Rolf Baldwin - Memories of Blackwood, 1920-1930

This is a talk by Mr. Rolf Baldwin of Geelong who has memories of. Yeah. Who has memory Rolf Baldwin of Geelong, who has memories of Blackwood between approximately 1920 and 1930. This was taped at Mrs. Garnett's place, Simmons Reef, Blackwood, January 1978. 23 or 1924 maybe my brother and I with our mother and very often with our sister used to spend holidays with my great aunt Katie Kate Grant in Moong. She introduced us to one of the local identities, a man called George Allen. Who was considerably older than we were, probably the same age as our uncle we found out afterwards, and uh this man we found out to begin with was a bushman who understood bush work thoroughly, and our earliest journeys with him were into the bush for woodcutting. On these journeys we learned more about him, that he had been a a sergeant in the light horse during the war, and bit by bit he told us of his earlier days before the war when he was an unmarried man, and then followed much, Much the same routine that many, uh, many men of that type did, though he would during the summer, cut firewood for the mines or for local milk factories and so on in the bush, stack this, and that would be carted out and uh that gave him a ready. Uh, a regular supply of money, and then in the winter when there was water available, uh, he and a mate used to work a claim on the Coojamanna Creek, uh, called the Garibaldi, or on the the claim was on a hill called the Garibaldi. During conversations, George told us of an old man whom he knew, called Mickey Nolan, who lived in a hut. Just a little way up Dale's Creek from Greendale. George told us that this old man, old to him. Uh, even, and of course doubly odd to us. Uh, George told us that this old man. Had, uh, uh, had been a miner, and that that he still, uh still did a little fossicking around on the creek. This of course was enough for us, and we then walked across to Greendale and up Dale's Creek to the hut, a distance of about 5 miles, uh, introduced ourselves to this Mickey Nolan, and uh were made welcome. Uh, he evidently was very glad to have a receptive audience to talk to, and used to talk to us endlessly about various experiences of his, uh, and we would listen all ears, of course, and on the way home, we would repeat, uh, repeat these yarns that we had heard from Nolan and, uh. Uh, adjust various details, and then, on subsequent meetings we would ask him about the same yarns and uh these yarns would be told again, and we found that they never varied in essential detail at all. That he He was a remarkable, uh, man, though of course there were several others of the same type that we knew, living in the bush. Um, old men then, probably, he was in his late seventies when we first knew him in 1925, and, or maybe 1924 we first met him, but he would, I should judge, be in his uh late seventies then. Uh, had followed most bush occupations, he'd, uh, cut wood at different times, had been, uh, a shearer for a short while, though not a regular shearer, I think he'd even been a shearer's cook, he'd worked in various capacities as a station hand, and had been, uh, an alluvial miner and had also worked. Uh, as a miner, many miners did work on the, uh, on the waterworks, uh, early in this century, and he had worked when they were putting in the various tunnels and other earthwork connected with, uh, with Pike's Weir, particularly on the tunnels, uh, that was, uh, a ready field for men with mining experience. Uh, in the course of, he'd always been a bachelor and um had. Read prodigiously, naturally, uh, anything that came to hand at all, and out of this, had a strange bookish way of talking, or rather the choice of vocabulary was bookish, uh, and, showed that he had obviously read very widely, not only, uh, not only ephemeral stuff, but also had read uh. To read more considerable literary works because his uh his language showed that, although it could break into uh break into pure colloquial at any time quite easily as well. Uh, the, the voice, uh, my brother and I could mimic reasonably well, I, I think, and, uh, again, we used to practise because much of the flavour of these yarns came, uh, from the, uh, the voice and accent in which they were told, and, uh, from the vocabulary that was used, rather than in any particular point to the stories. Uh the accent we could never quite fathom. His father, he told us, had been a, a police constable in Collingwood in the early 50s, and I should imagine he, he'd come uh out from Ireland uh before the uh before the gold rushes, so that this uh this accent that Nolan. Had or affected was uh partly uh partly Irish and uh partly an Australian admixture which gave uh, gave a somewhat uh comical effect. Uh, as a raconteur, he was, uh, unequal, he had no shyness, he had a tremendous flow of, uh, tremendous flow of language, and whenever he had a willing audience, was willing to, uh, was willing to talk, uh, endlessly about various experiences. The various yarns that we heard from him. had in them. The strange purple patches, and it was these that uh that that we remembered particularly, and uh, very often the yarns had no particular beginning and uh no particular end, but they, they had somewhere within them a uh a purple patch which made them, made them memorable to us anyway. Uh, such a one concerned a claim that he showed us on