No 25 Wilmington

Wilmington, 187 miles north of Adelaide, was known in the early days as Beautiful Valley. That gives one an idea of the picturesque location of the town, almost at the foothills of the Flinders Ranges as one emerges from the southern exit of Horrocks' Pass.

When you start to tell the tale of Wilmington you have to go back to the comparatively dark ages of the early fifties, to the days before Wilmington was — or was even thought of. South Australia was in the toddling stage still hankering after its comforter and feeling very uncertain on its legs as it looked forward to the future. For responsible government had only been granted the year before.

It was in July, 1851, that John Howard Angas took out pastoral lease No. 121, and established Stony Creek run. It is on portion of this run that Wilmington now stands. In July of 1875 the Crown resumed the lease. The following year a site for a township was surveyed, and town blocks sold. So Wilmington was born.

I suppose I will be told by some residents of the place that Wilmington stands on portion of the Mount Brown station. That was the legend given me when I conferred with old residents in the town itself. But my researches into the original records do not support local tradition. The Mount Brown country was originally taken up by Charles Barnett and Alexander Fotheringham in 1851, with an addition in 1853. These were the leases Abraham Scott took over in 1857, and which were absorbed ten years later into the Mount Brown estate. But none of that country came into what is now the town of Wilmington.

John Howard Angas

Stony Creek was only one of the innumerable Angas properties which, like the imaginary castles of the pseudo Henry of Navarre, were scattered here, there, and everywhere. John Howard was a bigger man than his illustrious father — as a pastoralist. There was scarcely a property of value in any part of the colony in his period that didn't have a brand of "J.H.A." somewhere handy.

When you describe John Howard as a "king" among his kind you are not exaggerating. He was a king— and his "kingdoms" frequently exceeded in size the domains of important royal ties in Europe. Many of them were measured not in acres, but in square miles. Take, for example, his cattle country— Elkedra— and its associated holdings, 13,100 square miles. You wouldn't care to tramp round that before breakfast on a frosty morning.

Then there were such trifles as Stuart's Creek (5,600 square miles and Wulrealpa (1,700 square miles), to mention nothing of a dozen or so insignificant backyards ranging from 900 to 200 square miles. As for Stony Creek, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Angas had to look for it with a microscope, so tiny was it compared with the huge holdings we have just mentioned.

Candidly, I like men who do things on a big scale — always barring, of course, Mr. Hill's taxation policy. And John Howard had no time for small deals. His motto apparently was "Half a continent or none."

Who was this man who came to Australia without any knowledge of sheep-farming and became its leading squatter? He was a mere boy of twenty when, one day in 1843, he stepped ashore from one of the "magnificent wooden liners" which in those days got you from Europe to Australia in something under six months if you were lucky, or made a present of you to the fishes if you were not.

His father's affairs in Australia, which were already large and complicated, and were managed by agents, had become a bit mixed on account of the responsibilities to which the principal had been committed. Angas the elder had not yet reached this country, and had deputed this lad, his second son, to find out what was wrong and to put it right. Angas junior did.

Even if you were a millionaire in 1843 you couldn't find palatial hotels in South Australia if you wanted to. For that matter I doubt if you could today— but we won't labor the point. I should imagine that, by the time you had travelled 12,000 miles in the sailing monstrosities which our forefathers called ships, you had lost all idea of comfort, and would be liable to accept pioneer conditions as nothing out of the ordinary. In any case, it was Hobson's choice. Young Angas's inaugural experience of pastoral life was sharing a six by three hut with a shepherd. Nowadays we would be ashamed to house a dog in such a microscopic shelter.

Angas stayed here ten years acquiring colonial experience, and methodically plotting out the policy which he followed with such conspicuous success in later years. As I see it, the kernel of that policy was to purchase large tracts as principal stations, with smaller properties between them, and the metropolitan markets for use in travelling stock, to ensure that they reached market in first-class condition, with corresponding profit to the owner. Of course, you could not do it now. But the opportunity was there in the days of Angas — and he had the brains to seize it.

