The Murchison – on dust storms and barmaids

The Murchison
Author unknown
(From the London Financial Times)

The Murchison was the earliest explored field in West Australia, not the first goldfield—that was Yilgarn, discovered by my friend Anstey—but the first upon which development work was undertaken. It went with a boom and has for some time been suffering the usual reaction. Miners imagined that they were going to make fortunes and didn’t. But today I like the prospects of the Murchison better than those of any other field except Hannan’s. They have got water all through this country, and indeed the prospectors can seldom sink below 70 feet anywhere.

What water means only those who haven’t got it know, I do not so much care for washing. Cleanliness, maybe, is next to godliness, but I have met some most admirable specimens of humanity who never washed in their lives. We never washed at Menzies, Hannan’s, White Feather, or Broad Arrow, and we were picturesque and healthy. But whilst I stayed in Yalgoo I washed my hands often twice a day and could never keep clean. Begin to wash dogs or cats and they are always dirty. It’s just the same with miners. The desire to be clean is a sign of degeneracy.  I will give you an instance of how dangerous it is to indulge in a bath on the fields.

We get what are called ” willie willies’. They are water-spouts made of sand instead of water, and they are most entertaining. They usually begin upon a very small scale, and the idle miners sit on their haunches and watch them circle down the street—a dancing column of dust, dung, dead flies, and old paper. Give them time and they will show sport. But the ” willie willie ” has no perseverance; he lacks continued effort, and the slightest opposition in the shape of a tin hut or telegraph line so destroys his symmetry that he dies of disgust in a small heap of refuse. But with plenty of room, he becomes rampant. When he gets over fifty feet high his power is vast.

One of the boys was much in love with a beautiful barmaid, and, failing to win her by fair means, he determined to wash. Having spent his week’s earnings upon a tub of water, he borrowed the hospital bath and retired to his tent. A “willie willie” had his eye upon him, and, coming across the plain with a rush, lifted the tent clean into the air and discovered the rash boy. His legs were a beautiful ivory white, but the rest of his body a deep copper color. There he stood, a bronze and ivory Adonis for men and barmaids to jeer at. He never washed again, but he won the love of the lady.

Yalgoo is not a beautiful spot, it was discovered by Charles Campbell Macklin—at least that is the impression I received after a week’s sojourn in the city. The townspeople are going to erect a statue to Macklin.  The statue will be placed opposite the principal hotel, in which Macklin is largely interested. One of the best features of Yalgoo is a noble lord, who runs a store and sells potatoes, dynamite, and flour under cost price.

I had a happy time at Yalgoo, “batching” with the son of a millionaire brewer and M.P. We did our own cooking, and our dinner parties were the sensation of the season. Tinned apple pudding boiled in a billy of tea was our piece de resistance. As we were short of water we washed our dishes on the tailings dump, and the acid gave a fine flavour to the tinned herrings and sheep’s tongues. One of our guests was a teamster who had been to Rugby (The School). He always grumbled at the sand on the enameled plates. I don’t think Rugby can be a good school. The boys must be reared in the lap of luxury, and they acquire a most expensive taste for sardines. This teamster would eat six tins as a hors d’auver. It is true they were the smallest tins I have ever seen, but also they were the most expensive. He could not return our hospitality, because he slept under his waggon each night, and the other teamsters working with him had not been educated either at Rugby or anywhere else, so we never went to see him.

We were not proud, but we lived in a real house made of mud bricks, with a somewhat damaged tin roof. We represented the aristocracy of Yalgoo and were on the Warden’s drinking list. The reflected glory of the far-off millionaire M.P. Papa oppressed even the exuberant spirits of Yalgoo. There are only two topics of conversation on the goldfields— mines and barmaids. Our scorn for the mines of Cue and Mount Magnet was Titanic. Hardly a man had been to Hannan’s or Coolgardie, for the Murchison is perhaps a thousand miles away, but all knew Cue and despised its ridiculous efforts towards civilisation. Cue had a clubhouse, Mount Magnet two well-appointed hotels, which stamped the towns as mere  “boom” cities doomed to failure. We were miners pure and simple at Yalgoo, the outside world rather sneered at us, but we always replied that whatever our minds might be, no one could deny our dust storms. We had been one whole day in total darkness. This usually shuts up any Cue man who called in on his way down to Geraldton.

And we had the most exquisite barmaid. Her cheeks were like damask roses, her lips the ruddiest of cherries. Her eyebrows were so perfect in contour that if there had been another woman in Yalgoo she would certainly have said they were made up. And how we believed in that barmaid, I was introduced to her the night I arrived. The beardless boy who initiated me whispered that she had passed all the examinations in Melbourne and Sydney, and had left a palace at Toorak to perfect her knowledge of life at Yalgoo. I privately thought that what the lady didn’t know was not worth knowing, but I openly declared that I had never seen a more beautiful woman or one more divinely innocent. She told me late one night in a burst of confidence, after seventeen glasses of benedictine, that no man had kissed those very ruby lips. When I am away and safe in civilisation, I am apt to sneer at the absurd innocence and childish ignorance of the world all miners display. But what a boast, for there, is not one of those girls who does not face death bravely a dozen times a year. They will go and nurse the worst cases of that must loathsome typhoid, and sit up night after night with men raving in delirium, in a stifling tent, with nothing to help them but their womanly courage.

Reader, have you ever nursed a typhoid patient? No?

Please God you never may. But the barmaid of Western Australia is, after all, a true woman—when the autumn brings its death-roll she never flinches.