SURVIVING THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN AUSTRALIA

The photo above of Ernest Lodge with his sister Dorothy and their dog Corky at home in Normanton was taken around 1929 before departure to the Far East.

  

Ernest Fisher Lodge.  1906 - 1998

A SMALL PART OF HIS ADVENTUROUS LIFE

Reminiscences of three years in Australia during the world’s worst slump, 30 December 1931 to 30 December 1934.  

Down but not out

In February 1929 being in residence at Devonshire Hall, Headingly (Leeds University) I was in the lounge reading the news headlines when a friend pointed out an advertisement saying ‘Planters wanted for Malaya.’  As Jobs were already scare in the UK and getting worse I applied.  Within a month I was in Thread Needle Street, London, being interviewed by the Board of Guthrie and Co Ltd, the owners of many rubber and oil palm estates in Malaya and Sumatra.

 (The colleague saw an advert from Guthrie’s requiring planters in Penang and thinking they were both applying he did.  The other boy didn’t.  When asked one question at the interview if he played Bridge he was able to respond positively having been a keen player.   On the strength of that and a rather suspect reference, based on a year of ‘agriculture’, which was largely colouring maps, from a Professor Waddington of Leeds University where he had got his degree, he got the job).

A month later I was aboard a fine passenger ship, the ‘Mooltan’, bound for Malaya. 

Source - http://alh-research.tripod.com/Light_Horse/Mooltan_1qaa1.jpg

This was a month’s journey with interesting stop-overs in Marseilles, Port Said, Bombay, Karachi, before berthing in Penang.  Having unloaded my gear into a rickshaw, pulled by an old Chinese, we found a small Chinese hotel.  Next day I looked up Guthrie’s office on the water-front and was told that there had been a change of plans.  Whilst on my way out a Scots assistant on a Guthrie’s estate in Sumatra had been stabbed twice in the back and I was to take his place.  This gave me a few days to look over Penang whist waiting for a boat to Sumatra; to the nearest port, to Medan, where Guthrie’s again had an office.  Sumatra, a big volcanic island almost 1000 miles long was mostly tropical jungle.  Rubber, oil palm, tobacco, sisal, coconuts, pepper, nutmeg, cocoa, coffee, were planted from Medan downwards along the East Coast, helped by some 300 miles of railway.  The equator bisected the island into two almost equal parts.  For a naturalist it was a paradise being the home of a great variety of insects, moths, butterflies, birds and animals; including tigers, bears, and orang-utans, monkeys etc..  Most of the latter we never saw as there was ample room for everyone.

The only other assistant, as I was called, was a Scotsman, Mackinnon, whose bungalow I shared until the other chap recovered from his wounds.  Mac was one of the finest men I have ever met becoming my manager.  He married an American girl, when travelling home to Scotland, when war broke out in 1939, and was down the Amazon, with a light plane at his disposal, to stimulate rubber production amongst the natives who were crudely extracting latex from the jungle there.  Following that he opened up and managed 50,000 acres of rubber in Liberia before retiring.  He and his wife came to stay with us for a fortnight in Penang in 1980 to where I had retired, and we never ran out of reminiscences of the early days.

As the world slump reached new depths the price of rubber plummeted from $2.00/lb to $0.07/lb and all assistants were sacked.  Two months pay and a passage home.  I knew the depths of the depression in the UK from my old school mate Harry Keene, who was three years with me at Leeds University and had joined the Metropolitan Police, London, after a depressing period trying to sell vacuum cleaners door-to door.

I opted for Australia.  I assumed it couldn’t be in a worse state than the UK and as I knew no one there, I would try for any job no matter how menial. It was amongst the best decisions I ever made.  To get there I had first to go to Singapore.  After a few days I boarded the ‘Mindaroo’, bound for Fremantle, the port for Perth, Western Australia.  This was a semi-cargo, semi-passenger ship having twelve cabins on the upper deck to accommodate for a variety of cargo below, including sheep, bales of wool, etc..

