Darcy Uhr’s Bell Bird – by John Drayton

WEST AUSTRALIAN pioneers who remember Norman Sligo and Harry Swincer, will be glad to know that Norman is doing well in New Zealand. He is general manager of the Anderson’s Bay quarries at Dunedin. He and Swincer were early on at Mt Magnet and with the Herbert’s of Mingenew, went into the Lawlers country before Paddy Lawler located the rich values there.

Norman Sligo and Bill Herbert broke away after typhoid and trouble with local aboriginals split their party, and did a 200 mile cross country ride to ‘The Mainland’claim. The population of the field then was five strong – the three Maher’s (Jack, Tom, and Bill), Mick Gleeson, and their tracker Tiger. The newcomers got to camp one Saturday night, and, pegging a claim on the Sunday morning, got
1 1/2oz. prospect in their first dish. Next to make the field was Charley Hayden, Bill Watts, and George Withers – mentioned in stories of early Coolgardie. Their route was through Southern Cross to the 90 Mile, and across to the Murchison. They rode over Coolgardie without noting the values uncovered by Bayley and Ford in 1892. Following this party came Jim Coates, Jack Ogg, and Owen Daly, who took a pile out of the Mainland Consols. Later arrivals were Harry Ainsworth, Tom Curtis, Paddy Lawler, Paddy Corcoran, and Ned Gilbert. Harry Swincer was with the first rushers to The Mainland, and he and Sligo joined forces again, Norman remaining on The Mainland, and Harry, going to The Island. The shallow workings had held the attention of the prospectors until a German, went through the hard conglomerate and found better values at 58ft, all sinking being done with pick and shovel.

Swincer pegged on to the German, and when requiring assistance in the sinking, called Norman, who gave their Mainland claim to Harry Ainsworth and Tom Curtis. They went down on a run of wash, from which they were winning 3oz to 4ozs a day, when news came that at Peak Hill gold was being got in the bucketful. They sold out to a storekeeper, who gave them 1/2 oz of gold for the show, complete with windlass, hide bucket, and rope. While they were packing to go to The Peak, the buyer went below to have a look at his purchase, He saw what he took for a small speck in the drive, and

Knocked out a 58oz. Slug!

which he showed the vendors as they were riding away from it. In his letter to me, Norman gives a new version of ‘The Luck of Owen Daly’. After Jack Maher worked out the ironstone leader at the head of The Mainland alluvial patch, the tracker, Tiger, specked a 100 oz slug west of the main patch, and brought a small dry blowing area to notice. Sligo had found some good specimens west of the ironstone leader, and trenched for the reef, without getting values, Paddy Corcoran went into the trench, cut the reef in three feet, and took out 700 ozs. in a week. Napping on the footwall side of the body, Owen Daly broke out a 6oz speck. Realising that there should be something good in the vicinity, he asked Sligo to come in with him. But Norman’s horses had strayed, and he had to find them. He could not throw in with Owen, who took Paddy Corcoran as his partner. The show provided them with a large fortune. Swincer and Sligo were mates from 1889 to 1896, and the survivor writes of his partner of the thrilling days of the west as

“one of the best-hearted fellows and finest bushmen who ever went out.”

None who knew him will challenge this assertion. When they were granted their reward claims in the Margaret country, their trips in and out were by way of the “Wallaby Rocks, where they met Darcy Uhr with two new chums, Perrin and Heriot.

Darcy was a sort of bear leader to a number of new arrivals from England. For a fee of £50 he took them out, and the teaching he gave them was worth every shilling of the money. Perrin was of the breed of ‘The Babes in the Wood’. Walk him twice round a tree, give him five minutes start, and it would take a tracker two hours to find him. Darcy once lost him near Sligo’s camp and after a hunt of two days, J. A. Sligo (Norman’s brother), found him exhausted, and carried him on his back a mile to where the horses were.

When Uhr came in, he had a few remarks to make and said; “You know the worry and trouble you have given us. Didn’t you see the bonfires we lit for you on Mt. Flora? Thought they were black fellows fires, did ya? Well, now, I’m goin to give ya something t keep ya from thinkin things like that any more.”  He took the big bell from the neck of Dingo, his pack-horse, and buckled it round Perrin’s. “Now you wear that day and night while you’re with me. If I ever catch you without it, I’ll shoot you,” he said Perrin was a sore trial. A few days later he went astray again with the bell clanging information as to his whereabouts. Again Jim Sligo picked him up, and the scared new chum implored him not to tell Darcy he had been lost again.

Uhr conveyed Perrin to Niagara and turned him loose. He left the 90 Mile camp to run his horses in, found the animals, and turned up at Coolgardie, leading them. He could not make his way back to his camp. The round-up of blacks at Wallaby Rocks followed the hunting of Sligo’s and Swincer’s horses from the water at Goose Neck — named after “Charley the Goose,” who prospected at Hawk’s Nest.

Harry and Norman went on the tracks of the aboriginals and came upon 200 camped in the stunted mulga, the horses in question, not far away. The leader of the natives was Jimmy, who had been with the whites for a time. A few days before they stampeded the prospectors horses, they they had held up a camel party of new chums, taken all their provisions, and 80 sovereigns. Sligo had known Jimmy at ‘The Quartz Blow’, and brought him out of the mob under the barrel of a revolver. Realising that that trouble threatened, Jimmy tried to get a knife from his hair belt, but the nasty look in the muzzle of Swincer’s rifle stayed his hand.