McCullock's Gold

by Lindsay Johannsen

  Chapter 1. The Miners McCullock and Johns, and the boy Sayd Kaseem

  Lester Bulwah McCullock was a true-blue bushman.

  Large, loud voiced and Territory born, he was tough as an ironwood tree, totally self-reliant and utterly typical of the breed – a hard working, rough living, tough talking individual who lived life to the full and dealt with its challenges head on.

  The year was nineteen forty-nine, and McCullock and long-term associate Wilbur Johns were partners in a two-man mining project. By rights the two were droving contractors, but three years earlier a prolonged drought and lack of work had forced them to find income elsewhere. Now they were on the Jervois Range copper field, by road about four hundred kilometres north east of Alice Springs. Others were there as well, working various little ventures.

  Living conditions were basic, as were most bush situations of the day. Water had to be carried in drums; opportunities to replenish food and other supplies were sporadic. Everyone helped by bringing out orders when returning from town, but town trips were infrequent and shortages, delays, the distance, an unmade track and sudden weather changes made running out of essentials common.

  Aside from food, McCullock’s main concern was his rum. He and Johns held separate lots, with current bottles kept in their cool safe and spares in a special lockup. Low reserves meant rationing and just a tot after work each day, as running dry caused friction, outbursts and arguments. With expected supplies came normality, however, and life at the little mine would resume its timeless tedium – mostly hot; occasionally windy… Always difficult.

  Then one day something would happen – a setback perhaps or an argument – and to calm his nerves or soothe his battered pride McCullock would take a pannikin to the cool safe and pour himself a decent-sized “settler”.

  It never helped and he never realised. All it did was tighten the knot in his guts.

  If he left the bottle there all would be good, but if he took it to the table it would be set upon in earnest. And while many a bushman enjoyed a couple of rums and a good argument, McCullock in excess was slave to a terrible anger. Reason would desert him and a mighty rage descend as the level went down – a fiery, irrational, paranoiac rage.

  Sometimes he’d pass out before the bottle was empty; sometimes the bottle reached empty before he passed out. In the latter instance the offending vessel would be hurled at their cast-iron stove, this being the only thing in their bush-timber and corrugated iron house solid enough to really satisfyingly smash it against.

  Wilbur Johns was altogether different. A smaller man than McCullock, he was quieter and more thoughtful, hard working and totally steadfast. He lacked a bushman’s capacity for strong liquor, though not a means of trumping McCullock’s rancour should the drinking become serious.

  His tactic was to launch into song, all extreme of volume and desperate of tune. So bad was it that short of assaulting the fellow all McCullock could do was storm off and vent his fury elsewhere.

  But their occasional mindless drinking session didn’t always come to that. Johns mostly reached his limit before the other could work up a decent rage, in which case he’d lean slowly sideways on his chair and pass out. Sometimes he’d remain there; sometimes he’d fall to the floor unconscious and remain there.

  The official name of McCullock and Johns’ copper mine was “Attutra” – as recorded in the big leather-bound Mining Register of the day. Everyone on the field knew it as Hanlon’s Attutra, however, after its finder, Tom Hanlon.

  Hanlon and associate Bill Mudge were the first Europeans to sight the Jervois formation’s green-stained rocks and ridges, though at the time they were in no position to linger.

  Instead the two returned when the storms had gone and the weather was cooler. After setting up camp at a short term waterhole near the line of lode they rode out to explore their discovery.

  It was bigger than either had expected. For three and a half days the pair prospected the hills of its ten kilometre strike-line finding copper outcrops large and small. Most were south of the waterhole though a few lay northward as well.

  Their last morning at Jervois saw them pegging claims on the field’s best showings before returning to pack up. But as they approached their campsite along the gently sloping creek bank they happened on a couple of odd looking black rocks, all water-rounded and half buried in silt and dry leaves.

  Hanlon dismounted, thinking they’d be alluvials – iron or manganese oxides washed down from the ranges. To his astonishment they proved to be black copper ore and the richest they’d found by far. More surprisingly, the rocks were part of a buried seam.

  The pair pegged a claim there and named it “Attutra”, a corruption of Attut’thurra, the local Aluwarra people’s word for budgerigar. It seemed appropriate; at dawn and dusk each day the bright green birds arrived in thousands to drink at the waterhole.

