Great Australian Journeys
Page 21
RAZING THE RODNEY
At the end of 1894, the western districts of New South Wales and Victoria were ablaze with one of the most extensive and bitter industrial conflicts in Australian history. The row had erupted over a contract from pastoralists—hit by the falling price of wool—that unionised shearers could not accept. By the time of the 1894 shearing season, the talking was over and the fighting had begun. All sides used violence in support of their positions. But the arson attack on the paddle steamer Rodney in August 1894 marked the height of the conflict; an extreme act by union shearers and considered Australia’s only act of inland piracy.
The Rodney left Echuca with 50 non-union workers hired by the pastoralists to replace the striking shearers. The scabs—as the strikers called these men—were under heavy police guard and were jeered by unionists on the bank. At Swan Hill, Mildura and Wentworth the boat and its growing cargo of scabs was stoned and abused. The Rodney was ultimately headed for Tolarno Station on the Darling River, which was blockaded by 400 striking shearers. Police were on their way from the north to break up the strikers while the Rodney steamed towards the station from the south.
Little did the police know the paddle steamer would never get this far. Long before the Rodney reached the station, the union shearers planned to stop the steamer by snagging her with wire or cable stretched across the river beneath the waterline. They would then board the boat and burn it. The pastoralists got word of this plan, however, and warned the steamer’s captain. He decided to tie up for the night of 25 August in a billabong about 50 kilometres north of Pooncarie. The next morning he would make a fast run to the blockaded station to evade any ambush.
But the unionists were not to be outmanoeuvred by the change of plans: at around 4 a.m. and in the dark, the Rodney was boarded by a group who had disguised themselves with mud streaked down half their faces. Even so, the man on watch saw them approach and called out a warning. The captain tried to get his craft started but the ship never left the bank, as ‘At the same moment his fireman, who was untying the rope which held the steamer to a tree on the river bank, was accosted by armed men, who said they would blow the fireman’s brains out if he touched the rope.’ The crew’s resistance was effectively over:
In a few minutes about 30 of the mob boarded the steamer. Not long afterwards the number was increased to 150. They worked systematically in gangs. One gang sought the free laborers, and bundled them and their swags ashore; another seized the captain after a short struggle. He was not much hurt. Another looted the steamer of everything useful and portable, while another procured kerosene, which was emptied over the boat from stem to stern, saturating well the chaff in the hold. Lights were then applied, and the steamer soon became ablaze.
Meanwhile the scabs had been forced at gunpoint to a nearby island, where they were marooned. The flaming hulk drifted downstream, threatening to set the bush alight as it veered from side to side. The arsonists gave three cheers as one of them played ‘After the Ball (is Over)’ on a concertina.
The same day at Wilcannia, further along the Darling River, another savage chapter in the strike was playing out on Nettalie station. Around one hundred union men turned up at the Grassmere woolshed, where the shearing was about to begin with scabs wielding the tools. A tense standoff developed, as armed police were guarding the woolshed and refused to hand the scabs over to the unionists. Afraid of further negative press, the strike leaders rushed to Grassmere, hoping to contain the violence. But as the strikers entered the shed, the police and a scab opened fire, wounding two unionists. One would later die as a result of his wounds.
When word of these events reached the press, the eastern colonies reacted with fear and threats. The New South Wales government issued a proclamation stating ‘all subjects of her Majesty are called upon to render assistance in protecting persons from outrage or molestation and in maintaining law and order.’
Large rewards were offered for identifying and capturing the union leaders involved. Pastoralists and others in the industry who had not already done so began to arm themselves. There were calls to hang the arsonists of the Rodney. Eight unionists were eventually tried for the crime but they were provided with alibis by their mates and were all acquitted.
Arson, confrontations and gunfights continued throughout Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland well into 1895. This foment led to the birth of the modern Labor movement. Another result of these strikes was the unofficial national anthem, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, based on the story of a union shearer in conflict with the pastoralists of central-west Queensland.
The burned and sodden bones of the Rodney can still be seen, lying low in the Darling River near Polia Station, about 40 kilometres north of Pooncarie.
THE MAGIC LANTERN MAN
In the days before film, entertainers travelled through bush and city with magic lantern shows. The magic lantern, lit first by a lamp, and later with electricity, projected black and white or coloured images from glass slides onto a large screen or a wall. The pictures were accompanied by a presenter narrating the show and sometimes singing songs as well. Joe Watson was one of these magic lantern men who travelled the tracks to entertain audiences far and wide.
Born in Boorowa in New South Wales in 1881, Watson’s first jobs were as a bullock boy and rouseabout. But at the age of sixteen he joined Paddy Doolan and Ted Hurley’s magic lantern show. Doolan and Hurley drove a double-storied wagonette containing the magic lantern through the bush towns of the east coast. Young Joe was excited by the open road and the adventures he fancied he would have in his new life. And, to boot, he was now in ‘show business’.
