THOSE WERE THE DAYS

OLD MINES

by Spinifex

Me and my mate took a trip the other day out along the road to Gosse River. Whip out along the well-made road past Nobles Nob and keep going - there's still a bit of water out there and there are some nice river gums on the river bed (the old eucalyptus camaldulensis) that you can loll around under. Esky, barbie and all the creature comforts.
You still burn your head off at this time of year though, even under the shade.
Basically though we were looking for a couple of old mines from around 1937 - the New Hope, the Comstock and the Plumb, maybe stumble across Desert Hope - on the road out there. The Tennant Creek Fields had been kicking in for about three or four years by then and the miners were looking for new areas, away from town, although there'd been some pretty spectacular pulls of gold. Mount Samuel for example was getting returns that made speculators fairly randy with desire to have shares in - 400 tonnes of ore from a couple of assays and something like 1000 ounces of gold in return.
Nice dollars in those tough days.
The heat was fairly savage when we went out - at the time of writing we'd been over a hundred degrees on the old fahrenheit scale for about six weeks - hot enough to burn holes in you. Sunblock up! We were in the air-conditioned Magna though and it was all pretty easy. We got hot a couple of times but really it was no sweat. Jump in the car, pump up the air-con and things are pretty sweet.
The old miners did it it a bit tough back then though. We're talking about 1933, 1935 now. Rough, tough, fry your brains out stuff. Hard times for those blokes.
Most people in Tennant Creek just accept that they're here, they don't really know why or how they got here.
The only reason they're here is because an Aboriginal bloke called Frank passed a bit of gold across to a white fellow who knew the value of a lump of rock back in about 1930 or 1931 - the dates don't matter that much - and a rush started. It was during the depression and no-one was doing it that easy then.
They came here, to dear old Tennant Creek. It genuinely was the last Gold Rush in Australia. A Gold Rush is when a flush of colour calls to the hungry and the desperate and the no-hopers and everyone else and they all come together, all of them trying to pull a quid out of what's around, what's in the ground and what's sitting on the surface for everyone to have a bit of a pick at.
The early colour in Tennant Creek was pretty good - there are some sites around, not far from the town centre, that were returning six to ten ounces of gold for a tonne of pretty hard-obtained ore. It's all hematite and magnetite around here and it can bite ends off diamond drill bits, even today, like a cat can bite the head off a mouse.
And those old miners worked in conditions worse than a blast furnace, poured their strength and their youth and vigour into mines that sometimes gave them jack shit in return and then again sometimes gave them an absolute fortune.
They'd hang their bottles of beer up in wet socks, keep them damp so that at the end of the day there'd be just a bit more than a dry humpy and bugger all else to go back to. They'd open up a tin of boiled meat and eat it and love it and then fall over at the end of the day on a rough old cot and sleep and think about getting rich.
They were said to be men of marvellous stature, built like gods, accompanied by women "hard and strong".
Go up and have a look at Mike Hester's museum in the old hospital - you wouldn't pay sixpence to stay a night there, in what is a mock-up of what things were like then.
But hungry blokes will come and bring their wives and kids as well, even when there's bugger-all water, and no facilities and crap food that's really only going to keep you alive and that will still end up with you getting boils the size of fifty cent pieces
Because they'd dig their guts out in the stone, sometimes not getting any further than two metres in a day, with two men in the shaft drilling, another bloke outside sharpening the drill points, sometimes busting all their gear, sometimes bursting out mad and going grog crazy, in the early days never having enough water to have a decent drink, let alone a tub. They did it it just a bit tough.
Anyway, we found those old mines, me and my mate. The New Hope (three or four shafts there and maybe a long adit out along a seam) had some good early returns, and then fell on its arse; the Comstock (shallow shafts and some lateral chasing of gold seams) went nowhere and there's a bit of a question mark over The Plumb (one deep, deep, deep shaft).
We never did quite find the Desert Hope. We got tired and sick of pioneering, got hot and bothered and didn't have the same sort of imperative on us that those blokes did and anyway the St. Paddy's Day Races were on.
We picked up a few relics out at the old, hungry Comstock - there was a Holbrooks sauce bottle with a glass stopper, an old Capstan tobacco tin and a litter of broken beer bottles. Southwark! Hell! Who'd drink that rubbish, even back then.
And then there was an old set of paints, for kids. A rusty old tin tray with insets for each colour, all dried up and nothing else left. Kids out there, no water much to mix up with, bully beef for lunch or go hungry (we found the tins), and this rusted-up painting set. Maybe an easel was out there too. Didn't find that though. Still, someone cared enough to get the paints.
The worst of times, the best of times.

