Gold graves and glory

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Gold graves and glory Page 8

by Jackie French


  Finally they took the shivering, shocked people back to the Bussell homestead. By now other settlers had run to the shore to help bring the survivors back.

  Grace’s mother died three weeks after from the shock and exhaustion, still murmuring for Grace to ‘Fetch them all. I can take them in.’

  Grace and Sam were given medals by the English Royal Humane Society.

  Frederick Drake-Brockman read of Grace’s heroism. He rode over 180 miles from Perth to meet her and she married him in 1882. Frederick became Surveyor–General, mapping out telegraph routes and roads in the northwest, and the second line of the rabbit-proof fence from the Murchison to Eucla. Grace Bussell Drake-Brockman died in 1935, at the age of 75.

  Sam was given a 100-acre land grant on the Margaret River near the Bussells’ farm. He cleared the land, built his house and kept on working as a stockman and bullock driver. He had six children. He died in 1920, when he was 75 years old, in a sulky accident after taking his son to Busselton so he could catch the train to join the 10th Light Horse Brigade.

  The rock the Georgette was wrecked on is now known as Sam’s Rock, and there is a monument to Sam in Busselton Park.

  GO WEST!

  Everyone should have expected it, but it was still a shock to Western Australian farmers when Britain decided to stop shipping convicts to the state. Mining almost stopped—free men didn’t want to go down the mines. Road building almost stopped, too. There were going to be far fewer ticket of leave men looking for jobs.

  The colony stopped growing—again.

  What would bring people to the west? Did Western Australia have any undiscovered riches that might attract settlers? How about good farming land?

  In early 1861, the British and Western Australian governments and British cotton factory owners paid Francis Thomas Gregory to explore the far north of the state to see whether there were good lands for growing cotton. Most of Britain’s cotton came from the southern states of the United States of America—but the US was in the middle of the civil war between the states, and the northern states’ navy stopped any cotton being shipped from the south.

  Surely there must be a great big river up there, draining central Australia, that would make a great place to grow cotton!

  But there wasn’t. Gregory searched till October, but all he found inland was dry, sandy desert.

  It was different near the coast, though. Gregory found good grazing land, watered by the Hardey, Nickol, Fortescue, Sherlock and Grey Rivers. He also found pearls at Nickol Bay. Maybe there were enough for a whole new pearling industry up there.

  FORREST HUNTS FOR FORESTS

  Forrest, unlike many other explorers in a desert country, took Indigenous guides. Even when they didn’t know the terrain ahead, the guides were able to find water and food, and were one reason why Forrest’s expeditions were so successful, whereas others had failed.

  In 1870 the Western Australian government hired the surveyor John Forrest to look for new grazing land, or anything else that might be useful.

  Forrest took his brother Alexander, who was a surveyor as well, two other white men and two Indigenous guides. He also arranged for a supply ship to meet them along the coast.

  FORREST IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL

  Forrest and his men took 21 weeks to cross Western Australia from the coast to the eastern border. He was the first non-Indigenous person to do so. The party found lots of grass, but very little water—and no good forests, either.

  On 1 April 1874 Forrest left Geraldton with the Indigenous guides and with his brother as second-in-command, and headed northeast to find new routes through Central Australia. They headed along the Murchison River to present-day Meekatharra.

  Near the Murchison River, Forrest met Indigenous people, who warned them there was no water the way they were heading, and led them to a good pool.

  They then crossed into 500 miles of spinifex desert, reached Peake Hill, where the north-south overland telegraph line crosses the Finke River, and finally arrived down in Adelaide on 3 November 1874. The journey had taken seven months and had involved several brushes with death through thirst and skirmishes with Indigenous people.

  John Forrest was given 5000 acres of crown land as a reward, and became Deputy Surveyor-General and finally Surveyor-General of Western Australia. But in the decades following, he was to go on to even greater things, both for Western Australia and Australia as a whole.

  In 1879 Alexander Forrest explored the region north from the town of Roebourne to present-day Broome. He mapped the Fitzroy River area and the Kimberley, then crossed the overland telegraph line at Katherine and travelled on to Darwin.

  He reported that the land was good and the Indigenous people friendly. He recommended more northern settlements, and became a land agent in the Kimberley.

  But for Alexander Forrest, too, this was just the start of his career.

  CHAPTER 12

  A DIFFERENT SORT OF GOLD

  FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA

  South Australia never had a gold rush—although it did have gold. But many people tried hard to find enough gold to rush to.

  Australia’s first gold discovery was in South Australia, near Castambul in January, 1846. In 1849 gold was found near the South Para River—but the gold was too hard to get Not much was mined there for over 50 years.

  By the time the gold rushes started in New South Wales and Victoria, South Australia had its own mineral wealth—from copper. But copper didn’t catch people’s imagination like gold did. Copper had to be mined, whereas early on gold could be won from the ground by anyone with a tin dish.

  In 1846 copper and lead ore had been found at Mount Remarkable, and pastoral leases were taken up in the form of sheep runs around the mining area, partly to supply the miners, but also because the wool and meat could be shipped out at the port.