the creek. Uh, as we wandered, uh, around the different places that he'd worked, he showed us the, the first shaft that he had sunk on the point where he lived. Over this one, he, I think that he had been um. Put on the track by Diviner who said that uh that there was gold in that particular place, and Mickey himself, uh did do a little divining, so he may have uh may have, hit on the, uh, hit on the particular place to put his shaft by that method. Uh, however, he, he showed us the shaft, and he said, I sank that shaft through very hard ground for something like 15 ft. It would not be that deep now, because it has fallen in. And then I came to the bottom, and oh, what a bottom. It was her Smooth, flat as a billiard table and as smooth as glass, and no skerrick of gold could have stuck thereon. That was all to that particular yarn. And this led him on, the story of gold uh led him on to various anecdotes about the different miners who had worked over on the Ledberg. This, uh, of course, was a great interest of ours, and he told us with a a rough map that he drew of various miners that he'd known of down in the Luberg. Who had been old men working there when he was a boy. We could never find at what stage he had come uh to the Blackwood diggings, but I think this must have been when he was uh when he was very young, and he'd probably grown up round about Blackwood. Uh, with his father maybe being a miner, I, I can't remember whether he ever told us, uh, told us about that or not, or maybe he'd even run away from home and lived around Blackwood, but as far as we could make out, he'd spent some years of his very early life in and around Blackwood and had then gone through to northern Victoria and New South Wales. Had then come back into Victoria, done more mining, worked on Pikes Weir, and then when he grew old enough for the pension, had set up his little hut in Dales Creek. This seems to have been what happened and uh I I think uh that that summary of it is probably reasonably close to the facts. In any case, when he was young, he knew of these various men that worked in the Ledberg but uh did not um. But it did not know. Very much about them personally, because he had never worked down there, and probably what he had to say about them was largely, uh largely hearsay. Uh, the tracks down to the Lerberberg, which he mentioned to us, uh, began in the north, at least to the north of Mount Blackwood, uh, with Square Bottles track, which led down to the confluence of Whiskey Gully and, uh, the main, the main river. This track, he said. belonged to a man called Square Bottle Bob Stewart, or more simply, Square Bottle Bob, owing to his fondness for the square bottle, or rather, the contents thereof. Then Just to the south of the mound, uh, running off the end of the existing lane, uh. The Were 2 tracks. The one which ran round to the northeast corner of the mound, so to speak, and ran and followed the spur down there, was known as Chadwick's track, and uh he had uh no-one had nothing to say about Chadwick, he didn't know about him at all. Uh, then another track went from the. The southeast corner of the mountain followed down that spur, uh, and this was known as Berri's Track. Further down from the mount there there was a track that followed the main, uh, the main ridge of the Bearshead Range, and didn't uh run. Into the river direct, but went along the range for maybe 1 mile, and then down a, a very abrupt spur which was extremely steep on each side. Uh, this was named after a Chinaman or maybe the leader of a party, maybe a solitary, we could never make that out, but was named after a Chinaman named R. Cow. But there were other camps on the river that Nolan told us of, there was a Cairns camp further up, presumably near what is now called Cairns Gully, on the, on the river. And there was one, I don't think he ever told us exactly where this was, but he'd evidently gone down to have a look at this, because this uh patch of ground uh was worked by, Uh, a man called Ted Austin, or Skeleton Ted, because he won so little gold that the man looked like a skeleton. And he had constructed with immense labour, a great drive into the side of the hill there. Oh man, it was huge, and when you went inside, it was not so much like a drive as like a damn great cathedral with its Gothic arches and huge chambers in which you could well nigh turn a team of bullocks, but all his labour won him nothing, for he could not find enough gold even to keep himself in food. So much for Skeleton Ted and the miners of the L. Other yarns concerned that uh that that same locality, and one in particular, centred around uh Drury's Hotel, of which the ruins are still visible on the west side of the. Myong Blackwood Road that goes over Mount Blackwood, uh, before, on the south side of the mount, on the west side of the road on the south side of the mound, uh, a little below, uh, where Dev Devney's homestead. Now is whether this homestead is still owned by Debney or not, I don't know, but uh that in turn is almost opposite to where Landsborough House, the old school was. So that Drury's uh Drury's Hotel is a stone ruin some half mile to the, maybe less, quarter of a mile south of uh of those two localities. Now at Drury's Hotel, uh, the miners from the Lederberg used to uh gather, and that probably there was a store there as well. This may have been mentioned, though