Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

In developing Western Australia’s mineral wealth, camels have proved almost as invaluable as water. They had been introduced into the country in the early days and multiplied faster than in their native Arabia. Along with them came their nomadic or Bedouin drivers, who found Australian wages to their liking and stayed on, although in many cases their jobs have now been taken by white men. It is estimated that more than twelve thousand camels are worked in the dry back blocks of the continent. The ungainly beasts stalk back and forth between the railway terminals of the east and the dry lands of the west. From the silver-mining centre at Broken Hill in western New South Wales they start out for the northwestern part of the state and for interior South Australia, Queensland, and the Northern Territory. From “The Hill” they take supplies to the remote sheep stations, returning with wool. Three hundred and fifty camels are worked by the water-supply branch of the Western Australian government. They serve the gold prospectors and the settlers of the “Never-Never Land,” and they are the police and mail carriers of the desert blocks.

In the desert gold-mining camps a considerable expense of doing business is watering the camels. A camel ordinarily drinks seven or eight gallons, when thirsty he will take in twenty gallons, and after several days without water forty gallons are hardly enough to fill him up. Where water is scarce it may cost his owner two or three dollars to treat his mount to a drink; one camel just in from a long trip drank fourteen dollars’ worth before he was satisfied.

But before I leave the subject of gold mining in Australia let me tell you of the visit I made to the mint at Melbourne where for many years gold dust and bullion have been turned into sovereigns. The gold comes from different sections of Australia and after being coined is shipped off to London. The greater part of the metal goes into sovereigns and half sovereigns.

I went through this money mill with its director. We first watched the gold as it came in. Some of it was dust, but much was in the form of bullion bricks from the smelters. As it was handed over the counter the clerks weighed it, using scales so fine that they can weigh accurately a golden grain as small as the point of a pin or a great nugget the size of my head. After the gold has been weighed a memorandum of the amount is made for the depositor, which he presents at the cashier’s office to get his money.

Leaving this room we went on to see how the smelting was done. The gold is melted in crucibles or pots of fine clay and plumbago. Each pot has a capacity of perhaps half a gallon of liquid gold. It is fitted into a little furnace not unlike the forge of a country blacksmith, set in a long, narrow ledge on one side of the melting room. In the room we entered there were twenty of such furnaces, nearly all of them filled with gold. The fuel used is coke, and a strong draught makes such a heat that the metal bubbles like boiling water. I was dazzled when I looked into the pots. The liquid was emerald rather than gold. I saw it poured out into moulds and the stream was a current of beautiful molten green on a background of light yellow. Later, when the moulds were opened, the green had disappeared and the metal had become a bright golden yellow.

I next watched the bars of bullion being rolled into the strips from which the gold coins are cut. Each was a ruler of gold twenty-five inches long, two inches wide, and not quite half an inch thick. I followed a truck load of these bars as they were wheeled into the rolling room. Here they were pressed between great steel rollers, which made them longer and thinner. At the finish each bar had become fourteen feet long and was just the thickness of a sovereign. Moreover, the pressing had polished it so that it shone like a new wedding ring. I noticed that the workmen wore thick gloves, and was told that this was because the strips of metal get hot as they are rolled.

Once treated with scant consideration, the shearers who now have one of the strongest unions in the country are veritable autocrats about their hours, wages, and quarters. Every afternoon they knock off for tea and a smoke.

Like 600,000 other Australians, these leather workers are union men with good wages, fair hours, and a weekly half holiday. Forty-eight hours is the weekly maximum, though in some trades as little as thirty-six hours count as full time.