For the first ten years most of his energy had been expanded in managing the affairs of his father. But he had acquired on his own account, in partnership with Alexander Borthwick Murray, a station at Reedy Creek. In 1851 George Fife Angas reached these shores for the first time, and the son was able to hand over control of the paternal interests to the father. Thereafter he was free to put his own policy into execution. It was about this time that he bought Stony Creek.

From then on he made a business of sheep-farming. I mean by that that he studied and dissected it from every angle, like a statesman studies the political clouds of Europe. That is what I admire most about Angas. He was not content just to let the wool grow and to haul in the profits. He had to know all there was to know about it— breeding, improving, marketing, soils, pastures, and the thousand-odd things, big and little, that make or mar a great business. In the end he knew as much about the game as anyone— and a great deal more. When he died in 1904 at the age of 81 he was enormously wealthy— and he deserved every penny that he had.

Matter Of A Name

In previous articles I have had something to say about the inappropriateness of the nomenclature of certain South Australian towns, due chiefly to the anxiety of early Governors to perpetuate the names of relatives only remotely, or not at all, interested in this country. Wilmington is a similar case.

The name, bestowed by Governor Musgrave, has not even the merit of being British. It is taken from an American town in either North Carolina or Delaware, and is attributed to the fact that Lady Musgrave was born in one of the Wilmingtons in the United States— which nobody has been interested enough to track down.

Prior to being dubbed with this American appellation the district was called Beautiful Valley. In an early plan of the locality, issued a year after the town was surveyed, that is the name employed. What is certain is that when the Government of the day changed the name from Beautiful Valley to Wilmington there was a public outcry locally. Sir Samuel Davenport, who then held large interests in the district, fought to retain the original name. The deciding factor was that the homestead of Mount Brown station was called Beautiful Valley, and the manager (John Scott) opposed the town bearing the same name owing to the confusion which would arise. So Wilmington it will now be for all time.

Wilmington Sales

If you want to see Wilmington awake to a full sense of its existence you should visit it on sale day. When I was there 40,000 sheep were being offered in the saleyards. Every road converging on the town was blocked by mobs of "baa-ing" animals, dogs, and drovers. They made a picture of rural activity that would give an artist an itch to seize his brush. Incidentally they kept the recording angel busy entering the drovers' opinion of the motorists, and the motorists' opinion of the drovers.

If you have endeavoured to drive a thousand sheep along a busy road you will know how the drover welcomes a hooting car which sends his nice, compact mob scattering to the four corners of the earth. If you, pressed for time, have endeavoured to drive a car through a thousand sheep at intervals of a few hundred yards, you will know exactly what sort of language passes through the mind of the car driver. I wouldn't dare repeat it here.

On sale day you couldn't escape from sheep. From a point where five roads converged I saw them coming down from Quorn— a living, moving army of mutton; the road from Port Augusta swarmed with them; from Melrose way, from Hammond, from Gunyah — nothing but sheep as far as the eye could reach.

Said I to myself as I watched that conglomeration of ewes, and rams, and hoggets, and fats, and springs, and shorns, and all the other descriptions which trip so glibly from the tongues of the sheepmen, "There'll be some cheap mutton going today." There seemed to be enough sheep flesh in sight to feed Adelaide for a year. But I was wrong. All that great multitude of woolly beasts was sold — except 400. Just fancy — 40,000 sheep! And the prices! Even the auctioneers wore a broad grin— and if there is any one usually more grinless than a stock salesman I wouldn't like to meet him.

"That's the peak, Bill. We won't see them rates again for a long time," I heard one salesman remark.

"My oath," said Bill, running his hand over his moist hair. "Come and have a drink."

But the salesmen were not the only people dressed in smiles. Wilmington swarmed with pastoralists. They mostly came from places with unpronounceable names— north, south, east, and west. Some were buyers, and some were sellers — and some were just sorry persons who went about wishing they had sent a thousand or two "woollies" to Wilmington. You could easily pick the sellers. They mostly leaned gleefully against the bar counters, and the burden of their song was — "What's yours?"

