4 March 1937

MUTINOUS CREW MURDERS ADVENTUROUS SKIPPER

Captain Cadell Was Pioneer Of Murray

In the days when adventure could be had for the asking in South Australia, the colorful personality of Captain Francis Cadell stood out prominently. Correspondents have at various times contradicted each other vigorously as to whether Captain Cadell was a "red-headed, red-moustached, pompous and bombastic man who knew how to keep himself in the limelight and to reap what others had sown," or an enterprising man of a thoroughly gentlemanly bearing. To many his death is as mysterious as his personality, but it is established that he was murdered by a mutinous crew in the tropics.

Captain Cadell arrived in South Australia in January, 1849, as master of his father's schooner, Royal Sovereign, of 151 tons register. He subsequently left for Hobart, but returned later in the same year. Funds must have been low, for in the following month the Royal Sovereign was advertised to be raffled in 300 shares of £5 each, but insufficient tickets were sold. Cadell took his boat to Sydney, and advertised her for sale there, but could not dispose of her. In the following June the Royal Sovereign left for Singapore in ballast, Captain Cadell still being in charge.

When Captain Cadell returned to Australia in 1852 it was as master of the barque Queen of Sheba. It had come from San Francisco with 120 passengers. It was subsequently stated that he had arranged for a small steamer to be built in Sydney for him. The Government of South Australia at that time was keen to open up the River Murray trade and in 1852 it was proposed to send £5,000 to England to buy a steamer for its navigation.

Captain Cadell is next heard of as the result of a trip he and some companions made down the Murray in a small boat from Swan Hill to the Lakes. About this time Randells, millers of Gumeracha, arranged to send their produce to the Victorian diggings, which were flourishing, by way of the Murray. Captain Cadell had the barge Eureka built at Goolwa, but rejoined the Queen of Sheba in 1853. He left the vessel in Adelaide and went to Goolwa with a party to examine the Murray Mouth. Subsequently he and the Randells initiated the navigation of the Murray by steamer.

Later he went to New Zealand, where he was connected in some way with the Maori War. In 1882 at Singapore, a Malay or Javanese named Permal was charged with having murdered Captain Cadell, of the schooner Gem, two or three years before. It appears that Cadell was killed by his crew about March, 1879, at or near Kei Islands, and the ship was scuttled with his body still in the cabin.

The cook, named Permal, who had been five years in the vessel, was pointed out by the rest of the crew as the ring leader and master spirit of the mutiny. They declared that he had intimidated them with a revolver. The object of the mutiny was the possession of specie kept on board for trading. This man, who was in custody for two years in Amboina (Moluccas) and for some months in Singapore, was tried for murder at the Singapore assizes in 1882, but a jury acquitted him.

Just as there are conflicts about Cadell's personality, so are the reports of his death contradictory. There was a report that he was murdered and his ship burnt by the Rajah of Ullora because of his cruelty to the natives. This was eight years after his murder. Then there is doubt whether he came to his death in the Gem, or Les Trois Amis, both of which he owned, about 1879.

Captain J. B. Carpenter was living at Amboina in 1879 when Cadell sailed from there to Port Darwin for a load of cattle for the Dutch Government. Carpenter saw Cadell when he went on board, but about three weeks later noticed a small dinghy from Cadell's vessel, at Amboina, though he could not see the schooner in the harbor. Captain Carpenter called the attention of the Dutch Resident of the Moluccas to the dinghy. Cadell's crew, on the evidence of Captain Carpenter, consisted of half-a-dozen Allor savages and an old servant, a Manila boy, who was with a couple of the Allor boys in the town. They were arrested. Whatever happened, no one was ever punished for the death of this Murray River pioneer.— H.

Kindness Rewarded

At a time when "poddy-dodging" was very rife in a certain district in Queensland, and cleanskins were being taken almost from under the noses of station managers, I, unknowingly at the time, received immunity from a rather daring band of "dodgers," merely because the leader of it had heard my name and remembered a little incident of a few years previously.