I can't, uh, can't remember. And that was the scene of another long yarn of Micky Nolan's which concerned on the one. Side, a miner who had been walking out uh from Blackwood. Late at night, uh, with a parcel of gold which he was taking down to Bacchus Marsh, or Bacchus's Marsh, as Nolan always called it. Uh, Alan, uh, this man, not Alan, I'm sorry, uh, this man. A miner was waylaid by 22 men who had been drinking in Drury's Pub, a little on the mount side of the pub, uh, close by a hawthorn hedge. He was killed, and these men took the body down into the bed of the Corkyparramo Creek, which is pretty deep down, steep down there, and there, uh I think um Nolan said they constructed a sort of pyre and burnt the body. I can't remember that, they may just have buried it. But at all events, whatever happened. All of this was observed by a man called Alan, who had drunk himself almost into a stupor at Drury's Pub, and had then set to work to walk back towards the mount, but had lain down and fallen asleep underneath the hawthorn hedge. Some while later, he woke up and heard these two men discussing the slaying of the miner from Ballarat from Blackwood. Too frightened to say anything, or to show his presence, he saw the miner waylaid and saw him murdered, and then, when these two men had taken the body down the creek, he made off. He did not tell anyone of his black secret. But it weighed on his mind. And some while later, his employer Came out and found Alan sitting at the door of his hut, weeping his heart out. Come, come, Alan, you seem distressed this morning. And there the the yarn went on through phraseology that I've quite forgotten. The employer questioned Alan and finally found uh uh finally hit on the whole story. Uh, he asked Alan why he had not told about it, and Alan replied to him, oh, how could I front a magistrate with a tail like that? The magistrate would only say, oh, this is just a dream or hallucination of a liquor-fuddled brain. What again was the end of that story, I have no idea, but the dream or hallucination stayed as a as a catchword with us for a very long time. The one. Of Nolan's stories that we remembered best of all, I think, was one which concerned a visit of his to the man that he called the register at Bacchus Marsh. I think he had to go down to see the the register. On some matter of a disputed estate or or something of that sort, I I can't remember what the uh uh what the. And what the purpose was for the visit, but I it may, may have been something of this sort, uh, at all events, when he uh when he reached Bacchus' Marsh, he fronted the register, who sat at his desk with pen and paper and closely examined me. Now, how many relations have you, Nolan? And I told him one brother, sir, residing at Bacchus's Marsh. And he wrote busily on the paper. The questioning continued, and he continued writing down my answers. After a while, I mentioned some other relation, a cousin maybe, or something of that sort. And the register said to me, Nolan, I thought you said you had only one brother. And I said, yes sir, when you mentioned relations, I thought you meant close our blood relations. Oh, tut tut tut man, and with that he threw down the pen. You might well have spared me the trouble of writing all this. So the yarns went on. For hour after hour of all sorts, and I shall only mention. One or two more, because they, they would become tedious. These both concerned New New South Wales and different things that had happened to him up there. At one stage he must have been a surveyor's assistant, I think it probably was, and he, uh, travelled the country fairly extensively with his, uh, with his boss in a buggy, presumably, and. The, he told us about this boss and his, his powers, and amongst the powers was a blue document, which he carried. And I remember him going up to some property owner who objected to him trespassing on his land. Uh. Taking the document from his pocket and saying, by virtue of this document, I may go in and over your land wherever and however I like. The other New South Wales story that I can remember uh concerned the the coach journey from, Uh, Mosgill down the hay. Uh, and I remember well the, the run of names Mosgol, Booligal, the One Tree, and Hay. They paused at at the one tree, as coaches did in those days, and, Nolan described the passengers, I I forget what led into that, but he described the the the passengers. Looking Like so many, so many spectres with great glaring eyes because of the dust which so thickly covered them. That the same story mentioned the uh the the horses. Um, Which he said were sturdy medium drop horses. And they travelled so fast that no winner of the Melbourne Cup ever put hoof to turf more speedily than they did. So much for Nolan and his yarns. that there were many of those and At that particular time in 1925 or 19924, uh, there was one other man living, um, living further up the uh the creek from Nolan, and he used to come in from Greendale more than from, uh, more than from the. The south past Nolan's little track, so that uh we only met him once or twice. His name was Charlie Faukes, and uh to us he was of no great interest. He too followed the same occupations as uh as Mickey Nolan, something of mining and something. Of timber cutting and so on, but by the time we knew of him, he was uh he was just a pensioner too, and lived in the same sort