Kanowna – a diggers life

Among the Kanowna Diggers

Why is a digger unlike a leopard ? was a question once asked of me. That riddle was easily answered, for the leopard cannot change his spots, and the digger can, and I think the Kanowna diggers are frequently doing it. Formerly the digger scorned to be classed as a miner. They drew a distinct line — and they are in fact different characters.

Prospectors eat a meal on the way from Norseman to Day Dawn, -1910 – Photo SLWA

Their rushing propensities, their prospecting tours and tramps in all climes afford them a different life. But now, as the alluvial Kanowna diggers have to sink shafts, drives and crosscut, bag ore for battery treatment, they have merged into the miner’s life, except when the puddling machine is at work, or the cradle rocking, and pans of wash slushed to and fro.

However, the typical digger is there, and the heterogeneous army that form a mining community fraternise as one class—those of college education have the same purpose in view as the plebian — gold is the object of searches, virgin gold, hidden away in every imaginable form, from gully to mountain top. It is a study in human nature to see and hear these diggers. Some carry their past in their faces, others leave not a vestige of a sign to indicate their past, except when in a camp reverie an incident recalls the past. They have, through habit of colonial life in the bush, come to look upon the trees as companions — the trees tell no tales. They look to each knarled and warped tree as if each one had an individual life, the tasseled flowering shrubs, the creepers mingling with the dead trunks of a fallen forest monarch, reminds them of their own life.

Jonnie Day of the Pilbara – Photo Nic Duncan

Then they turn to study the innumerable traits of human character that make up the vast army of diggers, and sit around the fire telling adventure stories. They sink any refinement, for they know all must fare alike, irrespective of accident of birth or education. They share the same tent, boil the same billy, eat of the same tin dog, and share and share alike. In sickness the digger is dependent on the rough and horny hands of his comrades. He has to tramp over the same country, and the elements favor no class or creed. The same stars, moon, and sun lights them on their way. If the rain is sent from the clouds all share alike. Some of these diggers have gone astray from the path of virtue and honor, but erring ones are amongst their mates — the soul of honor and truth. Ah, what studies and contradictions of human nature are found in a goldfield’s camp! It is a romance in trying to unravel the real from the fictitious.

I once knew a digger named ‘ Sugar George,’ whose only hobby when he went to town was to buy a bag of sugar, and he enjoyed eating it as much as an epicure relishes a savory dish or an old toper when a whisky bottle is his own. Another of my acquaintances was ‘Painkiller Dick,’ whose tent was bestrewn with empty painkiller bottles. He drank the contents, not to kill pain, but because he liked it. Then there was ‘Wheelbarrow Jimmy,’ he was never so happy as when trudging for miles, pushing his wheelbarrow, which contained all his worldly goods and the necessaries of his frugal life. The canopy of the heavens was his covering, the stars or moon his only light. His love of loneliness, face to face with nature, was sweeter than the companionship of man.

Then, I remember well, there was ‘Jack the Hooker’ and Bill, his mate, who came across a promising patch. They sunk a shaft, but when they bottomed on poor stuff Bill was ‘fed up’ of mining, and said he would ‘sling it.’ Next morning they struck water, shivering, dirty, and wet, Bill comes up the ladder, he kicks the mullock from his shoes and swears loud and deep. Then he goes into his tent, swears a bit more at his unoffending wife, who had recently joined him in what she hopefully wished would turn out a Golden Valley. Presently Jack comes to see what is he is doing away from the windlass.

‘I tell you, Jack,’ roared Bill, in a fury, ‘I have slung it, and not for the devil himself will I do another hand’s turn.’
‘Bless me,’ remarked Jack, ‘We have hopes now, the wash looks promising, and when we drive?
‘Drive be damned, I am- going to drive out of this. I’ll sell you all my kit
— lock, stock, and barrel, and my share in the infernal hole.’
‘All right, Bill ; what do you want for the lot, £20?’
‘Yes, that figure will suit me. Yes the whole lot?’
‘Including the old woman?’
‘No, you can have her for another £20.’
‘All right I will take her too, Bill ?’
‘Don’t be a fool, Jack,’ exclaimed the lady under offer, ‘I’m not worth it, it’s too much.’