Source - http://www.phpa.com.au/getattachment/About-the-Port/Photo-gallery/1935-Mindaroo-on-sandbank.jpg.aspx

Cap’t, officers and crew were typical friendly Aussies and we had many interesting stops on the way down to go ashore and look around.  Leaving Singapore one passes through the Rhio Archipelago, many islands of all sizes, down the East Coast of Sumatra before approaching the island of Java. These two islands are separated by the Sunda straits from which can be seen a famous volcano, Krakatoa, which last erupted in 1883.  According to my encyclopaedia the sound waves generated travelled 3000 miles, waves generated of 50 ft which overwhelmed shores and settlements, causing 35,000 deaths, and reached Cape Horn.  Amongst the few passengers aboard I soon found a mutual friend, Alex Horton by name, who was on his way home to Fremantle.  He had just been retrenched from a shipping company in Shanghai, China, which was also laying up ships because of the world slump.  He was 2^nd mate and had been with them for 5 years, mostly on the Yangtze River run.  This river, 3.500 miles long from its source in the Himalayas is given a navigable length for ocean going vessels of 1,500 miles.  In those days they were regularly fired on by Chinese communists from the river bank and carried a section of British troops with them, guarded by sheet metal on the after deck.  A great yarner, Alex soon had me well informed on China.

Our first port of call in Java was Batavia, actually some miles inland, where we spent a few hours.  Since taken over by the Indonesians it is called Jakarta, formerly, when a colony of India for more than 200 years, it was called Batavia. Throughout Indonesia there are ruins of Indian temples, the most famous being Borobudur; still the main attraction of tourists.

The next trip ashore was at Soerabaia, (Surabaya) at the southern end, also a beautiful town; and finally calling in at a small place on the southern tip called Banayuwangi (scented water), for a load of bananas, from there south into the Indian Ocean, heading for Australia, far from land.

Meanwhile I was learning a lot about Australia from Alex.  He was born in Liverpool, his father being a Chief Petty Officer in the British Navy in the days when warships were part steam part sail..  On retirement he emigrated to Australia with his wife, 9 children, 3 boys and 6 girls.  He was granted land outside Perth and a job with the Customs dept from which he had also retired by the time I met him. They built their own house, a very comfortable one, to sufficiently accommodate them all and added one more girl and one more boy.  The latter, when I first met him, was captain of Western Australia schoolboy’s football team.  Alex’s eldest brother went to sea and when I first met him in Singapore he had long captained ships and was Singapore’s Chief pilot.

Alex the second boy went to sea at 18 years, gradually passed his various training certificates and for the last 30 years of his life was a captain of ships from China, Singapore, to Indonesia.  He often visited Cheroh Estate where I subsequently lived after WW2, always bringing along his banjo.  Being Royal Navy Reserve he was taken into the Aussie Navy during the last war as a gunnery officer and took part in the sinking of an Italian warship in the Mediterranean.  He was on HSM Sydney, a cruiser.  On arrival home to Sydney, he was hospitalised for some infection and was still there when the ship headed back for Europe.  Off the west coast, after leaving Fremantle, the ‘Sydney’ spotted a suspicious looking merchant ship.  As she approached to investigate the merchant ship suddenly dropped her side, exposing rows of powerful guns and sank the ‘Sydney’ with all hands.  From the badly damaged German ship three men managed to reach shore and were eventually captured.  Alex was then transferred to a supply ship based on Cape York, N.E. top of Australia, for supplying Australian troops in New Guinea.  All this of course I learnt after the war when Alex several times visited the estate.

A few days after leaving Indonesia heading S.E. we got our first view of Australia – endless sand dunes with no signs of habitation.  Western Australia alone covers 1 million square miles.  The population, at that time, of the state was less than one million, of who mostly lived in Perth.  The last convicts were dumped there in 1856.  Travelling down the coast our first port of call was Broome, the centre of the pearl divers activity, a small one street – earth surface – with rows of shacks down each side.  The main peelers were Japs or Kupangers, from the island of Timor whose main town was Kupang, Indonesia.  There were no diving suits.  They just held their breath – only possible in reasonable depths.  In the bay there were many fine pearling luggers built of 2 inch thick teak, one of the finest timbers on earth.  By this time Alex and I had already been discussing the possibility of buying a boat on which to live out the slump whilst foraging a living from the sea.  These junks made our mouths water but were far beyond our means.

The next call-in site - you couldn’t call it a port as it consisted of one wooden shack and a long wooden jetty running well out to sea.  It was called Port Hedland (Where this ship ultimately came to grief on a sandbank), and rejoiced in various cattle and sheep stations, often of vast area in the interior.  Whilst we were there an enormous wagon came in sight piled high with bales of wool, being slowly dragged through the sandy soil by a team of eight pairs of camels.  For loading this we stayed the night.  The rise and fall of tide at this point is 30 feet.  The sea retreated for miles, giving the ships engineers the opportunity to check around the hull and propellers.  Spoonbills and smaller birds were sifting through the mud.

On our way again we waited out at sea opposite another stopping point called Onslow whilst passengers in a sail boat came to board us, approx 200 miles from Port Hedland.