That sale day was a sort of Londonderry fair. Thousands of motor cars lined the roads. Picnic parties sat on the running boards with thermos flasks and "hot dogs" in their hands or close by. Wayside booths dispensed tea and cakes, and similar satisfying fare. You could buy fresh fish or tins of honey on the roadside. It was all very informal, very happy, and rather exciting. All the time the sales were in progress "Daddy" Kruse, to whom I will introduce you more formally later, fluttered about from place to place, shaking hands here and exchanging a joke there. He was called "daddy" so often that, respite his venerable 80 odd years, I began to suspect him of wholesale bigamy, until someone gave me the explanation. "Daddy" Kruse is the "daddy" of the Wilmington sales. Years ago he started a monthly stock sale in yards behind the Beautiful Valley Hotel. The first offering was 200 sheep. There you have the genesis of the great sales of today.

Pioneer Days

When, today, you gave up the gum lined avenue which the main north road through Wilmington, it requires a lot of imagination to picture it overrun by kangaroos and emus, in the seventies and the eighties you didn't need the imagination. The real things were there— swarms of them.

The blacks, too, were numerous. They camped by the creeks when they came in to the stations to receive rations. Presumably an arrangement existed between the squatters and the Government by which the dusky warriors received food and blankets in exchange for a policy of benevolent neutrality in regard to the white man's property. Black brother was not long in learning to determine the period of the year when these perquisites were due. I don't know what sort of calendar these children of the bush employed, but they turned up with the promptness of a money lender's reminder the day the interest is due, received their allowances, celebrated with a "big phellar corroboree," and disappeared into the bush with the same mysterious silence they showed in emerging from it. But nowadays if a Wilmington child saw a kangaroo, an emu, or a full blooded black, it would probably ask its father what it was.

These days if a motorist on his way north hits a couple of potholes in the roads he wants to know what Messrs. Lionel Hill & Co. have to say about it, and why the leader of the Opposition doesn't launch a no-confidence motion on the subject. But in the "good" old days there were no complaints of that sort—principally because there were no roads to complain about.

Transport those days was a "do-the-best-you-can" sort of a business. Port Augusta was the nearest seaport, and there was only one way of getting there— over the Flinders Ranges. Tracks which were bogs in winter, and clouds of suffocating dust in summer, masquerading as roads, and the bed of a creek was more often than not better going for the bullocks than the morasses which served as Her Majesty's highway. There were no short cuts. If you wanted to go over the ranges there was only one way to do it— by Horrocks' Pass. Having got to the top you found, not the twenty miles of smooth bitumen which are there to day, but twenty miles of torture over country covered by boulders, scrub, and mad declines. If you wanted to save your load from getting away from you down the steep descents— and generally you did — you chopped down a big tree, and tied it behind your waggon to act as a brake. If you forgot this precaution you were likely to be a bad proposition for a life insurance company.

The "good" old days! I think not.

Today Wilmington puts its wheat on to a 40-ton railway truck, and doesn't worry any more until its gets its cheque.

Some First Things

At the northern end of the town is a quaint, old-fashioned hostelry— the Beautiful Valley. It is a long, low building which existed before Wilmington did. I have no doubt that originally it sported a shingle roof, though today it is covered with the sober blue grey of galvanized iron. It became an hotel sometime in the seventies, prior to which it was an "eating house" on the coach route to Port Augusta, kept by Henry Baker. It stands just outside the town boundary, and was the first hotel in the locality, though the Wilmington was the first in the town - proper.

Everybody who knows the north knows "Daddy" (Fred) Kruse, the veteran lessee of the place. "Daddy" has now retired from, active management of the house, which his son carries on, but he still delights in meeting old friends. I think it possible that "daddy" knows more pastoralists than any other man in the hotel line.