of little hut that uh that that Mickey inhabited. Built, uh, partly of logs, partly of, uh, Two scraps of galvanised iron that they had, but both uh both cosy roofed with um uh with galvanised iron and quite uh quite weatherproof. Uh, both huts, in fact, all the huts that were built through the bush, uh, in those days followed roughly the same pattern, with the, uh, chimney and door at one end, a window at the other end, the bunk probably under the window or along one side, uh, a table in the middle and maybe a few stools, and another little movable table, uh, over near the uh near the fireplace. The I, I can recollect at the moment no more, uh, stories about uh Mickey Nolan or his doings. He died, uh, as far as I can remember, just before the war, or it may have been just after the war began, but he had moved out of, uh, out of Dales Creek by, I should think, 1936 or 1937. I remember going to visit him. Uh, again, after I'd, after I had left the university, I went to visit the old man and had a long arm with him, but I think it was soon afterwards that he, uh, uh, that he went to live in Ballarat with a niece. I think then went into the benevolent home and died, as far as I can remember about the, uh, about the beginning of the war. Uh, at that time, in the, or going back further than that, in the twenties, uh. We knew many people in the district and maybe the names of a few of them would be would be interesting without my going into any detail because most of them were. Not much more than acquaintances, and we didn't know very much about them. George Allen and I have already mentioned he was a heroic figure, the boys, of course. Uh, another man who was, uh, as an uncle, I, I suppose an uncle by marriage to George Allen, uh, was one Willie Fowler, who was a dairy farmer up above Pike's Weir. And One of his sisters, I think, had married a man, white, who had also had a dairy farm just down. Uh, um below Uh, below Fowler's on the Corrabeet Creek, I'd imagine, at all events where the, uh, where the road from Mooneyong to Greendale, uh, goes down across the, uh, across the creek in its first dip before going north to Shooter's Place. Uh, Willie Fowler, uh, had been a great horseman in his days, something of a rifle shot, too old for the first war, so he'd never been a, a soldier, and he used to bring us into, uh, into Blackwood in the early days, I think probably our first journey into Blackwood was in 1924, under his tutelage, and he introduced us to many Blackwood figures whom I will mention lately, uh, later on. Uh Another figure from that particular area was Willie Linsdall, who lived. On the uh on the hilltop, where the, the Ballarat Road at that day, now bypassed, uh, dipped down towards Pike's Weir. There was the old stone building, which had been George Grant's Mornyong store. The name Mornyong took in more than the modern Myrnyong and went further to the west along the road. But this was called the Monyong store, and it was family, uh, family law. How, uh, George Grant, who was my mother's grandfather, had set up this store in the very early digging days, and done very well at it, but worked himself to death in a few years and left his, uh, widow to bring up the large Grant family. Uh, Willie Linstall was, uh, a, a close friend of ours because he had taken over the Grant property, probably bought it, maybe he wasn't the first. Uh, after that, but all events, he after the passing of the Grants, but at all events he was the owner of the, of what had been the Grant property in our day. Uh, he used to take us into Ban and, uh, also on several memorable occasions, took us into Ballarat, which had long been a land of dreams for us. Another place which we used to visit, uh, now, I speak more of the early 30s, maybe the late 20s and the 30s, when uh we had, Uh, when we were older, who could walk walk further, and had a, consequently a, a wider sphere of operation and uh. Not to begin with, but uh by the early 30s, of course, uh we had bikes too, and that that uh greatly, greatly widened our range. But in uh in those days, uh beginning in 1929, I think that's when I first had a bicycle, uh, I began the building of the hut here at um. At Simmons Reef and uh in between building activities and after the hut had been uh had been completed, of course um I uh, came to know the Blackwood residents pretty well, some of whom we had met 10 years earlier or Not 10, 5 years earlier when Willie Fowlers first brought us into place, uh, of those, I, I can remember quite well. category. Those that I knew well belonged to two categories. First of all, People who were just miners by chance, really. These were people on sustenance who at that stage were working all over the old field trying to pick up a little gold, and their camps were dotted over all the old localities which had been worked in the 50s and 60s. Uh, their names, uh, I, I. I, I shan't mention many of their names because they were but birds of passage. Those that I knew best were were Jack Graham, a man who was very interesting to us, as he had been, uh, worked on the railways as a fireman and had then gone into house building before the depression caught him, and when that that did come onto mining pursuits. Uh, and, uh, his two friends, the, the Gorn brothers, who were much younger, and who had both, as far as I can remember, had their apprenticeships, interrupted by the