Another 250 miles and we entered a small harbour, the port for an attractive growing town of Carnavon.  Here most tropical fruits like bananas were grown.  From there approximately 200 miles brought us to the port of Fremantle and the end of our journey.  I should say that the interior of Western Australia, apart from arid desert and bush, has mountain ranges up to 3000ft and many rivers.  Wheat and wool are the main exports.  The further South one goes the soil is more fertile so that all kinds of fruit are grown, and large areas are covered with forest with trees up to 300ft high. In Perth Park is one log 200 feet long, perfectly straight and 8 feet in diameter.

On berthing in Fremantle, Alex’s family were waiting for him and took him home.  On the advice of the ship’s officer I signed in at the Fremantle Hotel, which was not far from the ship.  It had twenty rooms, only one of which was occupied.  It main business came from seamen in the bar, usually dressed in blue jersey and baggy pants, and friendly.  The rooms were pretty basic, the first thing one noticed being splashes of blood on the walls where bloated mosquitoes had been flattened out.  An unpleasant surprise as I thought I had left mosquitoes behind in Sumatra.

On going down to the bar a couple of Aussies came up and we introduced ourselves over a drink.  On hearing that my name was Lodge they asked whether I was ‘one of the Queensland Lodges’.   This reminded me of the fact that years before I was born, a great-uncle emigrated to Australia, and as far as I knew was never heard of again.  Maybe he was a convict.  On a map of Queensland I noticed a small name in the outback called ‘Normanton’, my birthplace in Yorkshire.  Next day I met the only other resident of the hotel. A well dressed middle aged man named ‘Walkeden’ who was secretary to a shipping company whose office was nearby.  An Aussie himself, we became good friends and he put me wise to avoid approaches from shady characters who would see I was an obvious green-horn.  However, I soon found the slump in Australia was at least as bad as in the UK. Later I met two Yorkshiremen, farmer’s sons, who had come to farm and were allotted basic machinery.  When the slump came they had 500 acres of wheat ready to cut.   By then the price of wheat had sunk so low that cutting it would have incurred further loss and they abandoned the whole project.  I met them later whilst digging gold out in the bush.  That was after I met another Yorkshireman who came up to me whilst sitting on a bollard in Fremantle Harbour watching the shipping and thinking hard.  For an opener he asked me the time,  He was a coal miner from Barnsley who had been working on lead mines in Queensland for two years until retrenched and hadn’t been able to find another job.  We met again a few times and finally decided to do what many others were driven to, the goldfields of Coolgardie and Kalgoorie, 400 miles and more from Perth due East.  As it was completely without water and miles from anywhere, a pipe line had been laid, about 3ft. in diameter, to pump water that distance.  We bought a tent, billy can, pick and shovel and boarded a train for Coolgardie, the original goldfield, 400 miles inland, which had been worked out and consisted of ruins of some roofless brick house forming the only street.  We found one man, a cobbler, inhabiting a small shack with whom we had along talk in search of ideas.  There was a single track railway line running due south which he told us led to a clearing in the bush where some 50 odd men were ‘fossicking’, as it is called, or digging for gold.  It was named Larkinville after Nick Larkin who first found gold there.  Being the original discoverer of gold there he was given the ‘reward claim’ of an acre or so of is choice, before the rush moved in.  By the time we got there most of the rush had moved out, but there were still 30 or 40 diggers, men from all walks of life, including a rubber planter from Ceylon.  Before going there we went to Kalgoorie where there were several big deep goldmines still working.  It was a small town of around 20,000 people, with main-street, one hotel and shops.  We tried all the mines but drew a blank, so bought a gadget called a dry-blower, being bellows mounted on a wheelbarrow frame; some corned beef and returned to Coolgardie to board the side-line train for Larkinville.  It was single line and the only view on either side was bush.  This ‘bush’ covers a wide range of scenery; anything or any uninhabited area, from the usual scrub to trees 300ft high further south.  The train stopped when we came to a path leading away East through the scrub.  There was only and river and stoker running the train, no other passengers and the ride was free..  It travelled to Esperance in the Great Australian Bight.  After following the track through the bush for a few minutes we came upon Mick Larkin himself, a short man with a limp who was just about to shovel some earth into his dry-blower. 

(Looking for a dry blower illustration I found this as the nearest version – The model was constructed on the cradle principle with its adjustable screens moving in a rocking motion.  It included a pair of bellows to blast air, to separate the heavier gold from other material. The machine, designed to be carried on a horse or a camel, weighed 100 lbs.

