Yellowdine – a walk through a canvas town (Part 1)

YELLOWDINE
A Walk Through Canvas Town.

A Canvas town beside a hill of gold . . . that is Palmer’s Find, which, the world calls ‘Yellowdine’. Here, among the red trunks and the white trunks of gum trees, the scenes of the old goldfields days, the golden nineties, live again. They have wireless now, of course, and motor trucks, and a gramophone. But they are the same men, though, with new and younger mates, they have the same difficulties, the same codes, the same hopes. Still, they seek gold. Half a year ago this little township which men are watching eagerly in Perth and the Eastern States, in London, in Paris and New York— half a year ago it was untrodden bush, with the hill of gold so thickly furred with scrub that the first-comers thrust through it on their bellies.

Yellowdine Townsite – Photo Flickr

Now that hill lifts spotted and naked from the wilderness, and makes rich men richer half the world away. What a revolution has taken place in that hill’s quiet history. For countless ages, since time began, it rested serene and undisturbed in its primeval bush. Now suddenly its coverings have been stripped away, its sides scarred, its features levelled, and men are burrowing down into its heart. From its summit, where soon a 20,000 gallon water tank will stand, one may overlook the country around. Roughly to the north, 200 yards away, lies the canvas town, the dwellings scattered among the red tree trunks of the gimlet, gums and the white trunks of the silver salmon gums. To the west stretches for many miles the green roof of the forest, through its chinks, near at hand, an in frequent spot of white proclaims a tent.

To the south bordering the foot of the hill, a broad band of brown lies across the green bush like a scar. It is the dried-up bed of a salt lake that is one of a chain of lakes stretching east and west for 14 miles or more. An occasional eye of blue on the lake bed reflects unwinkingly the blue sky. Down the slope of the hill which leads to the lake, which is elsewhere fringed by the unmitigated bush, men labour after gold. Nearest the summit, which is red, spotted with white quartz, a collection of unpainted corrugated iron sheds serves as offices for the Yellowdine Gold. Development, a subsidiary of the Commonwealth Mining and Finance, Ltd, and a little to the right the gaunt red framework of a poppet-head towers above the main shaft. The earth-banked heads of a company of minor shafts, each topped by a hand- worked windlass, defile across the hill-side a little below, and then a sea of red earth with man-made hillocks falls to the shore of the empty lake.

Among the hillocks move the 60 odd alluvial miners, with their wetshakers, their dryblowers, their pans and shovels, their tools of yesterday. Here, in this area of seven acres or so, the alluvial mining scenes of the past are re-created. Out of the Past. An old-time dryblower, could he have been projected forward suddenly through 40 years, would find little to wonder at here. Some new-fangled machinery, perhaps, atop the hill; and the men a strangely beardless lot. But he would soon fit in. He would find among them some of his old mates, strangely aged; he would peg a claim on the outskirts of the field, at a spot less experienced eyes had overlooked; and with a dryblower or wetshaker, the same as he had always used, he would show these beardless chaps a thing or two. It would only be at sundown, when the men knocked off, that fear would enter him, when he yarned again with his mates and heard words he had not heard, and incomprehensible allusions.

Miner puddling for gold at Yellowdine 1935 – Photo SLWA

For an instant the sight of the settlement would reassure him, with its hessian walls, but then a horseless truck would thunder past in a cloud of dust, a Sydney band would blare strange music through, the Western gums, or the voice sound of a singer who, his mates might casually remark, has been dead these many years. . . . . It would be then, fearfully, he might ask what year of grace was this. To this lonely isolated township have come visitors from all parts of the world. There have been Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Belgians, Germans and Americans. The manager of the Yellowdine Gold Development (Mr. J. V. Taylor) has provided beds, at odd times, for a thousand or more of them in his tents within a bough shed. They stared at Yellowdine and wondered, and thanked him in a dozen different languages.

