11 February 1937

TRAGEDIES OF ILLAWORTINA POUND

Lure Of Gold Claims Many Victims

To the searcher after gold death more often than a fortune is the reward of his toil, and for everyone who succeeds thousands fail dismally. Each year the lure of gold claims many victims, but there are still thousands ready to dice with death, on the off chance of a lucky strike. Once a man get thoroughly inoculated with the gold fever he can never give up the search as long as he lives. He becomes a living embodiment of the old adage that while there is life there is hope, for he is invariably convinced that some day he will 'strike it rich.'

Romance and tragedy walk hand in hand in this feverish hunt for gold, and of the tragedies South Australia has had her share. Reference was recently made in these columns [3 December 1936] to the gold hidden near Pernnana Old Station, now part of Angipena, and of the tragedy associated with it. Many men have searched in vain for that hidden hoard, among them being an old prospector named Harry Hemming — Mount Hemming is called after him — who thoroughly understood the game. He could subsist where a less experienced man would surely die. A little flour, tea, and sugar, and he was right.

He knew all about the hidden gold at Pernnana Station— how Stewart had definitely found the gold, but had been murdered by his mate. He said he knew where the gold was. He was ill in hospital when a friend saw him. 'I will show you where I got this, Billy, when I come back.' he promised. He made no secret of where he had found the gold, and it would have been easy to have followed him after he got his supply of rations.

Harry Hemming was prospecting in the vicinity of the Gammon Range, part of the western wall of the Illawortina Pound, where he found gold, but thought he would do better on the other side. He obtained a quiet old horse, built a bush camp, and started prospecting. His horse died — it was a bad season — and when Hemming wanted rations he had to walk to Angipena for them. Nearly blind, Hemming cut across the range to McKinley Pound. On his return he blazed a track from the McKinley side. He used the track many times, and despite his friends' advice to give up the game, he continued stubbornly on, although his health was failing rapidly and he could hardly see. All their persuasion was of no use. He was on gold, and his hopes of striking Stewart's find buoyed him up. He is believed by many to have been as close as anyone to finding it.

Growing weaker with every trip to get his rations, Hemming refused to be persuaded to give up and leave the coveted gold undiscovered. He went back on the track for the last time, but kept too much to the east, and his remains were afterwards found by a blacktracker, 'Claypan George.' Hemming was not missed for some time as he had been living alone. Tracking him across rocky ground, George followed him up to the edge of the wall, over which the old fellow had walked or slipped. Wild dogs had found the body, and there was little of it left, but lying near the remains was a bottle with some gold in it.

Illawortina Pound was also the scene of another tragedy, the victim being George Snell. He went into the Pound to assist the man who murdered him to muster cattle. When he did not return after a few days' search was made for him, men from all the stations round about taking part. Even teamsters left their waggons to join in.

By the time they had reached Worturpa Hut foul play was suspected, but they could get no hint as to what had happened. Two smart half-castes, Dick Coulthard and Teddy Treloar, followed a clue and found that a camel's tracks headed into country where it was not likely to have gone on its own account. Although the camel's tracks had been made some days before, they were able to follow them in spite of the difficult country. They could not discover any signs of a man's tracks, however, until they came to a small creek, the banks of which were very steep. The camel had slid down one of them on his haunches. This satisfied them that the camel had been led by someone. Later they came to a place where a limb of a tree had been broken to allow the camel to pass. They eventually came to where a big dry tree was lying on the ground in a heap of ashes that indicated that it had been burnt recently. The place where the camel had been tied up was found after a further search, and there were signs that it had been there for some time.

The murderer had certainly made a clean job of destroying the body. There appeared to be nothing left to indicate that the body of George Snell had been burnt, but a careful search revealed a pocket knife and one or two other small articles that the murderer had overlooked. Had there been a shower of rain, the disappearance of George Snell would have been another unsolved mystery of the North. As it was, he had been murdered, and his body systematically burnt.

When the search party got back to the hut, the suspected man was there, having returned from Leigh's Creek, where he had been while the search was going on. Some of the men were for hanging him at once, and but for the police this would have been done. Their action undoubtedly saved his life.— H.

Crude Bush Surgery

In the days before doctors had penetrated far into the sparsely settled areas of the outback, necessity made it compulsory for some crude operations to be performed by those with just the slightest knowledge of first aid. The wonder is that so many of the patients survived the rough or deals they had to undergo.