Source - http://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/wa-goldfields/getting-gold/getting-gold-without-water

He could see that were a couple of greenhorns and offered to test our dry-blower, took a piece of gold from his pocket and threw it into the small pile of dry earth nearby.  It behaved as scheduled and was caught in the ripples as the rest passed out.  He pointed along the track to where some 40 odd prospectors were digging and off we went for about half a mile.  

 Before leaving Perth we had visited the Mining Dept and paid 2/6 for a ‘Miners Right’ which allowed us to stake a claim for I square chain and start digging.  The bush there was about 20-30 feet high, actually trees, and had to be cleared of all undergrowth for some acres by the diggers, now reduced to about 40 but previously some hundreds.  We were looking for ‘alluvial’ gold; that is fragments washed out by streams and rivers in the distant past, maybe thousands of years ago, when the whole landscape was mountainous and rain fell heavily.    Water-borne gold like this is always smooth without sharp spikes or edges, not like one sees in gold which is embedded in original rock.  Cheroh Estate where I lived for 15 years after WW2 was situated 8 miles from a big gold-mine, the Raub Australian Gold Mine, employing some 300 Chinese and 20 Australians.  They were our only neighbours and we knew them well.  Here at a depth of 1000ft, the gold was embedded in a 6ft. seam of what looked like slate, through which ran vertical streaks of white quartz.  Here and there one could see spiky pieces of gold; almost star like, appearing to have been shot out in some distant violent explosion thousands of years before.  After blasting, transport by light rail and hauled to the top, this was put through massive crushers and the gold extracted.

As we were prospecting for river borne gold, rubbed smooth over rocks, one starts the search by digging for an old stream bed, pebbles, etc..  The rainfall was minimal and the soil real hard, only possible to dent with a pick.  There was a small shack where a couple sold corned beef, sugar, tinned milk and a few other things including butter.  The water was brought in every two days by a man who managed to find a way through the bush with a pickup truck and sold at 3d per kerosene tin.   

 

We slung our tent between two trees and slept on the ground, soon learning to scrape out a hip-hole to accommodate the hip-joint.  There were some interesting characters on the site, rubber planter from Ceylon, a chartered accountant, the two Yorkshire farmers I mentioned earlier and an Aussie ex-soldier captain who had lost a leg in the First World War and employed two Welshmen to do his digging.  His army pension was £25 month, wealth in those days.  We sometimes kicked a football around in the evening and didn’t wash often in water at 3d per kerosene tin.   

After about a couple of months of this and no sight of gold, Bill Darlington, my Barnsley mate, developed large green blisters on his arms and body, known as bush sores, and I took him back to Kalgooorie to see a doctor.  He advised him to go back to Perth which he did.  After returning to Larkinville for a short while without success I decided to try Higginsville, further down the line, 30 or 40 miles, and duly boarded the train with my gear.  I was the only one aboard.  The guard walked slowly down the moving rain, hanging from one handle to another, opened the door, looked me up and down, pretty scruffy and said, ‘How yer doin?’;  the usual Aussie opener.  I replied ‘lousy’.  After a couple of puffs and he walked out again without another remark.  No ticket.  Typical Australian!  We again pulled up at a gap in the bush where I was surprised to see a water tank raised high in the air on wooden posts.  Here there were only two other diggers, an old chap called Taremaki Jack and a very English Public School  Boy type who was apparently living there because it was cheap, as I didn’t see him dong any work..  However he was friendly and we played three handed bridge in the evenings under a kerosene lamp.  This area was said to be ‘worked-out’, the whole area having been dug over and chewed up.  An area usually referred to as tailings.  I just shovelled this into my dry blower and was surprised to find small specks of gold, even one particular piece as big as my thumb nail, with a piece of quartz on the other side, and a piece of black ironstone on the other.  Another unusual phenomenon here was a heavy drenching downpour of rain, possibly the reason I saw gold.  Whilst this was encouraging and enabled me to accumulate more specs of gold, I could see that I wasn’t going to make a fortune.  At the same time a telegram arrived, in this out of the way place, from my former friend, Alex Houghton.  His temporary job had ended and he was planning to go to Sydney by train to try his luck there.  The train stops at Kalgoorie – it had to because the rail was of a different gauge.  It changed gauge again when entering S Australia, again when entering Queensland and again when entering New South Wales.  Crazy but true.  The journey from Perth to Sydney is 3000 miles and takes five days or did so in those days.  I duly met and talked with Alex again about our boat project and it had to be done soon before our cash ran out.  Having decided on that he carried on to Sydney and I returned temporarily to collect my few belongings and dispose of my gear.

