South Australia and Western Australia

by Anthony Trollope

But what she has wanted in gold she has made up in copper. And in some respects the copper has, I think, been better than gold, as affording a more wholesome class of labour. There is less of gambling in the business,—less of gambling even among the shareholders and managing people, and infinitely less temptation to gamble among the workmen. The fact that the metal must be dealt with in large quantities, that vast weights must be moved, and that heavy machinery must be employed, that no man can find enough to support himself for six months by a stroke of luck and carry it away in his waistcoat pocket, gives a sobriety to the employment which the search after gold often lacks. It is quite true that latterly the great discoveries of Australia have needed works as ponderous, shafts as deep, and machinery as costly, as any other description of mining enterprise; but, nevertheless, the enormous wealth which may be represented by a small quantity has a direct tendency to create a speculative spirit in the minds of all employed. The miner who earns his £2 10s. a week by blasting a quartz reef may work as steadily, and certainly does work as hard, as he who is picking up coal or copper-bearing dirt, but he is conscious all through that it is gold upon which he is working, and his imagination, aroused by the richness of the metal he is seeking, is ever pushing him on to personal speculation;—till the goal before his eyes is not the few hundred pounds which he certainly could save by industry as a miner, but the fortune which he might possibly make by some happy circumstance in his favour as a speculator. The circumstance now and again does occur; but the result is not always happy. There is much less of such incentive to gambling among copper mines;—though it is not altogether absent, for copper mines are also worked upon tribute.

The Kapunda copper-mine is the oldest in the colony, having been discovered in 1843, by two gentlemen engaged in squatting operations. It was considered to be a great day in the colony when the first ore was raised from this mine on January 8, 1844. The Kapunda mines are still worked; but their celebrity was soon eclipsed by the famous Burra Burra mine, and has now been altogether cast into the shade by the mines at Wallaroo and Moonta. I did not visit Kapunda, but I was told that the town itself is prosperous and well ordered.

The Burra Burra copper-mines, if not the next discovered in South Australia, were the next of any magnitude, and were for some years the great source of South Australian mining wealth. They have had a much wider fame than those of Kapunda. They are about ninety miles nearly due north from Adelaide, and they have the advantage of a railway for the whole distance. The one great railway of the colony runs from Adelaide to Kooringa, the name of the town close to which the Burra Burra mines are situated, with a branch to Kapunda, of which place I have already spoken. Copper therefore may be said to have made the existing railways of the colony. The copper at Burra Burra was first found by a shepherd, named Pickitt, in 1845. What became of Pickitt I never heard; but two companies were at once formed for the purchase from the government of 20,000 acres under special survey. This was the land in which the copper was known to lie, but its exact whereabouts was still a mining mystery. Of these two companies one was called the Nobs, as being specially aristocratic; the other, which was plebeian, were the Snobs. They combined, as neither could raise sufficient money alone, and the government could not or would not grant a special survey under a fixed amount which either separately was unable to pay. The land was then divided, and the two companies drew lots. The Snobs got the northern portion and all the copper, and the Nobs were driven to resell their moiety for pastoral purposes. Where the copper did lie, it lay absolutely on the surface. There was as it were a rock of copper, so that deep sinking was not necessary. During the first six years of the mine’s history 80,000 tons of ore were shipped to England, giving a profit of nearly half a million sterling. The company had begun with a capital of only £1,500 over and above the sum expended on the purchase of the land. Those were the palmy days of the Burra Burra mines, of which we used to hear much in England.

In 1851 the miners, attracted by the new gold of the next colony, rushed away to the Victorian gold-diggings, and the Burra Burra were almost deserted. But after a time the men returned, and English miners were got over from Cornwall, and the success was continued. In 1859, 1,170 persons were employed there. But gradually the surface copper was worked out, and the great attraction of other and still richer mines at Wallaroo and Moonta paled the ineffectual fire of Burra Burra. For a time the works were almost ceased. When I visited the place in 1872 new operations under a new management had commenced, and many in the colony believed that a complete resuscitation would take place. There were, however, not a great number of hands employed, and the works going on,—which were on a large scale,—seemed to be preparatory to copper production rather than themselves productive. There are three towns adjacent to these mines, Kooringa, which I have already named, Redruth, and Aberdeen. Thrown together they make one broken, meandering, unfinished street, which is by no means tempting to the ordinary traveller. It is hard to say how these things arrange themselves; but the wealth of the great Burra Burra mine certainly has not succeeded in making a great Burra Burra city.