Whilst acting as overseer on a sheep station in New South Wales, I came in contact with a young fellow who used to do a bit of horse-breaking in the district. As a result of my endeavors, the young fellow, whom I will call "Bill Jones," was given 40 head of horses to break-in on the station where I was. Midway through the breaking, there was a rumpus in connection with a girl employed at the homestead, and, although perfectly innocent. Bill Jones was adjudged the guilty person. I knew that Bill was as innocent as I was, but, being rather an independent kind of fellow, he resented the insinuations, and, after an argument with the manager, left. He even refused to accept a penny for the 18 or 20 horses he had already broken-in. Later, the manager heard the true story from the girl, and discovered that Bill had been made the scapegoat for another man.

Ten years later I was camped with my droving plant in south-western Queensland, when who should ride into the camp one day but Bill Jones! Bill was indeed in poor circumstances. The horse he rode, a real old scarecrow, carried all his worldly possessions. I offered him a turnout and some money, but he would not hear of it, but said he would be grateful if I could get him a job on a station. Within a week he had commenced horse-breaking for a big cattle station in the vicinity, and that was the last I heard of him for some years.

Some time later, when cattle prices were booming, I was managing a property on a percentage basis. But if I and cattle-owners were doing well after a number of lean years, so were the "poddy-dodging" fraternity. Any calf old enough to be weaned was worth £2, with big "nuggets" worth more. In the district where I was several stations had been cut up and there were plenty of selectors quite willing to buy clearskins and ask no questions as to where they came from.

The police were at their wits' end to know how to cope with the cattle stealing that was going on night and day, and at last a camp was formed, consisting of police and stockmen employed by the District Cattle Owners' Association. Those attached to the camp moved from place to place, but theirs was a hard job; friends of the various "poddy dodgers'' kept the latter well posted as to the movements of the police party, and although some were caught in the act and convicted, the big men in the game escaped the net.

Time went on, and the value of cattle slumped. From peak prices they came down to zero, and as a consequence the activities of the "poddy-dodgers" ceased. The property I had been managing was sold, and I became a loose end again. It was then that I met Bill Jones once more. But what a different Bill to the one who had ridden into my camp some years previously in Queensland's south-western corner. Bill had a car, was married, and in affluent circumstances. Over a few drinks he confessed how he had made his money. "Made it quick and lively," said Bill "It was just like taking rice from a sick Chinaman."

Bill had been heart of the gang of "poddy-dodgers,'' and many hundreds of cleanskins had been successfully lifted and sold. He told me that when he had heard my name as being the manager of the station in question, he had made enquiries and on making sure that I was the man he knew, he had given all to understand that my calves were not to be touched.

I have since heard that Bill was killed whilst buffalo shooting in the Territory, and although I have no room in my company for "poddy-dodgers" or any law-breakers for that matter, I must admit that I had a sneaking regard for him. Life might have been vastly different for him had he not been unjustly accused of the incident years before I first made his acquaintance. — "Old Timer."

Portland's Botanic Garden

Old pioneers still recall the days of the Victorian gold boom, but one off-shoot of it is almost forgotten, although it had the romantic element of smuggling to tinge it with interest.

As soon as the news of the Ballarat and Bendigo gold discoveries became known, hundreds of Chinamen left the California diggings to try their luck on the new fields, while thousands set out direct from China. There was no such thing as a White Australia policy in those days, but the emigration received a prompt check from a revenue-hungry administration, which imposed a poll tax upon every pigtail.

The result was that certain skippers engaged in the trade dumped their cargoes of Chinese at quiet spots along the coast, where border-runners picked them up. After they were sorted out and the necessary fees collected, a white guide was provided, and the yellow men commenced to make their way overland to the diggings. To patrol the boundaries of Victoria effectively was beyond the resources of that colony in those days, especially as the police and Customs agents themselves were as likely as not to get the gold fever and down tools without warning at any time.

Under cover of night, then, the immigrants sneaked over the border between posts, scattered, and made their way independently to the fields. An odd one might be caught on the way, but the fact that most Chinese look alike to white eyes made it difficult to decide between Chinamen who had paid tax and those who had not, especially as they regarded receipts for such matters as negotiable business instruments.

Even those who were caught treated the matter lightly, in much the same spirit as Northern Territory and Papuan natives do today. Many a Chinese prisoner took a lot of shifting once his sentence in the cells was up, and there was danger of him being thrown out into a hard world upon his own resources.