  Word of the Jervois discoveries soon spread. After registering their claims at the Mines Department office in Alice Springs, Messrs Hanlon and Mudge retired to the bar of the Stuart Arms Hotel, there to enlighten fellow patrons of their good and great fortune. And not without purpose, for they were hopeful of a few quick sales.

  Others soon followed. Most pegged claims of their own, though some formed syndicates to buy ground from Hanlon and Mudge. The Attutra was not for sale, however. The bigger outcrops had more potential but the Attutra was richer, its metre-wide seam required little in the way of blasting and its ore was easily barrowed from the trench.

  And by all accounts the two did well there, for according to Hanlon the copper ore gave a handsome silver assay as well. Yet Tom Hanlon was a loud and larger-than-life character, and so full of bluff and bravado that no one knew what to believe – even to this day.

  Then came the Great Depression and the field was summarily abandoned. Mudge departed but Hanlon stayed on, living for a number of years with the local Aboriginal people.

  During that time he continued his prospecting, moving around the broader Jervois region with them as they followed the game and bush tucker. But his health was in decline and, increasingly, when the others went out for the day, he’d lend his rifle to one of the three senior men and remain in camp.

  One afternoon at the Elua Soakage they returned to find the miner dead. The old men covered Hanlon’s body with his camp sheet then had the younger ones dig a grave alongside. When deep enough they had the old timer rolled in, then prior to its backfilling added his personal belongings.

  Hanlon’s rifle and bullets did not go with him, however. Neither did the tobacco and papers the three old men had found hidden amongst his things.

  Death was no mystery to these old fellows; it was part of life. They sent the others away to help the women then set fire to Hanlon’s brush shelter, after which they retired a short distance upwind to watch the flames burn down. There the trio held an impromptu ceremony, sitting on the ground in the gathering dusk and singing happily, as they sent the old whitefella off to his ancestors with the smoke from his own tobacco.

  More than a decade passed before mining recommenced at Jervois. First to arrive on the field were the well known droving and mustering contractors, Les McCullock and Wilbur Johns.

  A short time prior to this McCullock had seen advertised a windmill and tank construction contract at a newly drilled Queensland Stock Route bore. Being down to their last fiver and ready to try anything to earn some money they’d considered tendering for the job, but on looking over the specifications McCullock suddenly realised: the bore was only twenty kilometres from the Jervois mines; it was close enough to resolve the issue of water there.

  He was not unfamiliar with the place; they’d pushed many a mob of cattle by there when the waterholes were full – on their way through to the Queensland railhead. Sometimes, as they headed home, they’d spell the horses for a day or two at the Unka Rock-hole and he’d call in with his rum bottle to see an old drinking mate.

  Nor was he a newchum to the mining game, for as a young
man he’d worked on the Tennant Creek and Tanami goldfields. Now, he reasoned, with copper prices improving, a mining venture may well be the better prospect. In the Alice Springs Department of Mines office he enquired about the Jervois tenements.

  None of the leases were occupied, he was informed. Immediately he applied for the rights to Tom Hanlon’s Attutra, the richest show on the field according to bush and bar-room gossip.

  A few days later McCullock and Johns were on the road in McCullock’s ex-army four wheel drive truck, all full of enthusiasm and ready to find their fortune – or to try for an income at least. But their first sighting of the Attutra claim came as a shock. McCullock knew Hanlon had been working on the eastern creek bank but there was no sign of any diggings.

  So where was the mine? Perhaps floods had filled the trench and washed away the evidence, he decided. Undaunted, the pair unloaded their gear and set up camp.

  Next morning they began digging in an effort to find it, but by mid afternoon they’d downed tools in disappointment and had climbed the adjacent ridge – out of frustration more than anything. From the summit they noticed an offset in the geology. It gave a hint as to where the workings might lie.

  By evening they’d discovered the top end of Hanlon’s down-sloping trench and were lopping the three young river gums which had colonised the softer ground there; sunrise found them hacking away their roots as they bogged-out the backfill. In all the cutting proved six metres long and the two recommenced mining as soon as it was cleared – southward, as Hanlon had done before them.

  A couple of months later McCullock and Johns received their first cheque and with it came a pleasant surprise. The stories were true; the attached statement showed an extra payment for silver.

