Yellowdine – the people on the field (Part 2)

YELLOWDINE
The People on the Field

There is to be found on the purple veldt of South Africa, a certain shrub which, when plucked, withers like other shrubs and dies. But if after many years water is given, it blooms again. It is called the resurrection plant. Yellowdine— or Palmer’s Find, as those who live there call it— is, in a sense, a resurrection, not of itself, but of the early goldfields towns in this State’s story. This is the especial quality of Palmer’s Find. Here, in this little town of hessian huts and bough sheds and sheds of corrugated iron, the roaring nineties live again. Changes there are, of course, but the wonder is not the changes, but the sameness. Even the people, one imagines, are the same. The same impulse — to extract from the ground a yellow metal— moves them. They toll in the same heat, are troubled by the same flies, endure the same discomforts.

Yellowdine Townsite 1930’s – Photo Flickr

Has the world moved half a century? You would not know it, at Palmer’s Find. This is, I say, an especial quality of the new ‘field.’ It appeals especially to the residents themselves. It is the axle on which their wheel of gossip turns. Both old men and young consciously find much to amuse and warm them in their own anachronism. They look upon the past with contemporary eyes. They hobnob with history. Among these old men are dryblowers and prospectors, their faces burnt and twisted like the goldfields scrub, their wrinkled eyes eloquent of shadeless days. Dear memories they have of Paddy Hannan. and Dan Shea, and Ford and Bayley, and many another old-timers now gone elsewhere; and of stirring scenes of those golden days— of the Kanowna cemetery rush, and the bogus McCann rush; and the farce of the ‘sacred nugget’ of Father Long . . .

And the bosses have memories too— J. V. Taylor, who knew the goldfields at the age of 12, and Gerald Brown, whose father was Rolfe Boldrewood, and Bernard C. Shaw, a cousin of another Bernard Shaw, and L. Prince, the first accountant at the first Wiluna, and Charlie Perkins — old goldfielders all. Golden Memories. Sitting on the rough benches in the bough shed that is Palmer’s Find show restaurant, they revolve the old and new gossip of the Western goldfields. Many a ripe and famous anecdote is heard again. ‘Do you remember . when Mrs. ??? of Toorak, drove a trap up to a shaft, and that prospector fellow tumbled out with only his boots on, oh— and they were unlaced?’ . . . ‘Do you know why they called that mine the Double B ???’ . . . ‘Do you remember . . .??? So the talk goes on, while Jean Graham, the first waitress of the new field, deftly removes empty plates and substitutes full ones –  while at the other tables the young men (spick and span, despite the scarcity of water) listen with half an ear, or swap yarns of their own experiences, or let their eyes rove over the hessian wall that divides dining-room and kitchen — a wall whose every inch is covered by the photographs of football teams, and famous airmen, and His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, and film stars, ‘mainly film stars’.

And as on past fields, the community may be divided into sections. There are the alluvial miners, and the miners who work for wages; and there are the bosses,  the contractors, the storekeepers, the gamblers. There is the old comradeship of the outback, and the old, old grievance of alluvial miners rights. The historic trouble of the Ivanhoe Venture has once loomed near again and men remembered the Eureka Stockade. But, grievances and discomfort notwithstanding, it is an exceptionally happy community, so far as a stranger may judge. Here is a township with no unemployed. Everybody has an occupation and an income, however small. He can afford necessities, and take a part in the building of the township which is growing under his hand. Everybody, too has a calm faith in the ripe future.

The Alluvial Miners – There are about 60 alluvial miners on the field. Through the hot days they labour on the hillside above the empty lake — shovelling, shaking, panning-out. They use a score of methods, old and new, to sift gold from the reluctant earth. A cradle Paddy Hannan might have used works side by side with a cradle shaken by machinery. A shoveler rests his muscles for a moment to watch a scoop drawn by a team of horses. Around them are the sounds and sights and smells of the unchanging bush— the warble of a magpie, a flash of a green parrot, the smell of gum trees and of the rich red earth.

‘What changes do you see?’ an old prospector is asked. Toothless gums show in an enormous grin. ‘The quality of the men,’ he says,

amid a burst of laughter. Some of the alluvialists are wheat farmers from ‘The Cross,’ some once were unemployed. Some have their own claims – pegged out as in days gone by, particles of gold dust in the bottom of a pan are their wages. They make anything from 10/- to £6 day. Some have on occasions made even more. (There are no claims left.) A few work for wages on the claims of other men.

