Colonial facts and fictions: Humorous sketches

by John Milne

After getting the blocks of quartz, in which, as a rule, you can’t see a speck of the precious metal, up to the surface, they are broken in pieces with sledgehammers. They would use rock-breakers to do the work, but as rock-breakers, like Chinamen, do away with European labour, I imagine that they must have been tabooed—anyhow, I did not see a rock-breaker. The broken quartz is next thrown into the iron mortars, where heavy iron stampers are at work. When the quartz is sufficiently fine, it escapes like so much muddy water through screens in the front of the mortars, to flow over the surfaces of a series of copper plates covered with mercury. Here a quantity of the gold sticks to the mercury and amalgamates with it. From time to time these plates are scraped, and the amalgam thus obtained is subsequently distilled. Much gold, however, runs over the plates, and it is a great problem as to how it is to be caught. At some mines it is caught on rough blankets, which are stretched over an inclined plane forming a continuation of the copper plates. Still, there is a certain quantity of gold running away mixed with the water and the sand. This material is usually concentrated, that is, it is caused to pass over some machine where the light sand is washed away, and the gold, mixed with iron pyrites and other materials, remains behind. This pyrites material is then roasted and amalgamated in specially contrived amalgamators. Sometimes it is treated chemically. The more rapidly these operations are carried on, and the greater the flood of water employed to wash the sand along, the more the fine gold escapes. All the escaping water deposits its sediment in pits called slime pits, the contents of which constitute tailings. At all quartz-crushing establishments, you see mountain-like heaps of these tailings. They look like hills of fine white sand. Some of them are sufficiently valuable to be sent to Germany, where the gold, which the Australian miner has allowed to run to waste, is extracted at a profit. Every mill you visit you are told is the best mill in the Colonies, with the best methods and the best machinery. When I looked at the enormous stamps, one could not but think that it was like using Nasmyth’s hammers to crack walnuts. When you saw the general want of automatic apparatus to break and feed materials, you felt that mine proprietors were kind to workmen—who, by-the-bye, usually get about ten shillings a day. When you saw the floods of water tearing over the tables, and through the various machines, you felt that those who sent their ore to the mills were easily contented. I suppose there are reasons for all this, but they were not explained. Notwithstanding all the gold which is washed away, things are brisk. One gentleman was pointing out to me, who, at the time of my visit, was making £1,000 a week. There were a theatre and a circus in the town, and along half a mile of the main street I counted twenty-two public-houses. Altogether there are about two thousand or three thousand people in Charters Towers. On Sunday night I think I saw nearly all of them. They spent the evening in parading up and down the street in a very quiet and orderly manner.

At the hotel where I stayed, I had abundance to eat and drink. My bedroom was only nine to ten feet square, and I had to share it with another traveller.

I returned to Townsville the same way as I went. As I did not put my head out at the valleys and bridges, I did not incur the same feelings of insecurity from which I had suffered when going up. At Ravenswood Junction we had a scramble for breakfast, that is to say for a cup of coffee and a slab of steaming meat. Australians are fearfully carnivorous. Each of them eats, at least, an acre of beefsteak every year. This helps to make them big and strong. When I was in Melbourne, some prisoners had been making public a complaint that they did not get meat three times a day. They excited considerable sympathy. Just as I was about to pay for my feed, a rough-looking miner gave me a push, saying, ‘Shove that in your pocket.’ At the same time he threw down four shillings on the table to settle for two. I did not argue the matter with the gentleman.

At Townsville I found a launch waiting to carry me and sixty-one other passengers off to the steamship Warrego. On board we found a number more. It was an awful crush. The steamer was expensively fitted. If they had spent the money in making her a few feet longer, instead of spending it in fittings, we should have been more comfortable. All the saloon and other rooms were lined with slabs of marble. It was rather pretty, but too much like a bath-room. Here I heard very much about mining, and a little about separation and Government jobbery. At present Brisbane, at the extreme south of Queensland, is the capital. Those who live in the north complain that they pay for railways and other public works which they never see. There is too much centralization in the south. What Northern Queensland requires is separation and a capital at Townsville, then the money collected in the north would be spent in the north. People at Charters Towers say that Townsville is a fraud. It can never be made into a harbour, and their railway ought to have terminated at Bowen, where there is a harbour. The Townsville representatives have been too powerful, and they were not going to lose the trade, which Charters Towers and other places farther inland might bring them. Everybody who sends goods into the interior, or brings them from the interior, can be beautifully squeezed at Townsville. First, the Townsvillians collect dues for cartage from the station to the end of the pier. They are too wise to let their railway be carried to a place convenient for shipping. Next are the dues for lighters out to the ships; and so it continues.