  Over the following months they extended their workings another eight metres but there the seam ended, terminated by a fault. Northward the ore lay rich and enticing, but extending the pit in that direction would see them in the creek’s main channel and they were already having seepage problems when it flowed.

  Their first response was to search for an offset extension. No extension existed, however, though convincing themselves of this required three days’ futile cross-trenching in the creek bank’s stony margins. Chastened, they returned to their mine and built a bush-timber platform across its southern end. A windlass and bucket was set up mid-span to haul their ore and the two resumed work, first excavating downwards another two metres then mining horizontally back along the seam at the deeper level.

  But going deeper had drawbacks, such as harder rock and greater volumes of seepage when the creek flowed. Such tribulations were regarded as part of the business, however.

  Cloudburst storms posed the worst threat. These were rare but had the potential to swamp the mine and fill it with rubble. In recognition of this McCullock and Johns built an embankment around the low side of their workings, first raising parallel containment walls using flagstones from the creek, then filling between the two with mullock and overburden from the mine.

  In no way was their structure watertight but neither was their trench: a minor creek flow in the afternoon would leave it waist deep in water by morning. But creek events were usually brief affairs, even the larger ones, and the following day would mostly find the pair pumping out the water in readiness to bucket and haul the half metre of mud that had settled in the bottom.

  A better option was to let the water seep away naturally. A break in town or going prospecting somewhere – or helping a mate with some mustering – meant returning to mud that was dryer and more manageable.

  After mining-out the second level as far north as practicable, McCullock and Johns returned to the windlass and established a deeper, third level, directly below it. A week or so later, as the two finished work for the day, they lit the fuses to the charges they’d been setting then counted-off the shots as they walked home.

  Next morning, to their surprise and delight, they came on some fragments of native copper in the blasted-out ore, broken pieces of what had been a thin scabby vein. To their greater surprise they found the copper contained chips of native silver. Further metallic copper was encountered as their third level progressed. And always there was silver – sometimes a little, sometimes more.

  It was around this time that a third person came to live at the Attutra mine, an orphan boy aged ten named Sayd Kaseem. Sayd was the only child of an Afghani-Aboriginal stockman called Guppa Kaseem and his wife Alindema, a tribal Aluwarra woman.

  Guppa often went away droving for long periods, and prior to leaving would take Alindema and the boy to stay with her parents, usually at the Arkarnina Soak on the desert end of the Plenty River. One day, when Sayd was three, his mother contracted a terrible illness there and within a week had died.

  They buried her in the spinifex country out from the river, following which they established a sorry camp half a kilometre upstream from the soakage. Carrying water that far was tiresome for the women but the move was dictated by custom.

  A few weeks later Sayd’s father arrived in an old work truck. He lifted Sayd from where he was playing in the sand and took him back to the station where he worked. Sayd’s grandmother lived there as well and helped care for the boy, but she was elderly and frail and within two years had passed on as well.

  Following New Year Guppa arranged for his son to board at the Saint Mary’s Children’s Village in Alice Springs, in order to attend school. But Sayd was unhappy at the hostel and soon became morose and withdrawn. Only school holidays and a return to the bush seemed to bring him out of his shell.

  Then, shortly after commencing Grade-Five, his father was thrown from a horse and killed. Sayd crawled under a blanket behind a cupboard when told, desperate to hide from the world as he cried-out his anguish – a boy barely ten years old.

  The accident left McCullock and Johns devastated, and for a time they gave up helping with the occasional muster. Sayd’s father had been a staunch friend and a long term regular in their stock camp, with Sayd coming out to join them whenever the job coincided with school holidays.

  And during these times many a long day had seen the two riding together, father and son.

  McCullock’s position was clear, however; the boy’s welfare must now rest with him, though in his opinion keeping Sayd in Alice Springs was no answer. Guppa Kaseem’s son was a bush kid; out bush was the best place for him. There he could give the lad a home (such as it might be), help with his reading, writing and “‘rithmetic”, and teach him some practical skills – these being the more important where the bushman Les McCullock was concerned.

  Saint Mary’s welcomed the offer, glad to see the issue resolved, and Sayd felt the same way. He disliked town, hated school and detested life at the hostel – to say nothing of his deep legacy of sorrow. And Mister McCullock had been his father’s good friend. On a deeper level, McCullock the drover held a connection to a world now lost. Sayd couldn’t leave soon enough.