OLD MINES by Spinifex Me and my mate took a trip the other day out along the road to Gosse River. Whip out along the well-made road past Nobles Nob and keep going - there's still a bit of water out there and there are some nice river gums on the river bed (the old eucalyptus camaldulensis) that you can loll around under. Esky, barbie and all the creature comforts. You still burn your head off at this time of year though, even under the shade. Basically though we were looking for a couple of old mines from around 1937 - the New Hope, the Comstock and the Plumb, maybe stumble across Desert Hope - on the road out there. The Tennant Creek Fields had been kicking in for about three or four years by then and the miners were looking for new areas, away from town, although there'd been some pretty spectacular pulls of gold. Mount Samuel for example was getting returns that made speculators fairly randy with desire to have shares in - 400 tonnes of ore from a couple of assays and something like 1000 ounces of gold in return. Nice dollars in those tough days. The heat was fairly savage when we went out - at the time of writing we'd been over a hundred degrees on the old fahrenheit scale for about six weeks - hot enough to burn holes in you. Sunblock up! We were in the air-conditioned Magna though and it was all pretty easy. We got hot a couple of times but really it was no sweat. Jump in the car, pump up the air-con and things are pretty sweet. The old miners did it it a bit tough back then though. We're talking about 1933, 1935 now. Rough, tough, fry your brains out stuff. Hard times for those blokes. Most people in Tennant Creek just accept that they're here, they don't really know why or how they got here. The only reason they're here is because an Aboriginal bloke called Frank passed a bit of gold across to a white fellow who knew the value of a lump of rock back in about 1930 or 1931 - the dates don't matter that much - and a rush started. It was during the depression and no-one was doing it that easy then. They came here, to dear old Tennant Creek. It genuinely was the last Gold Rush in Australia. A Gold Rush is when a flush of colour calls to the hungry and the desperate and the no-hopers and everyone else and they all come together, all of them trying to pull a quid out of what's around, what's in the ground and what's sitting on the surface for everyone to have a bit of a pick at. The early colour in Tennant Creek was pretty good - there are some sites around, not far from the town centre, that were returning six to ten ounces of gold for a tonne of pretty hard-obtained ore. It's all hematite and magnetite around here and it can bite ends off diamond drill bits, even today, like a cat can bite the head off a mouse. And those old miners worked in conditions worse than a blast furnace, poured their strength and their youth and vigour into mines that sometimes gave them jack shit in return and then again sometimes gave them an absolute fortune. They'd hang their bottles of beer up in wet socks, keep them damp so that at the end of the day there'd be just a bit more than a dry humpy and bugger all else to go back to. They'd open up a tin of boiled meat and eat it and love it and then fall over at the end of the day on a rough old cot and sleep and think about getting rich. They were said to be men of marvellous stature, built like gods, accompanied by women "hard and strong". Go up and have a look at Mike Hester's museum in the old hospital - you wouldn't pay sixpence to stay a night there, in what is a mock-up of what things were like then. But hungry blokes will come and bring their wives and kids as well, even when there's bugger-all water, and no facilities and crap food that's really only going to keep you alive and that will still end up with you getting boils the size of fifty cent pieces Because they'd dig their guts out in the stone, sometimes not getting any further than two metres in a day, with two men in the shaft drilling, another bloke outside sharpening the drill points, sometimes busting all their gear, sometimes bursting out mad and going grog crazy, in the early days never having enough water to have a decent drink, let alone a tub. They did it it just a bit tough. Anyway, we found those old mines, me and my mate. The New Hope (three or four shafts there and maybe a long adit out along a seam) had some good early returns, and then fell on its arse; the Comstock (shallow shafts and some lateral chasing of gold seams) went nowhere and there's a bit of a question mark over The Plumb (one deep, deep, deep shaft). We never did quite find the Desert Hope. We got tired and sick of pioneering, got hot and bothered and didn't have the same sort of imperative on us that those blokes did and anyway the St. Paddy's Day Races were on. We picked up a few relics out at the old, hungry Comstock - there was a Holbrooks sauce bottle with a glass stopper, an old Capstan tobacco tin and a litter of broken beer bottles. Southwark! Hell! Who'd drink that rubbish, even back then. And then there was an old set of paints, for kids. A rusty old tin tray with insets for each colour, all dried up and nothing else left. Kids out there, no water much to mix up with, bully beef for lunch or go hungry (we found the tins), and this rusted-up painting set. Maybe an easel was out there too. Didn't find that though. Still, someone cared enough to get the paints. The worst of times, the best of times.		Graphics from 'The Territory by Ernestine Hill'.