Well, we would arrive in a town or sometimes a large station property, and line up a program, usually for the Sunday night. Paddy would make a big show of the arrival, lots of noise and banners. We’d charge the public 2/6 each for a night of magic lantern slides and mechanical films (with barrel organ accompaniment). I remember visiting the station of Mr A.D. Middleton and ‘showing’ to 30 or 40 shearers and rouseabouts.
Watson’s job was to work the lantern and, later on, the early film projectors they also carried. Hurley organised the gate and house while the blind Doolan nevertheless managed to bellow a voiceover to whatever was on the screen: travelogues, dramas, murders, boxing matches and even horseraces. Doolan had been a juvenile convict, transported in the 1840s and blinded by accident and through incompetent treatment.
Watson described a typical show:
We had pictures of animals in the London Zoo, Countries of Europe, the Royal Family, and slides of the popular scandals of the day—the Dick Marr Case, Paddy Crick Case, the Dean Case, the Tichborne Claimant, The Butler case of Sydney and a series on the Goldfields, and, of course, a series on the Ned Kelly Gang. The murders and bloodthirsty subjects were always the most popular, even with the womenfolk.
Doolan was also an accomplished singer and concertina player, and serenaded the audience, adding a musical dimension to the night’s entertainment. To supplement the income from the show, Watson and his companions also sold the words and music of Doolan’s songs and, on occasion, sold holy pictures door to door during the day.
Just as Watson hoped, the travellers did have plenty of adventures on the road. One of them involved the largest damper in the world:
It must have been at least twelve feet in diameter and was cooked on a large bullock wheel. We were travelling along this road after a couple of successful lantern showings. On the horizon I could see a cloud of dust and a group of men riding on horses. They were armed with poles and were obviously intent on bashing our heads in. They thought we were the escort for the strike breakers as there was a savage strike on at the time and the shearers were all camped down by this river, and waiting for the scabs to come through—they were coming up from Victoria—the home of scabs.
Luckily one of the horsemen recognised Doolan. We joined with their camp and saw this massive damper being made to feed the four hundred men at the camp. We had it with cock
y’s joy and it tasted good because it stuck to your ribs.
On another occasion he met Jim Kelly, the surviving older brother of Ned Kelly, and even went to his home for tea. The story of the Kelly Gang was also one of the trio’s most popular offerings, thrilling audiences wherever they went. Doolan would accompany the show with a rousing sixteen verses of ‘The Ballad of the Kelly Gang’, a tongue-in-cheek account of the Kelly Gang’s depredations. As Watson sang it in the early 1970s, then aged 92, the ballad begins:
Oh! Paddy dear and did you hear, the news that’s going round,
On the head of bold Ned Kelly, they have placed two thousand pound,
For Byrne, Steve Hart and Dan, two thousand more they’d give,
But if the price were doubled, sure, the Kelly boys would live . . .
The ballad ends with a comment on the inability of the Victoria Police to track the bushrangers down:
But now where they’ve gone is a mystery,
The Bobbies cannot tell [spoken with laughter]
And, until I hear from them,
I’ll bid you all farewell!
Watson picked up many songs, stories, poems, toasts and ditties on his travels and was an accomplished performer himself. Later in life he ran a pub in his home town and also became mayor. His amazing life, travels and repertoire of traditional lore were fortunately recorded by folklorist Warren Fahey and now form part of Australia’s extensive folk heritage.
TRAVELLING TEACHERS
The job description for a nineteenth-century travelling teacher in Queensland was intimidating: ‘he must be able to splice a broken pole, mend a wheel, doctor a sick horse, and, if threatened by fire or flood, be able to extricate himself and his boy and save His Majesty’s property’. These tough-as-nails educators were also expected to treat sandy blight and other eye problems as they rode from isolated outback station to small bush hamlet, teaching the Three Rs to shy bush children.
In the latter half of the century the rural population of Queensland was great but widely scattered. One anxious parent wrote to the Department of Public Instruction:
I am writing to ask your department for some assistance to educate my family . . . I have four boys respectively 7, 6, 3 and 1 years of age. I live 8 miles from the nearest provisional school at Mt Brisbane and there is no probability of a school ever being nearer . . .
There were increasingly loud calls for the government to provide education for outback children and end what one reforming minister of parliament called ‘compulsory ignorance’. In 1901, a trial Itinerant Teaching Service was established, sending teachers on the first of many unusual but valuable journeys around the state’s rural regions, a service that ran until 1930. Each travelling teacher was supplied with:
a specially designed buggy, four to six horses, and complete camping out equipment. He has also the services of a boy from fourteen to eighteen years of age to attend to the horses, help to pitch the tent, light the fire, lower sliprails, open gates, and do numerous little things which a handy youth can do. The teacher is expected to make his own arrangements for camping and food, and thus relieve parents of this responsibility; he receives a special allowance from the department for this purpose.
As well as being a very competent handyman, these men also needed to be good bushmen, as well as:
tactful so as to gain the goodwill of the parents and of owners whose lands he must cross. He should also be of kindly disposition so as to win the confidence of shy bush children; should be of trustworthy character, for his work can seldom be inspected, as his duties take him to homes which are far away from the beaten tracks and which can often be reached only through lonely country patrolled by police in search of cattle duffers, or of new chums who are lost . . .