Soon I was boarding the train in Kalgoorie and setting off over the Noolabar Plain – a thousand miles of low scattered scrub as far as the horizon.  That’s all there was to see except an occasional rail side hut with a water tank and telephone.  No birds apparently were able to cross this distance.  Western Australia, for instance, had no sparrows and any one seen there, having come in by ship, was chased until shot.  After 5 or 6 days journey I eventually arrived in Sydney and rejoined Alex who had found some cheap digs near Wooloomaloo Bay in Sydney Harbour.  A single upstairs room on a road running down to the bay where there were large wharves for the biggest ocean liners.  We spent some days looking around the many bays and creeks for a boat without any luck.  Meanwhile I cleaned up my minute hoard of gold – almost a match box full and put it in a small bottle with vinegar to bring out its bright colour.  I left it on a shelf without thinking and I never saw it again.  The landlady, of course, denied any knowledge of it, but admitted that the only other lodger had packed up and left.  She was a Maltese woman and probably his girlfriend.  By a stroke of luck there was soon an advertisement in the paper of a boat for sale – 28 foot long lifeboat, a mast and sail, a small cabin taking up half the forepart; and a small two stroke engine.  A part of the stern was occupied by another locker.  Amidships was a steel girder connecting the two sides and providing additional strength in rough seas.  After some bargaining we bought it for £65.  It sounds cheap but times were bad.  We could get a three course meal on the ‘lumpers wharf’ for 5 pence and meat at 3d/lb.  When the dole was introduced about one year later we took it – 7 shillings per month. 

On the boat – with Charlie Michael an engineer in Sept 1932

We then spent most of the rest of our money on improvements – new sail, new ropes etc.  Our eating utensils consisted of one plate, knife, fork, and spoon; one frying pan, one aluminium bowl and 2 mugs.  Breakfast was always the same – large plate of porridge on which we poured Golden Syrup.  Cleaning the basin after porridge wasn’t a problem.  We tied a string to the side handle and threw the bowl overboard.  In a flash it was attacked by small fish and was soon like new.  The man who sold the boat to us came down to visit us occasionally.   He was a Jewish refugee, who with thousands of others had fled Russia to Shanghai during the Communist revolution, later getting to Sydney and opening a chemist’s shop.  He had a teen age daughter, christened ‘Tamara’ after whom the boat was named.  He had taken on a new name himself to disguise his origin; ‘Francis de Vere Seaforth McKenzie Kelly.  This just about covered al the options.  A small strong dingy for getting ashore came with the boat.

Sydney Harbour is about 8 miles long, after one passes through the ‘heads’, high steep cliffs about a mile apart as one enters from the Pacific Ocean.  It widens into many spacious bays and beaches before narrowing temporarily at which point a huge steel bridge of 58,000 tons was built by Dorman Long before we arrived.  Beyond this it widens again into a series of docks for cargo vessels and still more bays.  Seamen argue as which the finest harbour in the world is.  Opinions only differ as to whether it is Sydney or Rio de Janeiro  

Below is a bit from an old map of Sydney Harbour.  Wooloomeroo Bay is along indentation as though some giant had pushed his finger deep into the landscape; situated south side of Farm Cove to the left of Elizabeth Bay to the right. The red circle around the red # on the left is our home base anchorage point.  We tied one rope to the Stiff’s Baths’ and our stern rope to a 15ft high rocky wall ashore.  The wharf you see jutting out into the bay was only for big European passenger liners, the commonest being British, Italian and French.  Our first source of income, small but steady, was from empty beer and wine bottles thrown overboard.  The local ‘bottle-ho’ as it was called, paid us 8d/dozen for our beer bottles and 3d/each for or wine bottles.  With the meat at 3d/lb and a cheap meal at 5d, this was like manna from Heaven.   We also devised a metal grip, fastened to the end of as long bamboo pole, which could pull bottles up from the bottom of the sea.  This was especially for use in Sydney Cove near the bridge where American liners berthed and formerly sailing ships.  Here the water deepened very quickly and the sides were a mass of loose rocks as the water deepened.  One wine bottle we recovered had been there of many years and embossed in the glass wall was an inscription ’The Paragon’, a pub that closed years ago.

Mooring point for Tamara in Sydney Harbour.

We picked up other occasional jobs, such as being paid £2 to clean up the mess, the morning after a celebration by some Club or other, football or ex-army, amidst a thick atmosphere of smoke, broken glasses and liquor.  This led to further easy money when we were contacted by a group of barbers, eight or so from one big salon, who paid us well to pick them up at midnight from a platform at the base of Sydney Bridge, the first article to come aboard being a case of beer, and set out for the ‘Heads’, i.e. exit from the harbour to the Pacific Ocean.  The fun began when we began to pass through the heads, from the calm waters of the harbour, on to massive rollers which appeared to have come all the way from South America.  This only happened once with them and afterwards we kept inside the harbour.  There are many other bays to choose, where even shark could be caught.   One shark caught was carefully kept alive at the request of Sydney Zoo Aquarium where on its second day if coughed up a man’s arm; as reported in the newspaper.

