My only memory of my mother was of her being loaded into an ambulance and nobody knows what happened to her after that – none of my living relatives seem to know!
My father married an Irish woman and I went to live with my aunt and was
later put into an immigration centre in Birmingham. The boys and girls were
separated. One day the matron came and asked which of us would like to go to
Canada – I thought it was too cold so I didn’t put my hand up! Then she
asked which of us would like to go to Australia? I had an uncle in the Northern
Territory on Jindare Station and my aunty had told me stories about him so I was
first to put my hand up! A party of 28 boys from different orphanages were all
kitted out with new clothes, suites, overcoats and hats with peaks and a bit of
pocket money ready to go. My father and aunty came to see me off and we first
went to London where we all stayed at the YMCA for 3 days. The boat for
Australia – The SS Benally, left from Tilbury Docks in London and it took 6
weeks to reach Australia. We left London in 1928 in January and arrived in
Fremantle on March 3. I was 12 years old and it was the biggest adventure in my
life. The boat called in to different tropical islands on the way and islanders
would row out to our ship selling all sorts of tropical fruit we had never seen
before. Some of the boys stole books from the Masters cabin and sent them down
on ropes to the small boats in exchange for fruit which was then hauled back up
in baskets.
At Cape Town we
stopped for three days while the ship loaded up with coal as it was a steamer
and used the coal for fuel. The Africans carried the coal up in baskets on their
heads in a continuous stream for 3 days! We
went sightseeing in Cape Town and went up Table Mountain. Wherever we went we
had Africans waiting on us and anything we asked for. We were treated like
royalty.
After leaving Cape Town the seas became rough and the waves often
towered above the ship but it was really exciting. One day we were having races
on the deck and my hat blew off and that was the last I saw of it! The crew were
good to us and the cook often brought out a big tray of plum pudding for us
boys.
Our first glimpse of the
Australian coast was disappointing; it looked so dry and desolate. After landing
we stayed in the WMCA in Perth for a few days before catching a train to
Pinjarra. All 28 of us were sent to the Fairbridge farm. I stayed in the Henry
Hudson cottage but left school there at age 14 and started domestic work around
the farm. They taught me a lot though.
First I worked in the kitchen with
its huge stoves and coppers. The kitchen had to be swept and mopped out every
day. Then I went to work in the huge bakehouse and learnt to bake bread. One day
I was chopping wood for the oven and eating a crust of bread and the warden
slapped me for eating the bread which I was entitled to have because I was
working in the bakehouse at the time. I was so upset by this that I ran away and
camped in the bush for three days. I actually enjoyed camping in the bush on my
own and thought it was a great adventure but when I eventually returned I had to
report to the colonel and he made me drop my strides and gave me a good caning.
He then gave us all a lecture about going out in the bush and getting lost and
how dangerous it was.
I was then sent to work in the piggery, then the market garden and then
the orchard. In the dairy I learnt how to milk a cow and in the butchers I
learnt how to butcher sheep, pigs and bullocks and how to dress them. We made
our own bacon by smoking it in a huge fireplace Then I went to work with the
teamster doing ploughing and harvesting. I got a good grounding in every aspect
of farming at Fairbridge. They were paying me then 10 shillings to work on the
farm but 5 shillings went back to Fairbridge. This 5 shillings was later
returned to us as a lump sum when we turned 21 but without any interest!
At age 15 Fairbridge sent me to work on a sheep and wheat farm at
Dalwallinu called Petworth Park and it was here that I got my first sniff of
gold. The station was owned by Phil Gaucher
(who painted the curtain in the Boulder Town Hall). Phil would come to
the farm and one day he brought up Charlie Newman a signwriter with him and he
pointed out the low bare hills which had been cleared and which looked just like
the ones near Kalgoorlie.
Charlie walked up to those hills and came back with a quartz rock with
gold in it. I spent a lot of time looking for more gold specimens there but with
no luck but at the time I didn’t know anything about dollying for gold.
A neighbouring farmer came along and offered me 15 shillings a week to
work for him – I was rich! It was the most money I had seen in my life but
Fairbridge wanted me back and I had to go back but got my first ride then in a
motorcar.
Fairbridge then hired me out to
other farms but all I got was 5 shillings again.