However, the bargain was struck, and. Bill left a free man for another rush. There is, however, a pathetic side to the digger’s life. Roughly garbed as they are they have a soft heart. When gold was discovered in the Kanowna cemetery and the usual rush took place, irrespective of its being the resting place of the dead, God’s acre was no more to them than the desert, and so they sunk their shaft alongside of the graves. One day a digger’s pick struck a coffin. He came out of the hole nearly as white as if he had faced the dead come to life. Great Scott, mate, are you hurt?’ asked his mate. ‘No.’, . ‘What’s up, then?’ ‘Nothing, Nothing.’ But he mopped his face, more as if he was drying a tear, and sat down on the last bucket of dirt he had sent up.

‘Well, mate, there is something up, so out with it. Ease your conscience like, not that I want to be your father confessor, but you. got sick like all of a sudden.’ ‘Yes mate, I did, that coffin brought back to memory the only sorrow of my life. Years ago, I had a school mate, and as boys we swore eternal friendship, fought each other’s battles, smoked our first smoke behind a big tree, and resolved to go together to some colony where we could dig for gold. Australia was the chosen one, and we put in years of comradeship together, shared alike in everything, barring the love he forrned for a pretty, but worthless, girl who played fast and loose with him, and finally jilted him almost at the very altar. My God, he was a man, every inch of him. He bore it bravely, but I could see the battle he was fighting with himself, and I was powerless to help him. One day when I saw him in a moody state with an unrest in his eyes and a twitching of his hands, I asked him if he would go to the West with me. ‘Yes, anywhere,’ he replied. I lost no time in securing our passage, and we soon landed on the shores of West Australia, and, like many more, tramped it inland.

There was the rush to Siberia, and we followed. What we went through for want of water and the scorching rays of the sun, was equal to the black hole of Calcutta. Our tongues were swollen and parched, our brains almost crazed. I was the stronger, and battled it the better. One morning I rose at daybreak, watched the grey mist fading away, thankful my mate slept in the cool hours of the morn, but he opened his eyes, and looking up to me, said  —

‘Joe, do you think you can hold out till you reach water?

“It’s hard to say, but what about you?’ As I asked that question a faintness came in my heart, the yearning look in his eyes spoke volumes. I felt as if I was going to lose all that was dear to me, and a sense of desolation crept over me. He defined my thoughts, for calmly and slowly he said  ‘I am past suffering, mentally and bodily good bye, good bye, good bye, mate, bless and thank you for all pleasure I ever had.’ Then he held out his hand. ‘Raise me’ he murmured, ‘I am dying.’ He gave one gasp and was gone.

Oh ! to describe my feelings alone in the wilderness, with my dead friend, passes words. I wept tears rung from my very soul, and finally fainted from exhaustion. When I recovered I felt, I knew, I was mad, and embraced the corpse of him I loved, so well. All our boyhood days came vividly before me. Then the sun drove me madder and I suffered the pangs of hell. Fortunately a camel team found us, and I was revived by the Afghans, bless them, yes. I bless them, black though they be, for they dug a hole with sticks. Ah, we know not our resources till we’re tried. We know not our friends but in the hour of need. I waited for the sun going down, then I buried my friend in a sand hole in the desert. No tomb marks his resting place, but I know it, it is engraved in my heart, and when I struck the coffin here I thought of my dearest comrade in his unconsecrated grave, and it was too much for me, so I will shift my camp. Not for all the gold could I drive underneath that corpse.’

The Q.E.D. mine illustrates another type of the digger class, for, judging by his knowledge of ‘Euclid’, when he named it  ‘Quod erat demonstrandum’ — ‘that which has been demonstrated’ — one can imagine him being more of a philosopher, and it would be imagined that this mundane life to him would be scientifically looked at and his grief modified by the fact of his superior learning. Therefore, if the one who named the Q.E.D. was to again revisit it, he would scientifically explain the cause of so many worthless shafts, the mounds of which are monuments to the buried hopes of many a poor digger who has left it, and now gone to the rush at Shepherd’s Flat.

For the time being, hope is an incentive to further energy. No one can hope more for their success than myself, for, take the diggers on the whole, and With all their faults they are the embodiment of all that is honorable, honest, pure of heart, and the most unselfish. If a black sheep gets among them he is soon ousted, therefore, my experience of many years and in many countries is that the digger’s life is a happy and cheerful one. – By Charles Hamba