But Wallaroo is now the greatest name in South Australian copper-mines, and Moonta is second to it. Between Gulf St. Vincent and Spencer’s Gulf there lies a large outstretching territory, bearing nearly as close a semblance to a man’s leg as does Italy, called Yorke’s Peninsula. At the top of this, at the part of the leg farthest from the foot, close on the shore of Spencer’s Gulf, and therefore on the outside of the leg, is Wallaroo. Here, previous to 1860, a squatter held a station for sheep, which even for that purpose was by no means encouraging. As a spot to be inhabited by men and women nothing could be more dreary or unfortunate. There was no water, and even the wells when dug gave forth water so brackish that it could not be used. The vegetation was stunted and miserable. The ground was sandy and barren. Here, on 17th December, 1859, a shepherd, named Boor, found a piece of copper, and brought the tidings to his master. Within a few months £80,000 had been advanced for working copper-mines by a mercantile firm in Adelaide. The squatter was in the way to become a very rich man, and the shepherd had become a mining hero. In the very next year another shepherd, named Ryan, found another piece of copper at a place called Moonta, about ten miles from Wallaroo, on the same sheep station,—and this was at once worked by the same persons. This other shepherd was also enriched, and the squatter became a millionaire. Perhaps few mines were ever opened in which there has been a quicker, and at the same time a steadier, mercantile progress than in those of Wallaroo and Moonta.

There are five distinct towns, all created by these mines, standing within ten miles of each other, containing together about 17,000 inhabitants; and previous to 1860 there was no house in the district but a wretched cottage, hardly better than a hut. The two townships laid out by government are Kadina, near to the Wallaroo mines, and Moonta, close to those bearing that name. But these mines had the inestimable benefit of being near the sea;—and now there is a third town, called Port Wallaroo, from which the copper is shipped, joined both to Kadina and to Moonta by railway. Port Wallaroo is a thriving harbour, and is perhaps the largest of the five, as here are built the smelting works at which the ore is turned into copper. For a time the ore was sent over to Swansea and was smelted there,—but as the two companies became rich and powerful, smelting works were opened, and the copper is now sent to England in bars. But the miners do not live either at Kadina, at Moonta Town, or at Port Wallaroo. They have built habitations for themselves round the very mouths of the shafts, and in this way two other vast villages have sprung up, called Wallaroo Mines and Moonta Mines. Very singular places they are,—consisting of groups of low cottages, clustering together in streets, one street being added on to another as the need for them arises, not built with any design such as is usual in the towns of new countries, but created by the private enterprise of the inhabitants,—and in fact put up in opposition to the law. The surface is government land leased out specially for mining purposes, and not for building purposes. No one is entitled to build on it. There are the townships, duly laid out in accordance with the law, close by, on which any one may build who desires to live there, purchasing his lot for the purpose in the proper way. But the workman’s need to be near his work has been too strong for the law, and these towns, much bigger than the towns of the townships proper, have established themselves.

In no instance is the centralizing tendency of the government in young countries and amidst scanty populations more visible than in their management of new towns; and it never struck me more forcibly than at Wallaroo and Moonta. It is either necessary, or the government thinks that it is necessary, that everything should be arranged for the new-coming inhabitants, and that they should be called upon to manage nothing for themselves. Roads and bridges are made from the taxes. The land is divided out into its sections by the government. Any comer may buy his section at a certain price, and may build his house,—but he must deal with the government officers, and must build his house according to specification. The idea, no doubt, is not only compatible with freedom of action, but is intended to encourage it, and springs from a theory of democratic equality. It is the duty of the government to see that one man does not ride over another, that the smallest and the poorest may have their share of the public wealth of the community,—that as far as possible there shall be no very small men and no very big men. The Utopian politician travels as far as he can away from the despotism of patriarchal rule, but he travels in a circle and comes back to it. The minister, though he be chosen by the people, becomes a despot; and, like other despots, he is forced to rule so that he may please his favourites. The favourites of the minister in a democratic community are they who can support him in parliament; and on their behalf he finds himself too often forced to read the law either this way or that. In these mining townships the land sold for building had been sold with certain protective privileges. They who bought were not only entitled to keep shops, but were encouraged to buy land by the assurance that no shops should be kept by others within a certain distance outside the township. Consequently no miner’s wife can buy an ounce of tea, or a yard of ribbon, or a delf cup, without going out of the bigger concourse of people to the lesser to make her purchase; nor can the miner, if he fancies that the prices at Kadina or at Moonta are too high for him, try the question by opening a rival shop for himself in his own immediate locality. In these large mining villages nothing can be bought and nothing sold. In reality the man when he has constructed a house has not even a house to sell. He should have built it in the official town if he desired to avail himself of his property.