  At Jervois the immediacy of his grief was slow to diminish, but this was soon to change. A couple of weekends after he arrived at the mine a trip was made to Bonya Bore for water.

  McCullock had his horses grazing the countryside out from there, and by coincidence they happened to be drinking at the troughs when the three arrived. Sayd jumped from the rear before the truck had stopped moving then ran to the stock yards and climbed through the rails.

  Johns yelled first. McCullock hit the brakes and leapt out to add his own voice, both concerned for the boy’s safety. These were free-spirited animals; a few were unbroken.

  Yet something strange was happening; Sayd was walking amongst them and the horses were standing around all calm and accepting. It was almost as if they’d grown up together, as if he were one of them and had been amongst them all along.

  McCullock had never seen anything like it. He’d known Sayd could ride a bit but that was all. This was a complete surprise.

  For Sayd the event proved a turning point. From that moment on he became a willing p
upil, meeting each day with eager enthusiasm, learning quickly and looking forward excitedly to the occasional muster McCullock took on.

  As a result Guppa Kaseem’s orphaned son was soon well regarded in the stock camps, his natural ability as a horse tailer making up for his deficiency of years and stature. And during their time together many a crusty old cattleman was to be seen standing at the stock rails, dumbfounded by this skinny young stripling’s ability to whisper and calm even the most spooked of horses, then riding the creature when no other had.

  When Sayd turned twelve McCullock taught him how to shoot. Following this the miner would occasionally hand over his battered old twenty-two rifle and suggest the boy go hunting for the afternoon.

  Sayd enjoyed these treats immensely, sometimes returning exhausted with a kangaroo over his shoulder and sometimes returning with nothing. If he killed a roo that was too heavy to carry he’d cover it with branches. Then, on arriving home, all three would go out in the truck to collect it.

  The hunting came with conditions, however. Sayd had to promise McCullock he’d keep strictly to the country northward between the main Jervois escarpment and the track to Lucy Creek Station.

  This was in case of his not returning. Though considerable, the area then to be searched would at least have boundaries.

  Two bullets the frugal old miner would allow the lad.

  If he came home with no bullets and no roo McCullock would accuse him of waste and threaten extra duties, though he somehow never remembered to allot them.

  Attutra was the only mine situated at creek level. All the others were on higher ground to the south, strung out along the flanks or ridge tops of the rocky little line-of-lode hills. A couple were close enough to overlook Attutra’s house and diggings but the others were farther and out of sight. Some of the outlying workings were kilometres away.

  North across Unka Creek the country was less promising, with the ground there being unworked since the early days. A period of great optimism those heady times had been. Copper prices were high, the surface ores were easily won and the field was a hive of activity and enterprise.

  The main development then had been the sinking of a shaft near the summit of Reward Hill, a prominent pinnacle half a kilometre north of the Attutra. Forty metres down the old timers were when the world economy crashed, deep in Reward’s rich secondary ores. And as the Great Depression paralysed the country and banks and industries failed, mines large and small everywhere were closed or abandoned for lack of demand, and Jervois was no different.

  Yet even during stable times commodities prices vary. Primary producers are constant, however, be they miner or man on the land: happy to see a rise; stoic on a fall. But stoicism does have limits. Too great a decline and a small-time miner of the day would seek income elsewhere, often never to return.

  In McCullock and Johns’ case the Attutra’s high grade ore and silver bonus provided a cushion whenever copper prices fell away, making those two the last to consider leaving. Also, should the drop prove marginal (or if it occurred at the height of summer when no cattle work was available), they could choose to continue working and stockpile their ore against a hopefully not-too-distant recovery.

  There were alternatives though, and for the other miners as well. One option was to drive into Alice Springs and take an extended break. Yet town had temptations plus hordes of hanger-on pub-mates, all ready to help a bushman spend his money. Often the only escape was to find work and head bush again.

  Les McCullock and Wilbur Johns had another option, especially where a flooded pit was concerned. Both were enthusiastic prospectors, and if the price dropped too far or the mine took in water they could venture into the field. Taking a week off work to go prospecting while the water drained and the mud dried could be a welcome change, much in the nature of a short holiday.