  By 1850 the Burra copper mine was going well, too. But it was hit hard by the gold rushes, as so many people raced off to the diggings. Who wanted to work in a copper mine, when you could pick up gold nuggets that were lying on the ground?

  SOUTH AUSTRALIA HUNTS FOR GOLD

  There had to be a way to get people to stay in South Australia rather than rush away. In 1851 the South Australian government offered a reward to anyone who found a really good lot of gold in the colony.

  William Chapman found gold at Echunga in 1852, but it wasn’t much, and only attracted hundreds of miners, not tens of thousands. There were a few other small finds, but still not enough for anyone to claim the reward.

  In 1856, the government paid Benjamin Herschel to search for gold in the Flinders Ranges. But he ended up finding copper instead. There just wasn’t enough gold to lure the miners away from the richer fields of New South Wales or Victoria and back to South Australia.

  Was South Australia ever going to have a gold rush?

  In 1859 the government tried again. They asked A.R.C. Selwyn to look for gold, coal and water again in the Flinders Ranges. Selwyn was Victoria’s Mineral Surveyor, and regarded as one of the best geological mappers in the world. He went as far north as the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges, but found no interesting minerals at all.

  Only about £20 000 worth of gold was found in South Australia in 1859—about 11 million pounds worth was found during the same period in Victoria.

  In 1864 the government tried again with Surveyor-General George Woodroffe Goyder. Still no luck. Then they decided it was time to bring in a real expert—Edward Hargraves. Surely the hero of the New South Wales goldfields would be successful!

  In 1864 only £8000 worth of gold was mined in SA.

  Hargraves came back from the Flinders Ranges and said that he hadn’t found gold yet, but he was sure someone would one day!

  But in the long term South Australia still did well from the gold rushes. More people arrived to walk overland from the port of Robe to Bendigo, and South Australia was near enough to the Victorian fields to share a bit of the general prosperity. More people wanting food or clothes meant more ma
rkets for South Australian wool, meat and wheat. And as the first excitement of the gold rushes faded and lots of diggers gave up, tired and broke, there were more people wanting jobs, or land.

  But although there hadn’t been a gold rush, copper production was doing well. Maybe there were other valuable minerals in South Australia, too.

  This time the government asked Professor Georg Ulrich to look for gold, and other minerals as well. Ulrich had studied geology in his native Prussia before joining the gold rush to Victoria in 1853. He’d worked as a geologist with Selwyn in Victoria, and would become one of the great experts on the minerals of Australia. He thought there was more gold to find in the north Flinders Ranges. And prospectors did find gold there (where Hargraves hadn’t). But it wasn’t much—although a few prospectors worked there for about three years.

  In fact, South Australia wouldn’t have its gold rush till the 1880s. And then it would be a good one!

  But South Australia was to have gold of another sort—the golden grains of wheat.

  THE GOYDER LINE

  The gold rushes in New South Wales and Victoria at least meant that South Australia’s wheat crops from the fertile coastal plain near Adelaide and the ports like Robe were getting good prices.

  By the 1860s things were looking better for South Australia. Most blokes had finally realised that they couldn’t just head off to the goldfields and pick up a fortune. Men who’d given up trying to find gold came back from Bendigo and Ballarat. Many bought land in the north around the copper town of Burra to grow wheat.

  The German settlers called their villages names such as Hope Valley, Praise Valley or Hill of Grace, as a way of demonstrating their faith.

  This meant the government had money from land sales too, to build roads and public buildings—and survey more land to sell.

  Port Pirie was the railway station for the rich wheat lands to the north and east.

  But how much of the land could really grow crops?

  In 1865 the South Australian Surveyor-General, George Goyder, travelled about 3000 miles on horseback to try and work out what land would be safe from drought. He decided that in South Australia you needed about 14 inches of rain a year to grow wheat.

  On a map of the colony he drew a line. Farms that might grow wheat and other crops were on one side; dry land that was only good for cattle was on the other. This was all from the farmers’ point of view. They didn’t count kangaroos, emus and the people who had been living there for tens of thousands of years with no cows at all.

  MORE TOWNS AND FARMS!

  More and more people wanted to make their fortune—or at least have a comfortable farm—with wheat. But most of the land near Adelaide and the ports had been taken up by farms or pastoral leases.

  In 1869 the South Australian government came up with a great plan to fill South Australia with neat farms and towns—a bit like Britain. All the would-be farmers could buy land with only a 10 per cent deposit. No farm was to be bigger than a square mile and the government would build a town for every 100 square miles.

  No-one was supposed to buy land across the ‘Goyder Line’.

  But South Australia had good wet years in the late 1860s and early 70s. Many people wanted to buy land across the line. 1872 was a great year for wheat and people started making fun of Goyder and his line.

  The South Australian government gave in and in 1874 they dropped the Goyder Line.