Clothes never cost us anything as aboard the boat we wore only a pair of shorts.  When my last pair wore out I made a new pair from sail cloth, first opening up the old pair as a pattern to lay out, using a sail-needle and thread. For going to town I still had a suit, shirt etc. from the UK.

We often sailed up the harbour beyond the bridge and in particular as far as Tarbon Creek and White Bay where we had found a large flat rock on which we could park our boat at high tide and have it well parked out of the water at low tide for any repairs or repainting required.  The banks of the creek rose steeply, were covered with bush and a number of bungalows on top, particularly to the north.  From one of these, every day, a young man and his three young sons descended early morning to cross the creek in their own boat.  They stopped at our rock on the way and introduced themselves.  His name was Dan Hamilton, originally from Greenock, Scotland and retired from the Royal Navy as Engineer officer, then chief engineer with Shell.  He and his wife had seven children, three boys and four girls.  They became our friends for life.  The two eldest boys Ian and Elliot, both grew up to be 6ft Aussies, served on merchant ships throughout the war and as engineers subsequently Ian became a partner in an Aussie firm making high tension switch gear, did well and was bought out by a US firm.  Elliot stayed at sea and for the last five years before retiring he was Chief Refrigerating Engineer of the ‘Queen Elizabeth’.  .He married a German girl and retired to the Isle of Wight to continue with his passion for sailing.  He has stayed with us here (Penang) on his way to visit his family, likes to wear a sarong at home in the hot weather, for which my wife sends him occasional replacements.  The youngest son, Don, grew up to be the biggest in the family but had an accident, lost an arm and died young. We lost touch with the girls except Alison who had a job at the Aussie Embassy in Germany and visited us in the UK.  We often had the three boys sailing with us during their holidays.  Mrs Hamilton made a Xmas Pudding for us with a coin inside.

Another great friend in Sydney was an Aussie, Charlie Michael, also an engineer.  He was brother-in-law of a close friend of Alex when they were shipmates on the China coast and we met him when Alex and I looked up his shipmate’s father in Sydney.  The latter was an old man who had spent his life as a sail-maker aboard ships.  His hobby was painting famous sailing ships like Cutty Sark.  He didn’t live long after we met him.  Charlie was quite a bit older than us too as he had fought with the Aussies during WW1, in particular against the Turks in the tough Gallipoli Campaign of 1915-16.  He often came out with us in our boat and made a great improvement in replacing the small two stroke engine, a permanent headache, with a spare Oldsmobile engine he had in his backyard, complete with gearbox.  As this was much more powerful we had a new propeller made to suit it.  I never forget that I met some very fine Aussies.

All things come to an end. Alex after two and a half years received a call from his father saying that prospects at sea had improved and he had a good job in Fremantle if he came home.  I had also heard from my former prospecting pal, Bill Darlington, that he was working on a big gold mine at a place called Wiluna, 700 miles out in the bush from Perth; that the pay was good and that if I could only get there I was sure of a job.  We advertised the boat at £65, what we paid for it although by now it was worth much more. It sold quickly to a couple of Aussies (one was a Capt. Hamilton) who intended to take it to the barrier reef, fishing.  We were sorry to part with it and shall never forget the often adventurous life we had on it, including the occasion when we were hit by a storm, when out to sea, and driven ashore North of Sydney by huge waves.  We were hammered for a week before we managed to get afloat with the help of a party of Aussie life-savers who had a club there.  Leaking like a sieve and baling for our lives, we managed with the help of a following wind, to reach the Heads, get through and run up onto a small quiet beach.  As the tide ran out, the leaks let the water from the boat and we had a busy time plugging them with tar and oakum.  The life savers thought we had sunk and phoned the Pilot boat at her station inside the Heads.  She set out to meet us but only arrived as we were approaching the Heads, could see we were going to make it, so just followed us in.  A big job of repair followed when we beached her on a pile of rocks in our anchorage in Wooloomooloo Bay, replaced three long planks in her bottom and at the same time added a foot to her keel for better sailing.  Both Don Hamilton and Charlie Michael were a great help.  The boat was again in good condition and we took her out to sea.