The people at Townsville are clever, and Townsville is rapidly improving. About midnight we stopped at Bowen, but as it was dark I kept in my berth. The next stoppage was at Mackay, where we discharged a lot of passengers, and took in a batch to fill their places. The coast was rocky, with islands and clumps of trees. Speaking generally of our passengers, they were a rough lot. Nine out of ten of them wore soft felt-hats, the brims of which they turned down. Most of them smoked, expectorated on the deck, and jerked the ends of wax matches and tobacco ash in all directions. The captain said that this was the result of competition. It enabled third-class passengers to take a saloon passage.

Australia is a land of wax matches. Everybody carries a box. There are apparently certain points of etiquette to be observed in their use. If you are lighting a pipe, and a gentleman asks for a light to his cigarette, don’t give him the match which is burning, but dip your finger in your pocket and let him strike a light of his own. It would be more convenient to you and also to him to receive the light which is burning, but that does not matter. When asked for a light, do not offer your pipe or cigar, but offer a match. In South Australia I heard that they were not considered safe, and only safety matches were allowed. My experience is that they are equally dangerous—both may and do explode on the slightest aggravation. An interesting series of stories might be written on adventures with matches.

Next morning, at about half-past five, we reached Capel Bay, where the passengers for Rockhampton disembarked. All the places down this coast appear to be inaccessible to large steamers. They are situated up rivers, and the rivers have bars. From this point the coast got flatter. During the afternoon there was a little excitement by one of the passengers having a fit; on his recovery I gave him, at his own request, a glass of water and a Cockle’s pill. That night, at about one a.m., there was a cry of ‘Fire! fire!’ shrieked through the saloon. We all turned out, perhaps one hundred in all, men, women, and children—in night dresses. The officers and, finally, the captain appeared on the scene, and we found that it was the sick man wandering about in a state of mental aberration. The captain ordered two stewards to watch him. Shortly afterwards he went up the companion and out on the port side. The stewards followed up the companion and out on the starboard side. They expected to meet their charge on the deck. He, however, was never found. We suppose he jumped overboard.

Early next morning we were at the mouth of the Brisbane River. On our starboard bow we could see some remarkable-looking mountains called the Glass Houses. One of them, which was called Mount Beerah, is 1,760 feet high. It looks like a very sharp regularly formed pyramid. From its shape, and from the fact that round about it, places have names alluding to volcanic materials it is probably of volcanic origin. It is certainly a very remarkable natural needle. The river is at the entrance very broad, and the land on the banks very flat. Here and there are swamps and fringes of mangrove. As we get higher up we see patches of sugar-cane and a few bananas. The river is muddy and full of shoals. On the banks, the shoals, and floating on the water, there are hundreds, and possibly thousands, of beacons and buoys. They help to make up the scenery. As the channels are ever shifting, these indices for navigators are shifted or multiplied. When an invader approaches, the ordinary plan will be to remove or alter the position of the guiding marks. At Brisbane it would be well to let everything remain in statu quo, and if the enemy did not get wrecked, it might be counted as a miracle. At one point there are earthworks forming a fort. Here the river is closed by a boom of timbers. A portion in the centre is left open for the passage of vessels. All these military preparations are due to the expectation of a war with Russia. Even the smallest place in Queensland has done something to beat off the expected cruiser. In Port Darwin the volunteers were busily engaged in practising at targets. Similar amusements were going on at Thursday Island and in Townsville. At some towns places had been looked for to which bank treasure might be removed.

Now, however, every town, from the snowy uplands of Southern New Zealand to the sandy shores of tropical Queensland, has completed its preparations. At many harbours it would be an unfortunate thing if a belligerent found his way inside. He would most certainly never go out. The war scare has done good. It has placed the Colonies on a war footing.

I found Brisbane a splendid place, in some respects it was not unlike a miniature San Francisco. The streets are, however, much wider in Brisbane. There are some very fine shops, hansoms, busses, barrel-organs, and itinerant musicians with harps and violins. Of course the banks are the notable buildings. Australia is a country of banks. If ever you see an unusually large building, you may conclude it is a bank. Russians have a weakness for big churches. An Australian’s hobby is to build big banks. The Houses of Parliament and the Law Courts were also striking buildings. In the afternoon I saw a lot of grand carriages. Inside them were handsomely dressed ladies. On the box or behind were cockaded footmen. Many of the girls were good-looking. They were, however, chaperoned by their mammas, and you saw what the sweet girls might look like in the sweet by-and-bye. It is a great mistake for a good-looking girl to walk out with an ugly mother. A young man gets frightened. If he didn’t get frightened, then he is not a philosopher. The girls had better refuse such men.