One incident I remember as though it happened yesterday; one that was remarkable for the fortitude shown by the unfortunate aborigine concerned. Whilst mustering on a cattle station in the Northern Territory a black boy was badly gored by an old scrub bull. Ripped from the thigh upwards, the deep wound extended for about eighteen inches. Blood was flowing so freely from the wound that we thought the boy would bleed to death before we could get him back to camp. However, we managed to get him there all right, and on the way stemmed the flow of blood a little by binding pieces of not over clean shirt around the wound.

On arriving at the camp and giving the boy a dose of painkiller, the only thing we had in the way of an anaesthetic, the cook became the doctor, waving away an old aborigine who wanted to fill the wound up with gid-yea ashes. I must admit that I would not have given twopence for the boy's life, so great had been the loss of blood, but the cook reckoned that he would pull him through.

The first procedure of the cook was to wash the wound well with warm salt water, and although someone suggested plugging it, the cook would not hear of it, but started to sew the sides of the wound together. As flies were present in myriads, the sewing had to be done beneath a mosquito net. All the time the aborigine never even whimpered, but as soon as the stitching was completed, he fainted. And no wonder, considering the pain and the amount of blood he had lost. It was impossible to move the boy, as we only had pack-horses, so he was left to the tender mercies of the cook And never was a patient more tenderly cared for.

After the wound had been dressed with clean bandages cut from shirts, the boy was placed on some blankets next to where the cook had his ground bed, and at intervals through the night the latter would get up and look at his patient to make sure that the wound was not bleeding. Twice a day the bandages were taken off and the wound bathed with water in which salt had been dissolved. It was the only antiseptic we had. Eventually, however, danger of blood poisoning passed, and the wound grew to a state that allowed the boy to be placed on a quiet horse and transported to the homestead, eighty miles away.

After receiving the necessary attention at the station the wound began to heal, and in a few weeks the boy was back in the saddle again. To the cook is due the credit of saving the boy's life, and even if the treatment was crude, few of us who saw the wound just after it had been inflicted, and later the healed scar could credit that such a small mark remained.

When asked about the accident in after years the aborigine would proudly show his wound and say with much pride, 'Cooko, he been cure him.' An application not so rough, but crude nevertheless, was that handed out to Alex MacGillivray, when after dislocating his thigh, he arrived at the Palmer diggings, North Queensland. MacGillivray. then part owner of Eddington Station, used to take small mobs of fat bullocks to the miners on the Palmer. It was during one of these trips that his horse fell and caused the trouble. However, the miner reckoned the injury quite a trivial one, and though MacGillivray was suffering great pain, they strapped him to a tree and as many as could get a grip secured a hold on his legs and pulled his thigh in again.— 'Old Timer.'

Get Rich Quick Scheme That Failed

Good money has been made in the past from the scalps of animal pests, notably wild pigs and wallabies. At 4d. per scalp for the latter, which existed in several districts in Queensland, cheques as 'big as blankets' were made in next to no time.

None, how ever, was as great as that made by one scalper in south-western Queensland in the early part of the present century. Luckily for the unfortunate aborigines he employed, the police ended his get-rich-quick scheme. If my memory serves me rightly, he died in gaol.

Establishing his camp in country where wallabies were literally in thousands, he collected ten or a dozen aborigines and their gins. Rations of a sort were provided, but what enticed the blacks, and kept them from giving up the work of snaring were the opium pills distributed every morning to those whose tally of scalps reached a certain number. There were no opium pills for anyone whose haul of scalps did not reach the minimum demanded by the boss.

Each afternoon the aborigines would go into the scrub and set their snares. At the first streak of daylight the scalper would arouse the blacks, and off each would go to his line of snares. It was rumored that the aborigines were securing anything up to £100 worth of scalps weekly for the man who was illegally exploiting them.

Although he had been operating for several months without any suspicion of his doings reaching the ears of the Law, the scalper's bragging eventually brought about his downfall. While paying a visit to a town near where he operated, the scalper said a little too much whilst drinking. The after match of that visit was a visit from the police, and in the subsequent proceedings he received a long sentence, ultimately dying in gaol.

Whilst he was undergoing his sentence, and for years after the scalper's death, both whites and blacks searched in hollow trees and dug deeply in many likely-looking places in the vicinity of where the camp was. The attraction was a plant of opium pills to the value of £250, which it was popularly reported the scalper had hidden. If the plant was evas found, few knew of it, for 70 years afterwards, when paying a visit to the district, I heard of men who still were carrying on prospecting for the hidden opium pills.— 'Old Timer.'

Real Life Stories Of South Australia (1937, February 11). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 17. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92468092