50 Years With The Pan –

50 YEARS WITH THE PAN
Last Saw Perth in1891

Blind, with his health failing and with little of this world’s goods left, one of Western Australia’s oldest prospectors boarded the train at Wiluna yesterday to make the 700 mile trip to Perth. It was Mr. Harry Jacobsen, now aged 78 years, who has been to more gold rushes probably than any man alive in this State.

Harry Jacobson

The city has held no attractions for him. It has always been the call of the far-off and the lure of gold. He naively confessed during the journey from Wiluna that it is 39 years since he last saw Perth. Wiluna has been his capital city during this time, and his journeyings have been made to the little mining outposts which do not figure on the regular maps. Prospector he has been, and despite his loss of sight, he still adheres to the belief that he will continue prospecting after receiving treatment for his eyes. It is for the purpose of receiving medical aid at the Perth Hospital that the old fellow, with his grey beard, thinning thatch, and rounded shoulders, is making the long trip. He believes that modern doctors can do much.

Ran Away to Sea

Keen-witted and with his memory unimpaired, he had an interesting story to tell. Born in Christiania in 1852, he ran away to sea at an early age, and in 1876 found himself in Bombay, where he and a Frenchman, Louis Lambi, stowed away on the P&O vessel The Ceylon, getting ashore again at Williamstown. The Yan Yean waterworks attracted him for a while, but the work was uncongenial, and he went to sea again in the old Kensington with a cargo of 360 horses for Calcutta. Later in the year, he returned to Adelaide with a cargo of jute and oils. He saw service on two or three other ships in various parts of the world until he took a berth on the American ship Armenta from New York, and landed at Circular Quay, Sydney, early in 1880.

For two years he drifted up the coast but left when the masters of the vessels became interested in ‘blackbirding’ in the South Seas. The Armenta had as a passenger from New York a young man named Cox, millionaire son of the editor of the ‘New York Police Gazette.’ Deserting the Armenta, Jacobson went to Newcastle and joined the W. C. Wentworth, carrying piles for the Lyttleton jetty in New Zealand, and returning with kauri timber for the Darling harbor.

Off to the Fields

It was late in 1880 that the Temora gold rush broke out. ‘I didn’t get a ‘skerrick’ because I was inexperienced,- the old chap confessed. Then a rush followed to Bermagui, on the North Coast. ‘Did you ever hear of the Bermagui mystery?’ the prospector asked. The newspaperman hadn’t. Then followed a story of how a rowing boat containing a geologist named Lamond Young, his assistant, and four oarsmen disappeared on a calm sea one morning. Kiandra, in the Snowy Mountains near Mt. Kosciusko, next attracted the pioneer, and he engaged in hydraulic sluicing and afterward drifted to Mt. Brown, near Broken Hill. The Kimberley rush of 1886 attracted his attention, and the following year found him at Cossack, for while on the way to Kimberley the Pilbarra find had been reported. ‘I got a good bit of gold there,’ the old fellow said with evident pleasure. ‘Enough gold for me to take a little holiday to Adelaide.

In 1891 he was back again in Fremantle and took the Salardin for the Ashburton. Arriving at Cue, news of Kalgoorlie came through, and he negotiated with a camel man named Duff to make the trip for £5, but just before starting off on camel word of the Peak Hill find came in and he bargained to be taken to Peak Hill for £2.

Luck at the Horseshoe.

Ah, I had no luck at Peak Hill, but at Horseshoe, 15 miles out, I got gold good gold. Ten ounces out of two dishes —160 ounces in three weeks. Of course, there were some men who got twice as much as that. One man I remember got ‘specs’ of 90 and 75 ounces. Specs, mind you. Kavanagh, I remember, got 120 ounces. Shifting over to Lake Austin he made £100 sinking a well to a depth of 45 feet for the Government. In 1894 he drifted out to Cuddingwarra, eight miles east of Cue, and held a mine there for some time with a partner. This they later sold to Mr. Gerald Lovell, of the Fingal mine, and which he believes Lovell later sold to Mr. Con O’Brien, now of Perth.

I did a bit of work on the Star of the East, out of Nannine. and afterward came to Lake Way, now known as Wiluna. about the end of 1896. Since that time I have spent most of my time in the Wiluna area, never, getting more than 100 miles away.’ ‘What will I do now? I don’t know. What do they do with old men like me? I’m going to see the doctors first. I sold my camp for £15, and I’m getting paid in installments over seven months, and I get a few shillings of a pension — I was naturalised a few years back — so I’ll be all right for a few days. Then, perhaps, I’ll come back and try to go on with the prospecting again. ‘That’s if I can see!’

This is a link to Harry’s Naturalisation document: – https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=30881

Such is the stuff of which our early pioneers are made.