After being sent to
a very primitive dairy farm at Capel I decided to jump a goods train to Pinjarra
and that is where I struck another bloke and we both jumped trains to Merredin
and then Kulin. My mate told me to chuck my gear away and just make a swag with
a blanket. So we went ‘on tramp’ like swagmen getting odd jobs in return for
food and camping in creek beds. I ended up jumping a train to Coolgardie and I
was about 16 then. At the time blokes ‘on tramp’ camped in the loco room at
Coolgardie because it was warm and there was always a fire going. I got a few
odd jobs around town and got a job as a woodchopper at the Convent for 2s. 6d.
plus tucker. They couldn’t believe how quickly I got through all their mallee
wood pile and I soon ran out of work with them. I then jumped the train to
Kalgoorlie and ended up digging septic drains for a realestate agent. I had to
shovel out the rubbish and rocks, deepen the trench and cover them over. There
were 15 to do and I was paid two pound a day. I considered myself a rich man and
booked into a boarding house. By then Fairbridge had tracked me down again and a
policeman came to see me. I was put on another farm and then on a sheep station
in Carnarvon, which was a real rough squatters farm and the work, was long and
hard. I was then about 20 and decided to write to my uncle in Pine Creek telling
him I would work my way up to the Northern Territory when I left there. At age
21 Fairbridge let me go and sent me the 90 pound they owed me.
I always felt like an outsider when I worked for Fairbridge as there was
a bit of a stigma attached to being a ‘Fairbridge Boy’.
I then got some odd jobs in Carnarvon but a policeman came looking for
me to tell me that my uncle in Pine Creek had just died from lockjaw after
cutting his hand. So I changed my mind about catching a boat going north and
took a boat to Perth instead and made my way back to the Goldfields. I suppose
my life was set out for me from that point onwards as I then went to work in the
gold mines.
I got my first job in a gold mine at Paynes Find as a machine
offsider and here they taught me how to use a jackhammer but my main job was to
shovel the dirt. I was still only 19 or 20. I then got another job at another
mine near-by. The work was dirty and dusty as the owner wouldn’t allow us any
water to keep the dust down. I persuaded the other guys to go on strike as I
told them the quartz dust would kill us but the other blokes ended up going back
to work but I decided to leave. I got a lift to Mount Magnet but there was no
work there. I met a bloke who told me I should go to Big Bell near Cue as there
was work there. As soon as I got there I stood outside the office every morning
with a mob of others looking for work. There they took your name and waited for
them to call you up. At the time they preferred the young fellas with no
experience as they could teach them up the way they wanted. So I got a job
straight away. They were desperate for men at that time and needed 400. This was
the most modern mine in Australia at the time.
My first job in Kalgoorlie was as an undeground ‘trucker’ at the
Great Boulder shovelling dirt into a truck for two bob a truckload. You had to
push the truck out to the shaft and pick up an empty one take it back, fill it
up and do that all day. There was always plenty of work for a trucker. Then I
was offsider to a machine miner and I learnt how to drill and fire and sink
shafts, man-ways and stoping, I worked on every shaft in the mine – six in
all. One day I picked up a very heavy rock from a rich stope and dropped it down
the man-way to the level down below without looking and it fell right at the
feet of the shift boss. That rock was nearly all solid gold and the shift boss
said thank-you and took it away!
We would take the rubber
out of the fracture box and make crib bags out of it. Some blokes used their
crib bag to take rich specimen rock out of the mine and later they used their
thermos flasks. There was often a gold buyer in the Boulder Block Hotel who
would be waiting to buy the gold from the miners . If you were found with
telluride though you would be in real trouble as the gold squad would know
exactly where it came from as there were only two places in the world where it
is found – an island in the Pacific and underground at the Golden Mile.
When war broke out in 39 I enlisted in the army as all the young blokes
thought it would be a great adventure and I had the idea I would be sent back to
England. A whole trainload of us left Kalgoorlie and camped at the Claremont
Show Ground and were later transferred to Northam. The food there was terrible
though and the meat was full of maggots. I got crook during training with suspected ulcers and ended up in a
hospital but they couldn’t find what was wrong with me and I was discharged. I
went back to the Great Boulder where they were pleased to have me back because
so many miners had left for the war. I got crook again and doctor Webster told
me to go to Esperance where I ended up staying for 5 years. I would go fishing
in the summer and back prospecting in the winter. I made a rough boat with a
sail made from a chaff bag and went fishing. Everyone thought I would drown in
that boat. I eventually went to a different doctor and was diagnosed with a
diseased gall bladder. They operated on me and took it out including my appendix
and I haven’t been crook since.
In 1954 I found gold in quartz at Kumarl which is 19km north of Salmon
Gums but it wasn’t really payable at that time. Then in Esperance when I was
cutting fence posts I met Harold Eldridge and he had a show at the Beete Mine
and I pegged a claim next to him. I did a bit of prospecting there but Harold
was always talking about Ryans Find and that’s where I ended up prospecting
for three years. When I was broke I would go back to the Great Boulder on wages.
