And at this time the long-delayed news reached me that my paintings from the Glasgow exhibition, including the scene of the corroboree, had been sold. A relative of my friend Mr Hailes had acted as the agent.
Sketch 7
In which I turn to stone
LIKE AN OLD WHEELBARROW Fortune’s squeaky wheel trundles on, if you give it a big enough heave. But it proceeds as if under protest.
The colony has been plodding at a lumbering place, and yet at every turn its luck builds. The difficult years have been followed by a succession of bumper crops, and now the farmers strut about the streets like so many turkey cocks. They ram their beefy fists into their pockets and glare triumphantly at the passing throng, and jingle their coins. Their waistcoats strain across their bellies, their flat straw hats are tilted back. They have become wealthy men in just a few years. The common joke is that wheat is growing out of their ears, though what I observe in fact is a sport of vigorous wiry hairs in the same locality.
In the streets, in the hotels, in the auction marts, all is now genial good humour and back slapping. And to add to all this sense of community wellbeing, copper has been discovered. Not just a little copper. Immense deposits of the richest ore. A local boom has begun, with skilled miners from Cornwall and Germany brought out, shiploads of them, to help with the new source of wealth. So that this is now wheels within wheals.
The copper bonanza first started on the edge of the agricultural districts, at Kapunda, and showed the way for more exciting discoveries at Burra Burra further to the north again, not at all far from where the unhappy Mr H. now rests his bones; and Goliath too. Some shepherds ranging about up that way found a great outcrop of copper ore looking almost as though it had bubbled out of the earth, and of course there was instantly enormous interest in acquiring that land. The Governor, in his habitual grinding manner, and showing himself a stickler for the rules—in this case, that the minimum acquisition at that distance from Adelaide must be twenty thousand acres, and at the established rate of a pound per acre—gave any interested party a week to find the finance and make payment in gold sovereigns. Otherwise that parcel of land had to be advertised for a month and the highest bidder would be the purchaser. Rumours were flying about that big money would be coming from Sydney for the auction.
Everyone knew that the mineral prospects were exciting, to say the least of it. And everyone knew that at the time there was hardly that much ready money in the colony. Well might one ask, just what was the Governor trying to achieve by setting the screws so tight? What did he hope to gain by it? My own thought is that he could have been trying to flush out the collective wealth of the gentlemen of fortune on the one hand, and the old South Australian Company stalwarts, Rundle Street shopkeepers and a smattering of farmers on the other, to reel them in and to repair the province’s fortunes from their pockets. Which of course meant tipping the scales back in his own favour. That is the basis on which this colony is meant to have proceeded, by the sale of land, and with funds of that magnitude in hand the Governor could get on with public works, which in turn meant diminishing the comparative importance of the South Australian Company—for simple example, by building government wharves, and so not having to be obliged to the private competition, or to argue about right of access.
But that is not the end of the story. The best is yet to come. Party the first, including the owners of the Kapunda mine, were already known as the Nobs; and party the second came to be known as the Snobs, apt enough given they had cobbled themselves together in a gimcrack fashion. I don’t know whether they were aware that that was how we thought of them. Possibly not, given the elevated self-importance of the one and the hugger-mugger secretiveness of the other. As neither party could raise the necessary in hard cash within that limited time—nor, one would have to think, could the Governor have expected any different—the two had to pretend a mutuality of interest, and join forces, each contributing a half. In point of law there was nothing to say against that. Nor was there anything in law against the two parties dividing their interests after they had taken possession of the land in question.
The way they did it was quite in keeping with the colonial spirit. They drew a line across the middle of the acreage, and tossed a coin to decide who should have the first choice of either of the halves. The Snobs, good sporting men all, won the call, and chose the northern half, now Burra Burra. The Nobs held title to the southern part, and opened a mine there called the Princess Royal; but while both areas looked promising on the surface, this second mine soon turned out to be pretty much of a duffer. If they had had two coins spinning in the air, more fortunes might have been won and lost on the occasion. That would have been an apt new version of the twin turbulences of Government and Company, each wanting authority, and each seeking to devolve answerable responsibility upon the other. Two bent and discoloured pennies. On this occasion though, one was enough to turn the tide for some, and to turn it quite another way for others. Thousands of pounds went up in the air with that tumbling coin.
The Monster mine at Burra Burra has been nothing less than a sensation. The ore is dragged down to the port following Captain Bagot’s line of road from Kapunda, to past the Old Spot at Gawler and so at last to the depot at the wharves, at first no more than a furrow torn across the countryside to ensure the bullock drivers should not lose their way. With the constant passage of bullocks hauling their cartloads of ore and returning with supplies, goaded on remorselessly by their profane and maddened whip-cracking drivers, the track and then the roadway were gradually formed; and the reverse of that route was followed by a stream of Cornish miners, big strong serious men with bushy black eyebrows and steady dark eyes.
