WATER CONDENSER—FILLING THE WATER-BAG
Taking my bicycle I went for a tour of inspection around the various streets adjacent to the town, where I found many very nice houses, and to my surprise saw a lady in a very nice carriage drawn by a pair of greys. Truly, I ought to be surprised at nothing in wonderful Coolgardie. The roads here are the most level and the best for cycling I have ever ridden on; not only are the streets remarkably wide, but the footpaths also. The town is on quite a plain. Riding merrily along I was overtaken by a man cyclist, who did not favour me with more than a passing glance, lady cyclists being no rarity here. I, however, recognised him as an old friend and called out, “Jack, don’t you know me?” He stopped in astonishment at seeing me riding about Coolgardie on a bicycle, as we had last said good-bye in New South Wales, three years since, before his leaving for the Golden West, whither I then had no intention of migrating. After a little chat, in which I discovered that Jack had not struck a gold patch or “made his pile yet,” he invited me to the camp to dinner with himself and the boys (his mates), and feeling quite anxious really to see for myself what the inside of the camp was like, I did not require a second invitation. We accordingly rode off side by side, past endless rows of tents and hessian camps, all alive with the miners now home for their dinner. Some of them had wives in the camp to cook their dinner, but the majority of the campers had to cook for themselves. “We must hurry up, for I am cook this week,” said my friend, and pointing to a parcel on the bicycle, remarked, “Here is our dinner that is to be.” No tinned dog now, as it used to be, but real, genuine steak. On arrival at the camp we found two of the boys anxiously awaiting the arrival of the steak, and somewhat surprised at seeing Jack accompanied by a lady cyclist, whom, however, they greeted with much heartiness. Poor fellows! here were four of them all away from home and mother; all had given up good appointments on the other side to come over and search for gold. They were all very jolly, however, and said that they had no cause to complain of Coolgardie. My first anxiety was to inspect the camp, which was a neat one. It consisted of five little Hessian houses: four of these were the sleeping apartments of the four mates, and two of them especially were models of comfort, as far as the boys could manage it. One was lined with bright cretonne, a shaded lamp by the side of the bed, a rough bookcase with the owner’s favourite books and photographs of various friends opposite; a nice cosy chair and a wooden table, made by my friend Jack, completed the furniture. Then another had his camp lined with green baize, very nice in winter, but too hot, I imagine, in summer-time. Here was a nice little table, two shelves painted with white enamel paint, and some sketches done by the owner; many little presents that had been sent from home were being proudly shown to me when we heard the welcome sound, “Dinner is ready.” We then adjourned to the fifth tent, which proved to be dining-room, parlour, and card-room in one. A table down the middle covered with oil-cloth, a bench at each side, with a side shelf and rustic dresser, formed the furniture. The steak was cooked splendidly. My thoughts went back to the time when I had seen Jack last, quite a swell young man at Newcastle, N.S.W., and now here he was in a wide hat and shirt-sleeves, cook to the camp, and looking, I must say, all the better for his roughing experiences. They had brought out the man in him. Before he was somewhat inclined to be effeminate, now he had become a fine fellow. But I am wandering away from the dinner-party. The butter was good, although it was tinned butter, and the bread as light as a feather. “The baker calls every day,” they told me, “and if we are all out we pin up a memo. on the door and tell him how many loaves to leave.” “Now,” said Jack, “I must go out and get the pudding.” I felt I ought at least to assist, and was also a little curious to see how it was being cooked, so getting up in spite of protests that I was the guest and must do nothing, I went out to quiz. I found the fireplace consisted of two iron spikes in the ground with a bar across, from which hooks were hanging, and on the hooks were two billies (tin cans with wire at top to hang by), one with tea and the other with pudding. I was presently to have what we call in the colonies “billy tea.” I could see no pudding-cloth, but presently Jack fished out a shining tin which proved to contain one of Swallow and Ariel’s Melbourne plum puddings, and a delicious one it was. Mothers in the colonies and in England need never fear that their boys away on the goldfields do not get nice puddings or cakes while Swallow and Ariel are to the fore. Returning to the dining-tent pudding laden, I found the boys had just extracted from a tin a sweet cake and also a preserved pineapple. This, with tinned Viking cream and the billy tea, finished up a dinner fit for a Princess of Coolgardie, as indeed I felt myself to be that evening, with those four boys doing me homage. I found out afterwards that they had all these nice things in the camp in reserve for Christmas, but they were only too glad to open them all in my honour. Apropos of tinned articles, the piles of discarded tins on the fields make one open one’s eyes; there must be millions of them. One of my friends told me that in earlier days, when everything in the palpitating heat-waves and fearful grilliness of the camps got destroyed with heat and dust, they used to come home to their meals feeling almost inclined to fall down and worship the tinned vegetables and meat that they had buried in holes to try and keep cool, and that these were the only eatable things to be got. Canned apples were a special luxury for Sundays, and took them back to orchards and gardens where they had wandered in the past. “Those apples, with a lump of plum pudding, full of good things, sustained our waning energies and brought us up smiling out of our then dreary camp life, and,” said another, “it brought back happy recollections of civilisation and home.”
After dinner we played a game of Nap on the camp-table, and I was the winner of nine shillings, after which they all escorted me back to my hotel, calling in on our way to see some other friends at another camp, which proved to be a more pretentious place than the first, and consisted of one of the pretty cottages before spoken of, the tenants again bachelors. The inmates, a mining manager, his secretary, and clerk, are attended by a Japanese servant; a very nice piano was in the pretty drawing-room. One of the boys sang “Queen of my Heart,” in compliment he said to me, and after a friendly glass of wine we resumed our bicycles and rode gaily into the town, where I bade them good-bye, after spending a most enjoyable afternoon in a goldfields’ camp.
Burbanks Grand Junction Mine
I went next day to see Bayley’s Mine, where those wonderful first finds were made. As I drove down broad Bayley Street and looked at the stately buildings, I could not but think of those early days and of the excitement of that time.
Of course I did not expect to pick up lumps of gold as people did then, but I certainly intended to keep my eyes very wide open, for I knew it was not an infrequent occurrence for men to find good slugs of gold about Coolgardie still. There are always a lot of men fossicking (looking for gold at the surface) about Bayley’s, and recently a man found a specimen of quartz weighing 144 ounces, and containing 97 ounces of pure gold; later on he found several smaller pieces near the same place. The country around Bayley’s is not very striking. Beyond the mines working and the smoke from their batteries there is nothing to be seen except miles of holes where the prospectors have been at work seeking for gold. It must have been a busy scene when they were here. Thousands of miners digging away, and then washing the stuff in tin dishes to see if there was a show of gold; and if one hole showed nothing, away they turned to another. The manager of Bayley’s took me round and told me that the mine is still very rich.
Vale of Coolgardie Mine