The matter is mentioned here chiefly because I thus get an opportunity of alluding to general interference of government in matters which with us are altogether beyond its scope. No doubt such interference is necessary in new communities. Government must do more when nothing has already been done, than it can do with an old-established nation. It must make roads. It must apportion the land. It must take upon its shoulders for a while the duties which fall afterwards upon local officers. But the tendency is to centralize power, and to put a privilege of interfering into the hands of individuals, which privilege can be and is improperly used for political purposes, and which to an observer from an old country seems to be antagonistic to liberty. I do not know that the miners at Wallaroo and Moonta suffer very much from their restricted rights. I do not think that they know that they suffer at all. But I groaned for them in spirit when I found that not one among them could put up a penn’orth of barley-sugar for sale in his own cottage windows. Such restriction would very quickly create a rebellion in England.

I went down a mine at Wallaroo, finding it always to be a duty to go down a shaft on visiting any mining locality,—and I came up again. But I cannot say that I saw anything when I was down there. The descent was 450 feet, and I felt relieved when I was once more on the surface. I walked below among various levels, and had the whole thing explained to me;—but for no useful purpose whatever. It was very hard work, and I think I should have begged for mercy had any additional level been proposed to me; as it was, I went through it like a man, without complaint,—and was simply very much fatigued. As I rose to the air I swore I would never go down another mine, and hitherto I have kept my vow. I found that miners working for simple wages could earn about £1 18s. a week, and that men on tribute would realise something more,—perhaps about £2 5s. The “tribute” men undoubtedly worked harder, as they were toiling on their own behalf, reaping the advantage of their increased labour. In speaking of the Victorian gold mines, I have endeavoured to explain the system of tribute,—by which the miner is enabled to share both in the profit and in the risk of the speculation. No doubt the result in the raising of copper is the same as in the finding of gold; but the transaction is by no means equally speculative. The man who works for gold on tribute may find none, and be called upon not only to work on, but also to defray expenses. Whereas the miner on tribute in a copper-mine does not go into the affair till it is known that the copper is there. According to the percentage of ore which is extracted, his earnings will be higher or lower;—but his earnings are assured, and, as the result of the arrangement, by working harder than he would otherwise work he simply earns more than he would otherwise earn.

At the Wallaroo mines I found a set of black natives employed on the surface work, at regular wages of 4s. 4d. a day, or 26s. a week. There were about ten of them, and I was told that they had been there for three months, and had been as regular in their attendance as white men. This was the only instance I found in Australia in which I myself came upon any number of these aborigines in regular and voluntary employment. I have seen a man at one station and a woman at another as to whom I have been told that they were regarded as part of the regular establishment,—but it always seemed that their work was of a fitful kind. I learned also that in one or two of the colonies, in Western Australia and in Queensland, they are drilled and used as policemen for the control of their own countrymen;—but such service as this I can hardly regard as steady, regular work. Here the experiment was said to have answered for the period that I have named. I came across one of these men, who was supposed to be a little ill, and therefore not on duty at the moment. He was dressed in a very genteel manner,—with clothes softer and finer than a white miner would wear even when on a holiday. He was very gentle and civil, but not very communicative. He bought clothes with his money, he said, and food,—and the rest he put away. He did not resent the impertinence of my inquiries, but was not quite willing to gratify my curiosity. My desire was to learn whether he had realised the advantage of laying up and permanently possessing property. I doubt whether he had, although he did mutter something as to putting away his wages. He seemed much more willing to talk about the cold in the head under which he had been suffering than of his general condition in life.