The Governor was able to put public works in place, access roads and causeways and public wharves, and so the lading became easier and speedier, and the volume of shipping picked up too; and with it, more and better returns to the mines, meaning, of course, the investors first and foremost. They have made huge profits, colossal fortunes. They have formed themselves into a company, and invested in works offices and vast stables and holding yards with picket fences, and sluices and warehouses and forges and cottages for the miners. They employ teams of masons and carpenters and bricklayers for this massive building program, so much so that they have siphoned much of that activity away from Adelaide and the villages growing about it. There was frantic activity in every direction, and all to support the steady flow of hundreds of bullock teams down to the port, the freight of each wagon representing a small fortune in itself.
In this way the Governor, having thought to put the South Australian Company to one side, unwittingly spawned another, the South Australian Mining Company, a monster indeed. And given all the Nobs and Snobs, you might say the major shareholders were the new nabobs. It was one of these who invited me to make some sketches of the mining operations for their boardroom, as a reminder I suppose of how they started, for their collective consideration. I was to be given freedom of access to wherever I wished. That sounded like a good chance of my own, my turn to lower a bucket into fortune’s well.
My way led up past the rapidly developing wheat country to where sheep may safely graze, provided the shepherd is attentive to his duties and alert to unwanted visits by the wild dogs. And preferably not, it has to be said, fossicking about for specimens of copper ore. Kapunda was at the margin between these two districts, and already a substantial mining village is in evidence, with a quadrangle of stone cottages for the miners and their families, and boys sorting the ore at long tables (though for all I could tell it might have been rubble), and tracks straggling about the major mine and in between the great heaps of spoil, and more forlorn wavering tracks to where investors had paid too hastily for no return; for not every hole in the ground proved rich pickings. Small knots of gentry stood about in tight huddles, those with their hands clasped behind their back looking very satisfied with the proceedings, those with their hands in their pockets and their heads bowed looking disconso
late. Everywhere were the stumps of saplings that had been cut down for the mines, and bare earth. Already this looks to be a worn-out, threadbare landscape, just clumps of low mallee here and there, with magpie nests in the slender forks. It suggests the country is more delicate than you might expect, unable to sustain much passing traffic or trampling. I have seen the same erosion in the park lands about Adelaide, and the plains beyond.
My road took me well past this district. I confess I wandered to one side of my proper route, for I was drawn to see for myself what is here called World’s End Creek. I could not be certain I had found it when I got there. It was aptly enough named, but then why would you name it other than for the sheer perverse amusement of it? Perhaps irony. I could see nothing other than a creek, and a clump of bulrushes, and a bit of a gorge for the creek to gurgle through; and it may as well be the end of the world, the other end of the globe’s great axis from the solitary inn just beyond old Portsmouth. There was of course no reciprocal tavern, and so no corresponding genial host, nor red-faced tosspots, no nothing. It is well out of anyone’s way, and bitingly cold at this time of the year. Just like its twin. It was all too evidently not much frequented, nor is there any reason for it to be so, for it has as far as one can see no earthly use. You would only go there to see why it was so named; as I had. And having done so, I cannot say in what way that was an improving experience.
Burra Burra is in a large bowl-like valley where three ways meet. I hope that augurs well. The great mine is a little further above the burgeoning township. The broad slopes of the hills are as bald as a parson’s head; or perhaps, more kindly, as an old cushion. There is, after all, covering of a kind, though now I think on it, that is sometimes true of the clergy too. The dales are covered with a scruffy grass, with spurs of rubble everywhere. Those dry bones, you might say, show through the soft rounded contours of the hills. Anything which has made the fatal mistake of growing in this neighbourhood has been ruthlessly culled, either for props in the mine, or for rough fencing, or for chopping up and putting under the cooking pot.
This is not a landscape to promote much in the way of sentiment, which is why in my first paintings I arranged little clusters of grazing cattle and sheep, and right in the foreground, at the centre, a few bucolic natives seated on the turf like the shepherds of old, staff-like spear in hand, watching the placid whole. And for good measure, I painted in dark clouds, smudging the sky. This far out into the open countryside, and we are already well on the way to imposing an ugly industrial blight. I count on the directors thinking my sky only a gathering storm; as indeed I fear it will be.
The natives were content to sit near me while I sketched, though without actually joining me. They seem to approve of people who sit still and do very little. Or maybe it is that we are then all at the one level. They were not curious about what I was doing, just accepting. Perhaps, now that I think of it, that is a courtesy, not being inquisitive. We could learn from these people about how to live comfortably with one another. But they leave a question: are they full of wonder at our transformation of their country, or does their stillness show them transfixed by sorrow? I know what I think, but it would not serve my immediate purpose well to make that apparent. Not for this commission.
The settlement nestles down below them, the barren hills opposite dominate the general statement, and the cruel gashes of the mines are kept tactfully off to one side, or behind some outbuildings or a ridgeline—just the roadway with a dray or two lumbering off towards the south hints at what is really happening here. And a tent to show that we are still in the process of arriving.