  According to the general wisdom, most of the Jervois region had been gone over thoroughly in the early days, an activity McCullock believed was mainly focused on gold. Certainly the old timers would have watched for other high value minerals, such as silver and tin or rich showings of copper, but anything less interesting would have been left in the ground.

  Much had changed since then. Better roads and prices had rendered lower grade ores viable, while a couple of previously unwanted minerals were now saleable. (Another once in demand was no longer wanted.)

  It was certainly a good time to be looking for gold. Traces an early prospector would have walked away from were now economic. Even so, McCullock had no intention of being blind to the opportunities offered by other minerals.

  One of the areas he regarded as under-explored was the land immediately below the long eastward reach of the Marshall River, downstream from the convergence. He was familiar with the Marshall Bar waterhole and country to the north, having taken cattle past there a couple of times when the stock route waters were dry, but no one seemed to know if the place had ever been thoroughly prospected.

  From what he’d heard, the country there was just sand, spinifex and scattered mallee, which southward merged into Simpson Desert proper. Now he was living just thirty-five kilometres away and he resolved to one day prospect the place himself. The waterhole would be dry of course, after the lengthy absence of rain, but he knew of the long term supply in the sand.

  Their first trip lasted a week, and came about following a storm in the ranges that unexpectedly flowed the creek and flooded the mine. But prospecting there with the truck would have used too much fuel, so to handle the job McCullock sent Sayd ahead with half a dozen saddle mounts.

  Sayd chose a campsite by a large bloodwood tree, about half a kilometre upstream of the Marshall Bar. And from there, each morning before sunrise, McCullock and Johns would ride south into the spinifex to search for outcropping rocks.

  Sayd stayed behind. His job was to look after the camp, to keep an eye on the spare horses and to have dinner ready for the men when they returned of an evening. Other than this his time was his own.

  McCullock and Johns usually rode in about sundown, though a couple of times it was well after dark. While they were having dinner Sayd would unsaddle their mounts and unhobble the spares, after which he’d take all seven of them down for a drink then hobble them out to graze.

  At four the next morning he’d climb onto the cabin of the truck to establish where they had wandered during the night. There, hands cupped to ears and slowly rotating, he’d listen for the sobbing of a Condomine Bell, a sound that carried for kilometres in the cool desert silence.

  The bell was a Samuel Jones original, and this and the big grey mare that carried it were McCullock’s most treasured possessions.

  By first light the horses would be watering at the soakage, Sayd having walked out to where they were grazing and pulled their hobbles. After selecting two for the day’s ride he would re-hobble the rest then deliver the saddle mounts up to the camp, all before the men had finished eating their breakfast.

  Twenty or so Aluwarra people were living near Marshall Bar at the time. The country surrounding there was central to their tribal lore and legends, and of all their homelands was their preferred place to live.

  Yet they could only visit after rains, when bush tucker was abundant and the hunting was good, for in dry times the Marshall country was unyielding – hard and barren northward, desperate to the south.

  Their camp was near the track leading to the soakage and their leader was an impressive-looking young fellow named Twofoot Jack. Other men present included an elderly uncle and his older brother Walkabout, but by strength and strength of character (and despite his bare twenty years), Twofoot Jack was clearly the man in charge. This authority was not just local, however.

  Twofoot Jack, as it happened, was senior man for the whole region.

  He and Walkabout were also first rate stockmen, and well known to McCullock and Johns. As a result the two had called in to see how everyone was faring and to drop off some extra supplies they’d brought.

  Sayd visit
ed there too, during his time at Marshall Bar, sometimes walking over to have a game with the children or to say hello before they all went hunting for the day. On one occasion he’d gone with them, returning later in the afternoon to prepare McCullock and Johns’ dinner.

  For those two the prospecting was hard work. Few rock outcrops broke that vast sea of sand and spinifex, and those that did were all much the same: each just a broken, brown-stained quartz reef supporting a hillock of crumbing granite gneiss. None were particularly large and some were just mounds. All were barren, shy of grass and utterly devoid of mineralisation.

  Then late on their last day as the two rode back to camp they happened on another small hill. This came as a surprise; they’d been through the area several times coming and going yet somehow had missed it. —Easy enough to do, McCullock decided; the outcrop was nothing out of the ordinary – bigger than some they’d come across but smaller than most.