To get back to Fremantle quickly, Alex took the plane.  I took some nearby digs whilst having a haircut and getting organised.  The landlady, of all things, had a degree from Leeds University, and a very clever young daughter who was working on Sydney Television.  I happened to have amongst my gear a ‘square’ or sort of neck scarf in University colours and gave it to her when leaving.  Meantime I booked a sea passage on a passenger cum cargo ship called the ‘Dimboola’ which was on her last trip.

Dimboola – Was actually sold to the Hong Kong SS Co (1932) Ltd of Singapore as reported in The West Australian 22 August 1935

Photo Source - http://www.tynebuiltships.co.uk/D-Ships/dimboola1912.html

The Aussies typically referred to her as the ‘Damn-Roller’. A glance at the map will show that it is a long trip and most of it out of sight of land.  I forget how long it took, but imagine about a fortnight as we only did 15 knots.  Fortunately I am immune to sea sickness after life aboard for two and a half years and was able to enjoy the trip, particularly as we were followed almost the whole way by albatross.  They are magnificent birds with a large wing span and circle indefinitely at high speed without flapping their wings.  They would pounce down on any food thrown from the ship and either grab it in the air or scoop it from the sea.

Arriving in Fremantle I put up again in the Fremantle Hotel for a couple of days, renewed my chats with friend Walkenden, went to Perth to see Alex’s family, in particular his father who had worried considerably about our life in Sydney.  From there I boarded a train – almost empty – for Wilma, a two day journey without seeing another passenger.  Having left Perth and suburbs there was noting to see but scattered bush, with an occasional emu.  It was dead flat all the way, the earth between the bushing looking hard and dry and dotted with pieces of ironstone and white quartz.   


It was a 750 mile trip into the interior, the line ending when we reached the site and tented community of a large modern, deep gold mine called Wiluna.  Lining the one main road were temporary shacks made of Hessian, stones and a few long bars.  Wiluna was a hell of a dump – just a collection of bag houses around one big gold mine.  The mine employed almost 1000 men, and the town consists of a main street, containing 2 pubs and several shops, which supply these men and their families with the necessities of life.  The railroad ends at Wiluna.  It was situated miles away from civilisation and surrounded by typical low lying W. Australian bush, with quartz, ironstone and rock scattered all over the landscape.  It was very hot whilst I was there, most days around 105-110F in the shade and one day getting to 144F.  Moreover it hadn’t rained for over a year.  The only water came from the mine from where it was pumped and purified.  It was the hottest driest place I have ever visited.  Even the birds shunned it – I never saw one.  It was said that no hens could live in Wiluna.  Apart from kicking a football around the rocky ground and hanging around the crowded tented bar I didn’t see any form of recreation.  The only animal I saw was a scruffy wild camel.  Even the gold here occurred as a yellow powder, known as telluride, dispersed through rock.  The rock had first to be blasted deep down the mine, hauled up and pulverised by heavy machinery before being transported on moving belts on to a row of steel cylinders, approx 7ft in diameter and 20ft long.  These cylinders contained steel balls for further crushing of the ore.  Each cylinder had a hole in the centre of the face at one end, about 7 inches diameter.  Before the cylinder was started up rotating a low wagon containing further pieces of ore was drawn up facing the hole and these pieces had to be fed through the hole by hand, My hand, being that of the last rookie to arrive at the mine.   

First I made contact with my prospecting mate, Bill Darlington, who by this time was married and had a child and occupied one of the bag structures. The procedure to start work was to report to the crushing section at midnight, the change of shift, so as to be available in case a worker failed to show up.  I got a start as a casual hand in the mill a fortnight after arriving and was soon permanent.  It is all shift work (8 hours, with ½ hour out of this for crib) and I didn’t find it hard.  Every day 1,500 tons of ore was crushed and treated in the mill and the gold recovered was 11,000ozs/month.  Gold was £8(Aust)/oz then and it was still rising in price.  I was averaging £1/day when I pulled out, which was a good wage in Australia those days  However it didn’t go far in Wiluna as everything had a 750 mile railroad freight on it.  After two failed attempts I was taken on as a regular, having learnt to heavily tape my finger ends.. The task was to throw out six truckloads through the hole per shift, usually possible with an hour to spare.  I then climbed a ladder to a small platform from which the shift boss kept an eye on things.  He was a doctor from Edinburgh, another sign of the depth of the slump.  The pay was good for those days, about £2 per day with various cuts for Income Tax, Health Ins. etc.  Bill worked down the mine at double that and advised me to put my name on the list at the mine head.  A by-product from the ore was arsenic and a separate extraction plant was built some distance away.  It had a very tall chimney.  At least 6ft of the top of this chimney was thick white arsenic powder.  All the workers had to wear protective masks.  Work hours were short and pay high – I didn’t apply for that section.  