On one occasion, whether by carelessness or deliberate treachery is unknown, a guide landed fifty or sixty members of one of these caravans right at a Customs post. Out came the astonished guardians of Her Majesty's frontiers to demand the poll-tax duly payable in such cases. The Chinese looked blank, and stated that they had no money with which to pay it. The authorities therefore decided to put the whole lot into prison and work out the amount of tax. Unfortunately for the good intentions of the officers, both gaol accommodation and the necessary overseers were lacking. Accordingly, the Chinese were sent to Portland, where they were put in one of the reserves, where rations were issued to them at the Crown's expense. Otherwise they were entirely unmolested. More than delighted at such liberal treatment, when they had expected something more in the nature of decapitation, the yellow men turned to with a will to present the citizens of Portland with some appropriate memorial of their gratitude. Day in and day out they labored to produce a stretch of landscape gardening that would have graced a chateau of Louis XIV., which a heart-less Government, devoid of aesthetics, forced them to leave incomplete, despite an offer to stay on in gaol and finish the job. Their garden, however, still remains as the principal botanical glory of Portland. — "Fisher."

A Deal In Land

Many years ago an old settler took up a 1,280-ache selection on the only permanent water in a squatter's run, fenced it in to comply with conditions, and sat back waiting to be bought out. Unfortunately for him, a good underground supply of water was found just outside his selection before his fencing was finished. A shaft was sunk and a windmill erected, which more than supplied the needs of the stock belonging to the original squatter. The newcomer tried his luck, for a while, but heard of a better waterhole in yet another property and moved along to select on it.

In the course of time he forgot all about his claim. The fences fell down, and things went back to their original condition. After his death, however, his executors found the property listed amongst the assets or the estate. They decided that it must have reverted to the Crown or been sold up, almost determining not to investigate it. To their surprise, however, an offer arrived by mail for the supposedly lost 1,280 acres. It proved to be from the pioneer whose land surrounded it the only potential buyer. He had kept the low rates on it paid up for some years with the idea of buying in from the estate, whose executors probably would not realise just how handy it would come in.

However, they were wide awake and asked a price that was much stiffer than anticipated. The pioneer promptly wrote back to say that he was not in the bidding. Would his neighbors be good enough to fence their holding, as the boundaries had decayed, and forward their half of the certified estimate for the work by return mail? The executors thereupon motored out, looked over the ground, and decided that there was no point in spending half the value of the selection in improving it with fences when they would never be able to sell it. They promptly closed with the squatter at his own price, after vainly trying to point out the value of the water to him. He just led them over to his windmill, showed them the revolving arms, and demanded why they thought he was short of water or likely to be. That argument finished the deal, and the preliminaries were signed on the spot.

As they drove out again they ran into a stockman working on the place, and stopped for a yarn. 'What sort of a flow does the old chap get from his shaft?' asked one of the executors. "What shalt?' "The one with the windmill, of course!" "Cripes!" exclaimed the stockman. "Didn't he tell you about that? The well ran dry thirteen years ago, and he's been frightened ever since that some old selector would came back and claim a bit of land he took up donkey's years ago on the only permanent water we've got!' — C.M.P.

Merino Ram's Fleece Weighs 54 Pounds

Some time ago in "The Chronicle" [17 Dec 1936] a contributor made reference to an extra heavy fleece cut by a wether in South Australia. Just prior to reading the contribution. I had the pleasure of seeing what was the biggest Merino ram I ever saw, and I have seen many of the best rams at our leading studs.

The animal in question was exhibited at the Cootamundra show by the breeder, Mr. David Weir, of Skirling Plain, Quandralla, N.S.W. It was shorn last October, and although carrying less than eleven months' wool, cut 54 lb. For a Merino sheep, this must be a world's record. The ram in question came into prominence the other day, when at Mr. Weir's dispersal sale it was sold to a Victoria breeder for the rather low price of 60 guineas. When on show at Cootamuna, a well-known sheep and wool expert said of the ram, "It is without a doubt the biggest Merino ran in the world."— "Outback."

Real Life Stories Of South Australia (1937, March 4). Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), p. 47. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92464490