Irish-born Thomas Johnson was the first of these intrepid teachers to travel the byways of the Balonne electorate on the Queensland–New South Wales border. The 38-year-old Johnson was a kindly man but a stickler for getting things right—an ideal teacher. With his young assistant he travelled almost 2500 kilometres in 1901, visiting over one hundred homes.
By the end of the year Johnson had also visited families in the Cunnamulla area, including sixteen families previously not known to live there. He moved south to the border in April, then east to the Balonne River. Between May to August he visited a further 43 families as he followed the river north, including a side trip to Mungindie in the east. Then it was west towards the Warrego River to educate the children of another fourteen families, finishing up in the Thirsty Downs area.
In their buggy, the teacher and his assistant carried reading primers, books of tables and arithmetic, as well as texts on geography and grammar, which they distributed to the far-flung students. The families all also received a large atlas, providing a window onto the world beyond southern Queensland. Children were also provided with pencils, chalk, slates, pens, ink and exercise books to work in.
Johnson provided basic instruction and guidance in using the books and usually left a local person in charge of furthering the education process. Sometimes it was a parent or a sibling, but it could be anyone capable and willing to take on the responsibility of teaching the children.
The fathers of the children who were visited worked in a range of bush occupations, as boundary riders, fencers, carpenters, ‘prickly pear contractors’, dingo trappers, shearer’s cooks and railway gangers. Others were overseers, bailiffs and station managers. They were united by their common need for an education for their children.
By 1911, there were around eighteen travelling teachers following various routes. One of them, a ‘fully certificated’ Mr Patullo, covered:
an area of from 25,000 to 30,000 square miles and extends from Woolgar, by way of Nundah and Winton, to Longreach and Barcaldine in the south, thence north to Aramac and Muttaburra, and on to Hughenden. The district is in the artesian area; the country is flat, open downs covered with Mitchell grass. Mr Patullo is provided with a buckboard trap and six horses, which are worked in relays—two at a time.
In the first six months of 1911 Mr Patullo had already travelled over 3500 kilometres. It was noted that these teachers would need to be extremely hardy to endure such a lot of travelling. As well as their other necessary accomplishments, it was essential that they ‘have a disposition which renders the work congenial to himself else he would be a travelling misery and a complete failure whatever his scholastic attainments’.
By that time, ten years into the program, the teachers were expected to visit each of their families four times a year. They usually stayed for a few days at a time, correcting work set previously and planning the next stage of the children’s education. Mr Patullo found that the children he taught had many handicaps and disadvantages due to their isolation but
their powers of observation were remarkably keen. The children in many cases have a hard life and are often set at a very tender age to do the work of an adult. Yet, with all these things to contend with, they are bright and intelligent and make excellent use of the opportunities for education which the travelling school provides.
The journeys of the travelling teachers came to an end around 1930 when an alternative, a school for primary education by correspondence, was established. Long before then, Thomas Johnson left his outdoor school to marry Amy O’Brien and take up a position in a state school. He retired as a head teacher in 1932 and died at the Brisbane suburb of Annerley in 1937.
THE ROAD URCHIN
In the middle of the Great Depression 30-year-old carpenter Harold Wright emigrated from England. Like many others at the time he went on the road in search of work. And like most, he found that there was not much work around.
So in 1935, he crafted a wooden wagon into a mobile home cum workshop and office and travelled around Victoria sharpening tools, kitchen knives, mower blades and anything else that had become blunt. He called this unique carriage the Road Urchin and spent the next 34 years on the move, living and raising a family within its cramped confines.
In Brisbane around 1940, Wright married Dorothy Jean McDougal, known as Jean. She lived with him on the wagon, reportedly taking charge of the fees paid for his services. They had a daughter, Evelyn, who also lived with them on the road.
Wright made a point of decorating the wagon with bright colours and trinkets to advertise his services: ‘I painted it up brightly and wrote signs and decorated it to make it attractive to the public. I called myself “The Sharpening King”, thinking this would attract more business and make life a bit easier.’
Among the wagon’s many features were displays of family photographs, newspaper clippings and some of Wright’s own creations. One of these was in the form of a notice attached to the outside of the wagon. It read:
Fair Go, Mates!
TO CAMERA MEN AND WOMEN
Observe! I have put endless thought, time and energy, which has made photography of this unusual outfit possible. When taking photos of this unit, it would be much fairer to me if you would also purchase one of my Souvenior [sic] Brochures of Home and Workshop, with Story and Pictures.
Thanks from The Battler
ONLY 15 cents
During the day the wagon looked ‘like a bower bird’s nest on wheels’. At night, with coloured lights ablaze, the wagon looked like a circus tent.
The family travelled with pet dogs and cats as well as chickens. In the heat of the day they would often park beneath a shady tree. The unusual sight attracted the local farmers who would come over for a look. Once they found out what the strange contraption was all about they would usually go back to their farms and return with all the tools that needed sharpening. Sometimes there were so many edges to be restored that Wright and his family stayed overnight and the farmers would take them home for a meal and a shower.