Yellowdine Street Map – Image SLWA

Palmer’s Find is situated eight and a half miles from the Perth- Kalgoorlie road, the turning being at the Yellowdine railway siding, which is 20 miles east of Southern Cross,  ‘The Cross,’ as it is called. At first a promising straight and narrow path, the bush road to the settlement falls presently into bad ways, twisting and groping bumpily among the tree trunks. After eight miles it arrives, with a faint sense of astonishment, at the planned township of Palmer’s Find, a town on a map — and that is all. It is a really fine town, with wide, planned streets and handsome building lots. All that is needed are some buildings. To this site, the present township, which is half a mile further on, will be transported. The 500 inhabitants must gather up their tents and bough sheds, their stretchers and home-made furniture, and move. The date of the death of the present township (so young) and the birth of the new one has not been fixed, but it should be within two or three months.

Vlase ZANALIS left with miners at Yellowdine, 1938 – Photo SLWA

In the meantime building lots in the new town have been sold, three corner lots fetching £270 apiece and others £180. The main street lots fetched in all, £4,200. Here water, which at present is carted in 200-gallon drums from the Yellowdine siding by a contractor, and sold to the residents of Palmer’s Find at 5/- per 100 gallons, will be made available by means of a pipe line to be laid down. The preparatory clearing work is nearly finished, and the pipe line, which will convey water from the goldfields scheme, is expected to be in operation within two or three months. In the new township proper provision will be made for drainage, sewerage and sanitary conveniences. The Main Roads Board will build a road to the town, and a telephone and other facilities will be installed.

The Present Township – A walk through the present township reveals a scattered collection of about 100 dwellings, some of sacking and hessian, some of canvas, a few of corrugated iron. There is not a wooden, or brick building in the place, although the store, which is the only building near the new site, is made of wood. A modern bungalow of wood and brick is to be erected for Mr. Taylor on the southern forehead of the Hill. Compared with what it was two and a half months ago, it might almost be considered a modern city. Then the first two boarding, houses, the boarding house of Mrs Hodgkin’s and the boarding house of Mrs Keitel, lifted their hessian walls. Meals were eaten underneath a tree. Salt beef, and potatoes were the only diet. A rail made from a tree trunk served as seats. There were no beds, no dwellings, There were only rocks and gold. Now, such rapid progress has been made, there are five hessian boarding houses, all full, four bookmaking establishments, which are equally crowded, two grocers’ shops, two hop-beer shops, two bakeries, two hot pie and saveloy shops, a fruit and drapery shop, a barber’s shop, and a newspaper, hardware, patent medicine and a drapery shop. There is a bootmaker in the town, and a plumber and a dressmaker.

The mail is delivered, and letters and parcels may be posted, three times a week. A mail plane circles over the town each Sunday morning— another shock for that old prospector. Ice is delivered twice a week, and one of the butchers has an ice box. The other delivers meat astride a thoroughbred racehorse (Northern Isle, by Isle of Arran out of Northern Lily). As yet, however, there is no parson, no school teacher, no doctor, no lawyer, no police constable, no justice of the peace, there is no cemetery or undertaker, no mayor or corporation, there is no church, no hospital, no hotel, no beer, no milk, no electric light, no telephones, no streets, and no drains (no water). There is not even a bath.

Seen better days – Yellowdine – Photo Norman Jorgensen – 2009

The tiny population of Palmer’s Find is drawn from all parts of Australia, and even from some of the more remote parts of Italy. There are about 40 children in all, of whom 15 are of school age, between six and 14 years. The bush is their school. And there are about 30 or 40 women on the field— and (say the residents) more are arriving almost every day now. So far there has not been a birth or a death, but on Saturday the first wedding, will be celebrated, with a tree stump as an altar, the sky as a roof, and for stained glass windows the frail green flower of twilight. Six especially fattened turkeys are watching the march of the hours lugubriously.

Next Week: The people of this canvas town, their social life, their earnings, their amusements, and the miners’ own rough code of justice will be described in a second and concluding article.