  Neither regarded it with interest. With a week of difficult and fruitless prospecting behind them they’d both had enough, certainly for the time being.

  Disheartened, saddle-sore, more than twenty kilometres yet to ride, the light about to fail, bone weary, tired of the flies and the heat and the sand and the never ending mallee and spinifex… It was enough to break even the strongest resolve.

  When they were younger having to ride all day like this was their way of life, especially on the big Kimberly cattle drives through to Queensland. Both could still handle a day’s hard mustering, of course, but these days they employed fit young stockmen for the job. —And now, a couple of hundred metres east of where they were riding, there lay another hill.

  The pair rode on in silence. Detouring over to it hardly seemed worth the effort. And how many other hills might they have missed? Not many, surely. —It didn’t matter anyway. Nothing worthwhile was going to be found in this part of the country.

  But as they made their way past the outcrop the two kept looking across … and suddenly changed their minds.

  It was the whiteness of the quartz that did it. That plus the sudden realisation there were two reefs, their unusual placement on the hill and the strange similarity each had to the other – all of which was being highlighted by the last yellow rays of sunlight.

  Without a word they wheeled around and rode across to make a quick reconnaissance, and within minutes of dismounting on the gentle western slope had found some gold. Luck had played no small part; but for a small erosion channel in the hill’s coarse granite-gneiss sand the gold-bearing rock would have remained buried.

  For a while McCullock and Johns were like two out-of-control children, jumping around and whooping with excitement. But night was nearly on them and once the moment had passed all they had time to do was dig out a few samples and continue on their way.

  A short time later the thin new-moon crescent set, leaving the pair with just starlight to find their way. Neither of them noticed. Both were talking at once, barely able to sit in their saddles.

  What had them so animated was the nature of their discovery, for the samples in McCullock’s saddlebag were more than just gold bearing. They were packed with the stuff, the crumbly white host rock alive with its sugary yellow grains.

  Later, as they made their way through the darkness, McCullock began to wonder if someone had been there before them. To him it seemed as if the top ten centimetres of the gold seam had been removed and the trench backfilled to hide it. And the more he thought about it the more convinced he became.

  But why had so little been taken and why had they not come back?

  His questions would never be answered, of course, and why should he worry anyway? They’d found gold! A fortune awaited! What a glorious feeling!

  Yet McCullock was not one to forget more practical issues, especially the issue of not staying longer than planned. The last thing they needed now was for one of the other miners to begin wondering where they were and what might be keeping them, as they’d already been gone a day more than stated.

  By sunrise the next morning Sayd and the horses were well under way. Shortly after this McCullock and Johns finished loading the truck and started homeward as well.

  Once across the Marshall the pair detoured over to where the Aboriginal people were living. McCullock was worried about the worsening bush tucker and game situation and wanted to make sure Twofoot intended moving.

  There was no need to rush things, however. When the half dozen men came over to the truck he passed around his tobacco tin, following which they all rolled a smoke and leant on the tray for a yarn.

  Twofoot asked about different people he knew on the cattle stations and caught up with the general bush-telegraph gossip. Then, after judging what he thought an appropriate length of time, he enquired in an offhand manner as to whether the two had found anything of interest.

  And with the straightest poker-face McCullock had ever been forced to manage he told his lie … and changed the subject. A good portion of their provisions had been used, he explained, but apart from holding a few things back in case of troubles going home they were welcome to have what was left.

  McCullock also encouraged Twofoot to move his people away from Marshall Bar. Finding enough bush tucker to feed everyone would get harder and harder the way the country was drying, he argued (as if Twofoot didn’t already know), and every day delayed would make walking out of there just a little more difficult and hungry.

  “Bring them up to Unka Rockhole,” he said. “It’s full; a storm in the ranges ran the creek and put water all over the flats there. I’ve seen kangaroos on the fresh grass and there’ll be yams and bush tucker everywhere.

  “We could fit the old ladies and some of the kids on the back if you want,” he added, “but that would be all.”

  Twofoot appeared to be in no hurry. He looked around at the near-empty sky. “Maybe bye-an’-bye,” he replied eventually. “We should give ‘im more time, I reckon. After that we might walk up to Unka.”