It was in a comfortable parlor of the old inn that I met a number of residents at the invitation of Councillor John Hannagan, the Wilmington representative on the Port Germein District Council. Councillor Hannagan himself has something of a record as an old identity. He has had 24 or 25 years' continuous service on the council, and has served several terms as chairman. The gentlemen I met were Messrs. A. Maslin, George Saunders, W. Schuppan, H. Lattorf, A. H. Noll, Fred Kruse, and Fraser.

They told me the first resident of Wilmington was Charles Blackwell, who established a store there before the town was surveyed. John Ormiston combined the callings of butcher and baker and was the first postmaster. It is one of the peculiarities of the north more than any other part of the State, I think, that so many business men have— and still do— combined the opposite callings of butcher and baker.

The first man to set up shop as a carpenter was Ben Williams. On a corner opposite the Beautiful Valley Hotel, where the saleyards are now located, was a blacksmith's shop conducted by Trevennick & Bice. One would hardly recognise in this early Bice our dear old friend and veteran statesman, the late Sir John Bice. But the fact remains that it was Wilmington which gave the State the former Chief Secretary of various Ministries.

You would never imagine today that in the early eighties there used to be a thick forest in the vicinity of Wilmington. But there was. This was the Willowie Forest, and in 1886 there were some 200 sleeper cutters working there preparing sleepers for the railway extension to Hergott Springs.

Various copper shows were worked in the district in the seventies, the most promising of which was the Spring Creek mine. This property had the reputation of being rich in metal, but operations were hampered by the scarcity of water. There were actually Smelting works established at Stony Creek. But nothing very valuable eventuated.

I tried to trace the first child born in Wilmington. I could obtain nothing definite, though the consensus of opinion was that it was a son of the pioneer storekeeper, Charles Blackwell. The fact that the youngster was named "Charles Wilmington" gives a certain probability to the belief.

The first school was held in the Methodist church, and was conducted by a Mr. Masterman. It is possible, however, that there was a school in the district prior to this, located somewhere in the surrounding scrub. Some of the old people with whom I talked had an idea this might have been so, but their recollection was not at all clear. The first official schoolmaster was W. J. George. The Wesleyans seem to have been the first religious body to enter this field, and one of their earliest ministers was the Rev. C. Ince. At this time there was a fairly strong sprinkling of Roman Catholics in Wilmington, and the late Archpriest Nevin used to come from Port Augusta to conduct mass.

Incidentally I learned that the first man buried in the local cemetery was one who was killed in a local hotel by falling off a cask while a party of men were skylarking.

Wilmington is a small town, but a solid one. Its staple exports are wheat, wool, and butter. The population is 700, and the town contains 100 houses. The town comprises three divisions — Davenport, Bassington, and Wilmington. The assessed value of the three is £3,096, representing a fee simple of £62,000. In 1918 a handsome hall was elected as a memorial to the soldiers of the district who served in the war, and the foundation stone was laid by Mrs. Robertson, a daughter of that same John Scott whose forcible protests were responsible for settling the town with the name of Wilmington instead of Beautiful Valley.

I cannot close this article without paying a tribute to the memory of the late Mr. E. P. Dignan, who, I suppose, did more than anyone to put Wilmington on the map. Apart from establishing a large factory for turning out farming implements, which employed nearly fifty hands, Mr. Dignan was the leader of almost every movement aiming at the progress of the district, and it was largely due to his efforts that Wilmington got the railway of which it is the terminus today.

NEXT ARTICLE: Melrose: A Lost Expedition.

Owing to the picture pages being required for the special Christmas issue next week, there will be no article of the 'Towns, People, and Thing's” series in that number.

Images:

• On sale day sheep were to be seen converging on Wilmington by every road —from Quora, from Port Augusta, from Melrose, from Hammond, from Gunyah — a living, moving army of mutton.

• Spring Creek at Wilmington: A picture in the North.

• Forty thousand sheep were sold in a few hours. Sometimes mobs of a thousand changed hands in a couple of minutes.