The Palmer’s Find Dining Room and H. Temby Butcher at Palmer’s Find now known as Yellowdine 1935 – Photo SLWA

Rough Justice – Like the miners of the nineties, they have their own codes of justice, these old and young men. They still ‘ring the dish’ When a dispute arises — when one man, for instance, jumps another’s claim (what romance in the very words!) — a beating on a pan or tin summons all the miners to form a court. Shovels and picks are dropped, and the men foregather. Gravely they hear what this man, and that man, has to say, a verdict is given by a show of hands. The verdict is absolute, and no man goes against it. He would be run out of town! One man has already been told to go, though this was a matter of the township rather than the field. He was held to have pilfered from a storekeeper. There was a meeting of the men, the case was heard, the man found guilty. In two hours he must leave the town, they said; otherwise !!! what would happen, otherwise was not stated, but he knew. He didn’t wait. ‘The men won’t tolerate any thief on the ‘field’ said a storekeeper. Of course, there was a bit of pilfering at first, so many men were broke. But on the whole it is a well behaved community. No beer is sold at Palmer’s Find— no sly grog, even. The miners, many of them at least, do not regret it. ‘With sly grog,’ they say,’ there’s trouble, and then the police will be out here. As it is now, things are fine. This place doesn’t need police.’

The Mine Workers. The 200 or so miners employed by the various companies include many Boulder and Kalgoorlie men. They are paid the award rate of £5/8/- a week. In their number, working on the different mines, are perhaps 40 Italians — ‘nice people,’ say the, townsfolk, ‘very quiet and orderly.’ ‘Good workers,’ say the mine managers. Men there are from all over Australia. They have come in cars from places as far as Brisbane. The shopkeepers in the hessian shops are adaptable folk. They sell a wide range of goods— one grocer takes in washing, and sells clothes and patent medicines.

In view of the isolated position of the township — when heavy rain comes, it is quite cut off— the cost of living is not excessive. Fresh eggs are 1/10d- a dozen; a 2lb loaf of bread is 6d, sugar is 5d. a lb, kerosene, 8/6- a tin, (tinned milk, there is no fresh milk), 1/- grapes, 6d. a lb. pears and apples, 2lb. for 1/. A woman’s house frock can be bought for 2/11d, water is 1d. a gallon; steak, 9d or 10d. a lb, beef, 8d or 9d, corn beef, 6d, sausages, 6d. A shirt can be washed for 7d., a handkerchief for 1d, a towel for 4d, and a pair of trousers for 1/.

The women must, do then own washing. Music, Dances, Pictures. Music is the main amusement of Palmer’s Find. No early goldfield ever had such music. The crows have then beaks quite out of joint. No more at dawn do they rouse miners from their stretchers, now it is the voice of Bing Crosby, the wail of a saxophone. The sun comes up to the sound of broadcast jazz. The severe tones of a military band reprove the wagtails. There are several good wireless sets on the field, and they work longer hours than anyone. Racing results are popular—in fact, in some cases, they account for the sets being there, and so is jazz. But what the miners like best are the old songs they hear—

‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!’ . . . the songs so many of them had sung, years ago,

in other bush shanties on other fields. Some of the men play poker, some play with dice. But do not be perturbed —no heavy sums are lost. No sacks of gold dust thud upon the tables, instead, a threepenny bit or two is gravely staked. It Is not the gambling of the old ‘Wild West’. There is about it a faint flavour of suburbia.

D.M. Cox Cash Store, Palmer’s Find, 1935 – Photo SLWA

There are Dances – Once every week the 30 odd women on the field (with others arriving almost every day) are in great demand at dances. The band, too,  is a good band, and makes music as gay as any of those expensive bands that blare so cock surely on the wireless. There is a concertina, a kerosene tin, a gazooka, and one of the Italians has a kind of flute that may be seen more often in his native land. Resolutely the old-time dancers pace the jarrah floor of the shanty that will, alas, soon be a butcher’s shop.

A Bush Cinema – They have the pictures, too, at Palmer’s Find, one night a fortnight. The accents of Greta Garbo, of George Arliss, sound among the gum trees. It is not one of your decadent city cinemas, perhaps, with carpets soft as clouds. But a cinema, just the same. The walls are of hessian. Real stars are the roof. A sheet serves as a screen. Seats— you bring your own seat, please! Any box win do. And the wedding! Not for many days will they forget that wedding, the first at the ‘field, celebrated last Saturday eventide. Some of the older men, no doubt, recalled the first wedding on the Coolgardie field, on that July day of 1894, when another goldfielder pegged a lease on the great matrimonial lead. . . They recalled, no doubt, the description written by ‘Smiler’ Hales in the local newspaper:

‘The bride wore a rich cream quartz-coloured silk, with orange blossom outcrops. The bridesmaid was dressed in a reddish substance, with a sandstone coloured substance running round the main body, looking very nice.

Ah…..th0se were the days.
There is a new light in their eyes,
as they look across the canvas town of Yellowdine.