The early miners’ staple diet consisted of ‘Damper and Tinned Dog’, washed down by the inevitable mug of black tea – a meal sufficiently filling to satisfy the cravings of appetites blunted by protracted periods of roughing it in the bush. Apparently, tinned meat, or tinned dog as it was mainly called, must have agreed […]
New Chum Johnnie Raw-
06/11/2021 By Leave a Comment
Geraldton Express and Murchison and Yalgo Goldfields Chronicler 23 December 1898, page 20 The New Chum Johnnie Raw or Bill McGee’s Mate As told by a miner He was an English new-churn, a reg’lar Johnnie Raw, His fresh complexion told it, and the English coat he wore. I was the first he spoke to. He […]
The Desert Secret by Jules Raeside
30/10/2021 By Leave a Comment
There’s a shaker up the gully, There’s a paddock partly stripped And a shovel, pick and dishes lying round And a little heap of tailings Lying underneath the sieves And a heap of hopper stones upon the ground. But the hand that shook the shaker Nevermore will raise a ‘run’, O’er the ripples of the […]
His Quest by Dryblower Murphy
23/10/2021 By Leave a Comment
His Quest. by Dryblower Murphy 1926 It was out beyond the Bulong track we met him swagging in, He was middle-aged and ginger, haggard-eyed and famine-thin; And while he munched some damper and a pannikin of tea, He asked us if we thought he’d catch the Perth express at three. There was not a watch […]
A Swearful Dryblower – a verse
11/09/2021 By Leave a Comment
I am a digger at Mulgabbie and I’d like to rise and say Dryblowing is a swearful game to most diggers anyway. You work for days without a color, then have a lengthy swear that takes two solid windy days to cleanse the atmosphere. If an angel down from heaven had to dryblow for a […]