The directors no doubt expect pictures giving more prominence to their mines. So I have determined to show them the mines as I doubt they ever see them, or rarely—from the inside out, from down in the dark, under the ground. They have employed a captain to report to them on whatever they need to know. Their assumed place is in the world above, in the sun, with a view of the steady procession of loaded wagons and drays winding their way toward the south, three pairs of oxen to each.
For me to make my sketches I have had to screw up my courage and descend into the pit.
The miners have the hard end of it. I made my first acquaintance with them in the hotels, where all was pandemonium, what with the shouting and arguing and singing and cursing and even some crying, the miners and mechanics and labourers and teamsters and smelters all in their several groupings. They were not just rowdy, they were discontented. Not long ago the masons and bricklayers, carpenters and sawyers and others employed in constructing the mine buildings and the cottages for the workers became restive, and made good their threat to cease work if their wages were not raised. The Company Secretary proved as obdurate as they, and when at the last they returned to their work their conditions had not improved one whit.
Now the miners in their turn are grumbling about their expenses. Tributers and tutworkers alike, those who are paid according to the amount of ore they dig out and those who are paid a standard rate, resent the Company steadily raising the rental of a cottage. They must also surrender a deduction from their pay for the mine doctor, and for their candles, and for the sharpening of their picks; and their provisions have to be carted up from Adelaide at an additional expense. With all this nibbling away from their earnings they are in no great danger of becoming wealthy overnight. That is a state of affairs I readily sympathise with. I am all too familiar with it. They know the quality of the ore that is being carried down to the port in canvas sacks, and they can see how much there is of that, and they know that it all means enormous profits. With such obvious wealth coming out of the mines, they see the Company as mean and greedy.
They are offered accommodation provided by the Mining Company, but at such a rent as to leave too little from their wages. In protest the men have taken to building their own snug stone cottages outside the surveyed area, or to digging themselves little living quarters, mudholes in the clay banks of the local river; crayfish holes you might say. Though they laugh at themselves as living in rabbit Burras. Quite snug these underground cabins are too, neatly whitewashed inside and some with carpets, and a shingled awning or porch at the front if somewhat flimsy, and looking very vulnerable should the creek suddenly come down in flood. The chimneys are just holes cut in the roof, and a barrel sits atop the vent. The womenfolk, their Jennies they call them, are busy looking to improve their living spaces, and of course minding the children. For there is quite a community down there below the banks of the creek. A pathway runs right along the waterway and even over the tops of these underground dwellings, dodging around the chimney barrels. The creek, as you can imagine, is an absolute haven for the young children to play in.
Out at the mine, the masons have built excellent stone and brick ventilation shafts, and stables, and works offices and warehouses, acres and acres of buildings, putting the whole on sure foundations. The signs of success are all in the one place, with whims and sorting tables and sluices and all sorts of bustling activity going on. But that is as far as the appurtenances go; it is all on the surface. For down below is makeshift beyond imagining.
You must descend by way of long ladders, coming down to a kind of large shelf and then over the edge of that to yet another ladder; and so another and another. And with each stage you clamber down further and further into the gloomy caverns these men have been opening up. From as far as I descended you could still make out the distant entrance high above. I was not overly fond of the idea of crawling along the little tunnels that seem to go off in all directions from these chambers, or stopes as they are called; and I was certainly hesitant about peering over the edge. You could not see what was down there, and the alarming thought was not the darkness itself but that there might not be anything at all at the bottom of that vast pit.
I walked with the men at an early hour out to the mine, when they were starting out for their new shift. It was a quiet time of day anyway, before the birds had begun calling across the fields; but with a shar
p breeze coming across the stubble and with low clouds just above, the sound of the men’s heavy boots crunching along the crushed rock pathway seemed to amplify the void about us, just a few of the men talking quietly to each other in that curious sing-song way the Cornish have, waggling their peculiar little beards as they did so. They speak as much through their noses as through the grimly clenched slit of their mouths. That no doubt tends to limit the amount of dust they would otherwise swallow. Most of them are of a middling age, gaunt, with sinewy necks, and they have the most enormous hands. All those generations of uprooting fellow wrestlers at the village games, and throwing them on their back. They seem tenacious men, and hugely strong, like the roots of the scrub trees hereabouts. From what I could make out, their conversation is not profound.
Zur, that bean’t much of a nole, eh Reuben.
Indeed it bean’t, Eb.
And much sage nodding each to each. Those who are not so loquacious—that is a relative term you understand—are given over to the companionship of short clay pipes clamped between their teeth. The men all wear the legs of their moleskin trousers tied at the knee in bowyangs, like the common labourers back in England. They carry their lunch with them in a large handkerchief, and they mostly have a kind of hard felt hat, on which, as I discovered, they fix a candle in a lump of damp clay.
The Profilist Page 11