depression and had come again to, uh, To see what they could do in gold mining up at Blackwood. Uh, these, uh, at that stage were working in the bottom of the Lederberg. The two boys, after a year or two, went back to Melbourne, but Jack Graham stayed around the area for some time and worked on many of the old mines, or old claims rather. Uh, such as the Albion, uh, the new Sultan, which had a, a drive running into the side of the hill, uh, just north of Simmons Reef on the north bank of the Leother Derg, and I think he also worked for a while on the Easter Monday, though that I'm not sure. And that that is enough for the uh. Sustenance men, as they were called, uh, the locals that we knew well were, firstly, Herbert Cairn, uh, and his brother Willie Cairn, who used, in, in the twenties to um, Keep the hotel, but who uh later gave, gave up the licence in favour of one Ernie Morgan, who was the publican, as far as I can remember, right through the thirties, I think from about 1928 or 1929 until the outbreak of the war. Uh, then, uh, there were Ernie Tyrrell, uh, we knew him quite well and used to hear a good deal about the early days from him, and another of the same vintage, uh, Was Billy Gribble, who used to live uh in the place which I think is still called Gribble's fruit garden, although the old home in which he lived has been subsequently burnt down. Billy Gribble was a miner too, and I remember being taken by him up to above Shaw's Dam, to have a look at a uh claim that they were working up there called the Bill's Birthday. Uh, I think 3 were in that party, and they had what was a novelty to us. We'd seen whims at work before, but this was, uh, a horse whip that they used for their, uh, for their haulage. Uh, Herb Cairn at that time was still occupied with mining, and he used to take us sometimes up to the Trojan Mine at the top of Yankee Gully, and we used to watch operations there. And I think at one stage, I, I'm not sure at this point whether it was Herbert Tan or or somebody else, but a small, small party were working in the Easter Monday, and we also went through, uh, through those workings. Uh, others that, uh, we knew, uh, were the Matheson brothers. Though we were never so familiar with them. For some reason, I don't know why we knew them reasonably well, uh, and Mick Hayden, who was a a fairly old man and was a prominent local identity at that time. Our greatest friends uh among the locals were probably uh the Williamsons and the Libby's. Uh, the two brothers, Williamson. Um, Were Norman and Magnus, they'd been born, uh in Barry's Reef, as far as I know, at all events, lived there, in their early days, and, Uh, had They've been in the district all their lives, except that in the, in the depression of the nineties, they, they both went to other states. Uh, Magnus over to the west, uh, where he was on some of the big rushes, and Norman Williamson down to Tasmania, where he worked in the bush for the Mount Lyell and other companies round there, mostly on the construction of timber trams, which was his particular mate yeah, he had never, Uh, followed mining but was more inclined, uh, for working in the bush on timber in one, in one way or another. Uh, in the time when we knew them, Magnus was working with his brother-in-law, Fred Libby, out at, uh, Greenhill, and, uh, Green Hills, and Norman Williamson lived part of his time in Barry's Reef, or up at uh Blue Mountain properpper, and, In the end, He, through the, I think it must have been right through the 30s, he was uh acting as one of the first bushfire lookouts for the uh Forest Commission, had a hut up on the very top of Blue Mountain, and uh had up there a little, A stone dammed lake and a tower which he built for himself, of of saplings and so on, a man who was completely at home in the bush and uh loved, Loved a life for its own, for its own sake, I think, rather than for any money that they ever made out of it just because he liked uh living in that way. Uh, he often too would be out at Green Hills, and we spent many a happy hour yarning there with the two brothers and their sister, who was Mrs. Libby, and old Fred Libby, who was the same age as the others, but always called old for some reason, and uh. Sometimes, uh, going with them on long walks through the bush. These to us were a delight for all three of them, as well as being very knowledgeable bushmen, were keen naturalists, keen readers, and. A great quotas of poetry, something that seems strange in modern times, but these men had read so widely that it was evidently quite Uh quite usual for them to, um, uh, to talk of what they'd read and to quote from what they'd read, and particularly of poetry, they all seemed keen on, on that, uh, poetry and music, and all of them, as well as being good singers, and Mrs. Libby was particularly, um, uh, a good musician, as well as being keen singers, um. Wrote, uh, wrote poetry, and sometimes would would quote their own, their own poetry quite unaffectedly. At this stage I think I had better stop. Because although that there is much more that I could say about these men and about others whom I knew through this uh through this country, I feel that at the moment I'm becoming rather random in uh in what I choose, and I would like to give the matter some thought and uh, think more carefully of what I should say about the uh about the locality and of what, people