“We did all sorts of things for a living, most of which I never wrote home about.  That’s the great advantage of going to a place like Australia if you are on your uppers – nobody knows you and you can take on any sort of job without feeling ashamed of it, as you would amongst people you had been brought up with.  Also it is a very free and easy; don’t care a damn, sort of place, with none of this petty snobbery that meets one in the old country or any other old country. 

After three months I was called to the office and given a cable from Guthrie’s office in Sumatra asking me to report back for work at Panigoran Estate, the one I had left. They had booked a sea passage for me from Fremantle to Singapore in 10 Days time.  I hadn’t any time to waste as the train did not run every day and the journey took two days.  They rushed my pay through and I was lucky to get a train next day.  At the same time my name appeared on the list for going down the mine.

It seemed a long two days to Fremantle. There I had to get my passport stamped for leaving the country.  They wouldn’t stamp until I had paid my Income Tax over the past three years.  I had difficulty persuading the official to believe the facts that until I went to Wiluna I had lived without a job.  Luckily I had kept my three pay chits from my job at Wiluna.  After scratching his head and looking me up and down a couple of times he said, ‘Gimme seven and sixpence’.  He then signed to say I had paid my taxes.  I collected my passage ticket and with a deep sigh of relief boarded a ship, the Centaur, with the usual friendly Aussie officers.

The Centaur was converted into a hospital ship in 1945 and sunk.

On May 14th, 1943, AHS Centaur, an Australia hospital ship sailed off the coast of Queensland towards Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. The ship had 332 medical personnel and crew on board. She was marked with large red crosses and sailed without military escort as per the Geneva Convention requirements. The vessel would not survive to see dawn. The Japanese submarine I-177, commanded by Hajime Nakagawa, torpedoed AHS Centaur in an early morning attack, taking 268 lives. Now, the discovery of her wreck on December 20th has resurfaced the sensitive issue between Australia and Japan.
The sinking of AHS Centaur violated international war law and is considered one of Australia’s worst wartime tragedies. Her demise turned the vessel into a martyr for Australians, confirming the brutality of the Japanese in the public’s mind.

Source - http://gcaptain.com/maritime-monday-april-2012-ship/

Again it was passenger cabins upper deck and cargo below with many ports of call.  A very pleasant holiday.  At Broome we picked up a hundred or so pearl divers being shipped home to Timor, a Portuguese Island at that time since grabbed by Indonesia.  Other cargo was sheep for Singapore.

The first evening out of Fremantle I was leaning over the rail enjoying the feeling of heading back to Sumatra when an elderly Aussie parked alongside of me and opened the conversation in the usual Aussie way – ‘How are you doing?’ .  On introducing ourselves it turned out that he had lived in Melbourne, owned a factory which made all types of industrial brassware, such as nozzles for fire hydrants, hose pipes and other brass fittings.  He was onboard for a restful cruise all around Australia, having already gone around the Bight, would later pass round the top and down the Great Barrier Reef and home to Melbourne.

After some talk over the rail he came out with another standard Aussie remark – ‘What about a beer?’.  I hadn’t much money left but I was thirsty and went down to the lounge.  His next question was, ‘Do you play crib?’.  It happens I had played a lot on estates in Sumatra where the only Europeans were the manager and me.   Radio and Television were unknown.  The only newspaper was in Dutch.  The light was a Kerosene lamp and the fridge a wooden box lined with zinc sheet into which we put a small sack of ice delivered every two days.  All this changed after the war for comparative luxury, electric light and fridge.

So for the rest of the trip to Singapore, about a fortnight, we yarned over the rail and played crib.  As my money ran out after the first two days and I declined crib he said, ‘What’s wrong, are you broke?’  On my confirming this he pulled a wallet from his inside pocket, riffled through a wad of pound notes and said, ‘There’s a hundred here, how much do you want?’.  I took £25 from him and luckily it saw us through Singapore.  I took him around and we parted.  From my first month’s pay in Sumatra I posted back the £25 – that was in early 1935.  We wrote to each other until he died in 1950.  He sent me Aussie magazines and I sent him items of interest like a 25ft python skin which he had fastened to a long plank and hung on the wall in the lounge.  He had two daughters, 15 and 17 years, to whom my wife sent two sarongs.  By return he sent photographs of them on Melbourne beach with a caption.  ‘The first time Indonesian sarongs seen on a beach in Melbourne’

And so, back to rubber planting on Panigoran Estate in Sumatra