One of my best finds was by my Blue Heeler dog - I had been taking soil samples
all day up and down gullies with no luck and decided to go back to my car. I
would say to my dog ‘Blue Take Me Home!’ and he would take a straight line
back to my car. This time though he chased a rabbit and as the ground looked
good I took a loam sample while I was waiting for Blue to come back. There was
good colour in the dish and it turned out to be my best find. The Little Nipper
Mine was not far away and there were two miners working there getting some rich
patches . I soon became well acquainted with the prospectors Voumard and Walls
who worked the Little Nipper mine. They were loaming up small enrichments with
only a few colours in the panning dish but some patches went 400 ounces! When a
patch cut out they would have to very carefully follow the traces along the wall
till they hit another patch. Often there were only a couple of colours to
follow.
My patch near Ryans was
going an ounce to the ton and my first crushing was 4 tons and the next one was
15 tons. All the dirt was taken to the battery in Coolgardie. I would make holes
with a bit and hammer and it would take me all day to make one hole for blasting
one foot deep because the ground was so hard. Then a bloke brought out a petrol
driven jackhammer to lend me and that was much easier. The only problem was that
it was all dry boring but I made a canopy to keep the dust off me. I shifted 45
tons for an ounce to the ton but gold was only worth 15 pound an ounce then so
when I was offered 500 pound for the lease I decided to quit and sell it and
bought a ticket back to England. I would go back to England many times during my
life whenever I sold a lease or made a good crushing. I was trying to trace my
family roots and found my father, sister and elder brother but my younger
brother was killed in a coalmine.
When I came back I camped
near Coolgardie and prospected the Hampton Plains ground and picked up a show
not far from Sam Cash’s. After crushing 75 tons for 76 ounces over a period of
time I sold it for $5000. Sam Cash wrote the well-known book ‘Loaming For
Gold’ while he was prospecting around Coolgardie. The Hampton Plains Company
had been given 547 km2 of Crown Grants by Queen Victoria in the
Coolgardie-Kalgoorlie area, which was not available for pegging, and they had a
portion of the major nickel and gold deposits inside their boundaries.
In 1963 I pegged an area at Canegrass north of Scotia for nickel. That
belt of country has now been drilled and pegged for nickel. I later found
another nickel area at Londonderry before Kambalda was found. I sold the
Londonderry lease for $10,000 but was offered it back for $2 when the company
pulled out of Australia. I
immediately sold it again to another company for $11000! Close to the nickel
areas were gemstones deposits especially chrysoprase and moss agate and this got
me started on cutting and polishing rocks. At Canegrass I picked up a flat rock
to jack up my car when I had a puncture and when it cracked open I saw that it
was full of chrysoprase. I had a shop in the main street of Coolgardie then for
many years selling rocks, gemstones and old bottles.
South of Coolgardie near
Burbanks I had a gemstone lease with moss agate on it which I would sell to a
dealer in Perth’.
………………………………………………………..
Harry was made a life member
of APLA and back in the 70s as President of the Coolgardie Branch he led a
protest against the new Mining Act regulations which he said favoured the big
mining companies over the small prospector because it allowed them to peg huge
areas of ground locking out the small prospector. Four hundred prospectors
turned up to march in Perth from all over the Goldfields. Harry said ‘Now
there is no longer incentive for the individual prospector to go out into the
bush with his dolly pot and panning dish and loam for gold searching for new
deposits as the ground is blanket pegged by big companies. All these old
prospecting skills will soon be lost for ever. The other mistake the government
made was to close all the government run state batteries which also made it
harder for the small prospector to survive. Most of the best gold finds in WA
were originally made by individual prospectors camping out in the bush dollying
and panning for gold.
Photo left of Harry and Jack at The Coolgardie Jazz, Gems & Rock'n'Roll Festival 2006 showing some of his polished rocks.
Harry still has a mining lease at Gibralter and still drives himself
around the bush fossicking in his small car which incidentally has the number
plate
‘APLA 1’
He is now a member of the Coolgardie Gem & Mineral Club and teaches
members how to cut and polish rocks. He recently led a convoy of cars from the
Perth Lapidary Clubs on a field trip out of Coolgardie and had a display of
rocks at the Coolgardie Jazz & Gems Festival and at the Hall of Fame open
day. He also has a stall selling his gemstone jewellery and polished rocks every
Coolgardie Day.
PS. Harry was born on 23 October 1915 so he will be 92 this year!