  Goyder kept on insisting that you couldn’t count on rain beyond his line—no matter how good the rainfalls were at the time. He said that on his expeditions he’d seen the land full of long rich grass in good seasons, then so dry that the bare soil blew away and covered fences and horse troughs.

  People also had the idea that ‘rain follows the plough’. In other words, if you ploughed the ground and planted crops or trees, it’d rain!

  Surveyors were rushed off their feet trying to keep up with the demand for land that would support wheat. A million acres were surveyed in 1876 alone! New towns sprang up: Jamestown, Wirraburra, Apilla.

  In 1875 South Australia got more rain than it had in any year since the colony began. Rain had to follow the plough. Why else would so much rain be falling?

  Even when the 1876–77 wheat harvest was only half what it had been the year before, hardly anyone worried.

  Farms and townships kept spreading north, into the once dry country. Land for all, sunlight and good rain—it looked as if this could go on forever. The settlers kept moving on past Goyder’s line throughout the 1870s; surely the good rain would just keep falling.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Was Goyder wrong? Were all the new farms and towns safe? The 1880s were going to bring tragedy and settle the question once and for all.

  CHAPTER 13

  KIDNAPPERS AND CAMELS

  The farmers of South Australia were heading north into the dry country. Those in Western Australia were heading east, towards the desert, too. And in New South Wales they were heading west. But until the 1860s no European knew what most of Australia was like. The vast centre of the continent remained a mystery.

  Were there rivers and lakes, with lots more good land for farmers to take? What exactly was out there?

  And how on earth could you get through the desert to find out?

  It was a long way between waterholes. Horses just couldn’t survive in the heat and dry. They needed good grass too.

  But there was one animal that loved the desert.

  The camel.

  SHIPS OF THE DESERT

  Camels could go for days without drinking. They could eat the tough outback scrub, too. They had wide hoofs that, unlike horses’, didn’t need shoeing, but helped them carry heavy loads through harsh country.

  Camels were perfect. They could take explorers out into the dry unknown and if any of the land out there was good for farms, they could carry supplies to it. They could even take supplies to farms that were already a long way from regular waterholes.

  But where were the camels going to come from? And how the heck did you look after a camel?

  THE AFGHANS

  The British army had used camels in northwest India and the area now known as Afghanistan. In 1840 Governor Gawler of South Australia wrote to the British Colonial Commissioner asking for some dromedary camels to help explore the dry lands north of Adelaide.

  Six camels were shipped from Tenerife just two months later. But only one survived the long, hard journey to Australia. The next camels sent to various colonies died on the way, too. Camels just didn’t like swaying ships and waves, and the mouldy hay to eat on the voyage.

  In 1840 the Western Australian government offered £100 for a pregnant camel and in the 1850s it offered a bonus for the first person to get a male and female camel to Australia—alive.

  But camels are bad tempered, stubborn animals if you don’t know how to handle them.

  Expert camel handlers were needed, too.

  BURKE AND WILLS HEAD OUT

  The first camels and camel handlers to reach Australia were probably the three brought to accompany the 27 camels for Burke and Wills’ expedition across the centre of Australia.

  The Victorian Exploration Committee wanted someone to cross Australia and uncover the mysteries of the inland, just as the English Dr David Livingstone had done in Africa. This would be BIG. The first European expedition right across the centre of Australia—if they made it and could get back alive.

  The committee gave George Landells, who was involved in the horse trade and regularly brought horses to Australia from India, money to buy camels and find some camel experts. Colonel Warburton, South Australia’s Police Commissioner and an experienced bushman, would lead the expedition.

  Landells got 24 camels in India, as well as three camel handlers: Dost Mahomet, Samla and Esan Khan.

  The handlers were first called ‘sepoys’, which was what the English called Indians who worked for the British army in India. But the men who came to look after camels later on were usually kn
own as ‘Afghans’.

  Some weren’t from Afghanistan at all, but from India, Pakistan, Punjab or Baluchistan. But most were Pathans, from what is now Afghanistan. Their families were tribespeople, peasant farmers, merchants or nomads. And they knew all about working with camels!

  The Afghans were mostly Muslims, though some camel handlers were Hindu or Christian.

  The camels were shipped from Karachi to Melbourne. They were taken to Parliament House and kept in the stables, and hundreds of people came to stare at these strange beasts and at their keepers who wore turbans. Six more camels were brought into Australia and they were bought for the expedition for £50 each.

  Landells bought some draft camels, bred to carry heavy loads, some racing camels to carry messages quickly, and some endurance camels for riding.

  But now the Committee decided that Robert O’Hara Burke should be the leader, rather than Warburton.

  Burke was a Victorian police superintendent. He had never handled camels. He wasn’t an experienced bushman, either, and he didn’t know much about exploring South Australia—or camels. But he was supposed to be used to commanding men.

  The Committee did the expedition proud. They bought them provisions for a year, two American wagons, a boat, bedding, clothes, revolvers and other guns, tents, dogs, 15 horses and 60 gallons of rum!

  Landells said the camels needed the rum so they didn’t get scurvy in the desert!

 

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