’.
Joseph OMODEI (few people know his real name) lives in a comfortable tin shack surrounding by his prospecting gear a couple of quartz stone throws from the Broad Arrow Tavern. The squat, bald, 76 year old Cabbage has lived in Broad Arrow three times between prospecting stints in a total of 26 yrs. He has seen some boom times in the old ghost town, which in 1897 was a thriving municipality, boasting 8 hotels, two breweries, a stock exchange, a hospital with separate fever ward, two banks and several stores.
Cabbages ‘Patch’ near the Broad Arrow Tavern.
When we called on him, Cabbage was fuming about a big mining company taking a lease on two of his favourite ‘specking’ places. “Big companies shouldn’t be allowed to hold 12 miles of ground” he beefed, in an accent still redolent of the northern Italian village he left 60yrs ago at the age of 16. “I won’t disturb them, but as soon as they’re finished with it, I’ll peg it myself” he said. Cabbage says he has no ambition to be a millionaire – “I haven’t got a clue about finding gold” but he remembers once feeling like one. “I had a look 100 feet down an old shaft near Ora Banda and I thought it was worth going on with” he said. “I took six crushing’s out of 360 tons, and averaged four pennyweights to the ton. I built up a good bank book, I thought I was a millionaire, so I moved into Broad Arrow next to the pub. I soon found I had to go out and look for more gold.”
Joseph ‘Cabbage’ Omodei
Fossicking around another old mine that he knew had yielded 50 grams of gold to the tonne, he found the former owners had left some load stone. “It was only a quarter of an inch thick over 10 yards, but it assayed at 5 ozs to the ton” he recalled. “Then it opened up to about 4 inches and didn’t that sweeten up the crushing!” So it was back to Broad Arrow with another bankroll.
Cabbage’s mates cheeked him about being a film star. He well remembers playing a small roll – as a prospector of course – in the Australia film “The Nickle Queen”. Broad Arrow was crowded during the nickel boom and there was plenty of money around” he said.
Joe Omodei’s father preceded him to Western Australia, and when he got a job on the Kurrawang woodline he sent for his teenage son. “I wouldn’t have left Italy if I had known what was in store for me” he said. “I was only a jockey weight, but Dad put me to work chopping wood. We worked from dark in the morning to dark at night – 16 hour days. My parents got a note from the school teacher asking them to send me to school, but my father told him, “This is my boys school, a bloody axe”. The Omodei’s lived in a bush shanty with only a hurricane lamp for light, “our fridge was a chaff bag”, Cabbage recalled. They earned enough money contract cutting for the furnaces on the Golden Mile to buy a garden plot six kilometres out of Kalgoorlie and the family grew vegetables for the Goldfields for 22yrs.
Even while his tilled the red soil of his garden Joe went prospecting and eventually he left the garden to work 1400 meters underground on the Chaffers mine at Boulder. After an outdoor life in his garden. Cabbage felt claustrophobic one and a half kilometres underground, so he again went prospecting and has been ‘chasing the weight’ ever since. Now he drives his battered old blue utility out into the gimlet and mulga around Broad Arrow specking for gold.
Ref:- The West Australian 25 Oct 1984.
Story sent in by Brian Hodgetts
Broad Arrow Tavern
Moya Sharp
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Cabbage was one of Barry & Shirley Hart better customers at the Broad Arrow Pub with his own claimed bar stool no one ever sat on it other than Cabbage himself
That was Barry and Kath Hart my parents lived in BA mum use to cook pies and pasties for them
The first photo was my parents home Dick and Ethel Terrell.My Mum lived in that house with her family in 1934 her dad was a ganger on the rail line and Dad brought the house for mum in the late 60 s early 70 S
Love this and so enjoy your emails
The house in this is my mum and dads house or I should say was.It holds many memories
My parents were Dick and Ethel Terrell .My mum lived in this house in 1934with her parents her father was a ganger on the railways mum went to school in Broad Arrow
Cabbage was called that because he threw canbages at Sir Norman Brierley’s aircraft when it crahed on his market garden in the 20’s. Tom Sayers was the publican at the Arrow. Cabbage had an FE Holden ute! When he got crook amd wemtbto hospital a Scotsman shifted into his house and wrecked and stole any valuables!
Hec had one of the railway houses and lost his eye after his rifle bolt exploded! Went to the Doctor a week later!
Tom’s brother Mick used to amger his wife with the story about his job in the brothels when he was 17! He was a bump up boy! Enough said!