GO WEST AND FIND YOUR MATE
By John Drayton in “Smith’s Weekly”
Cattle and sheep run over the site of the old camp of Rolling Stone. In the gold belt between Duketon, WA and the desert. Rolling Stone was the jumping-off place of the pioneers of Eastern discovery. The only water for a stretch of 20 miles was there, and the only bit of good camel feed in a wider area. This was the western point from the New Year’s Gift, one of the small rich leaders shows in a mileage of golden territory in which the mother body was never located.
New Year’s Gift was prospected by Ben See and Jack Holliday, camel men who had covered most of the district between Leonora and Laverton in the rush period, 1896-99, when hundreds of gold hunters left the more settled camps of Coolgardie and Hannans and broke for new country out east. Good prospectors, these two kept going long after they should have turned back on their tracks and replenished. Food was running short, but there was plenty for the camels, and water was available. Gold was everywhere. Not in payable quantity, but every floater showed some, and many of the stones were specimens. No real prospector would leave such a country until forced out.
Compulsion might be twofold. The natives were bad, and provisions were unobtainable. Sufficient to carry on could be obtained from camps 30 to 40 miles away, but the camps were not heavily stocked. The prospectors would see one another through as far as was possible, but, mindful of their own safety, could do no more.
Gold Was There: That there was good gold somewhere in the vicinity of their camp, the mates were convinced, but where? This was the question to which See and Holliday sought the answer. “We’ll go on until the end of December,” said Ben. “If nothing shows, we’ll pull out on New Year’s Day. There’s never a year as bad as the last.
New Year, New Luck!
One of the boys will stand us a few tins of dog, and we’ll hang out, somehow, for a fortnight. The end of December found the position unchanged. They had not actually found anything, but the country was inviting. Floaters were rich and plentiful. Had there been a battery within a few miles, they could have fed it with a good parcel of 5oz. stone. But the nearest mill was 40 miles away, a rickety old three-head one at that. If they could find the ore body from which the rich floaters had been shed, they would be at the end of their troubles even without a battery on the spot.
On their Last Feed: On New Year’s Eve, they opened their last tin of dog. A few pounds of flour remained, and it was agreed that the camels would be brought in for an early start in the morning. The beasts had wandered, and the men went different ways in quest of them.
A hot day in the bush – Lionel Lindsay.
See was back before dark, the four camels strung out behind him. Jack did not turn up for supper, was not in at bedtime, and had not arrived at dawn. But his mate was not anxious. There were no natives in the vicinity at the moment, and the bush was an open book to them. He might have met with an accident, but this was unlikely. In that case, he would have made a smoke signal, and Ben would have gone out on his tracks.
So he slung the billy, lit his pipe and waited.
At 5 o’clock, Jack came in. “There she is,” he said. There she was, all right. In the three samples he carried, gold showed in bunches. That day their dolly-pots did good service. They pounded out values sufficient for immediate needs, pegged the holding, “ran their lines” following the Mining Act, and with only a few handfuls of flour to sustain them, rode to Laverton, lodged their application with the Warden’s officer and loaded up for the return journey.
They took a fortune out of the show, aptly named ‘The New Year Gift’ and sold for a decent price.
A Dead Man’s Find: In 1901, I travelled with Holliday from Fremantle to Sydney. He was going home with the profits of the New Year’s Gift. “I never told anybody but Ben the full story of that find,” he confided. “Someone had opened the show before I got to it. I saw old tracks and came to signs of a camp near a little gnamma hole. I pottered round a while and came on the outcrop. “It had been napped, and the stone Ï took in was piled alongside a broken handled pick. There were three spears just beyond the outcrop, but no other sign.
“Do you remember a chap named Allambone who was on the Murchison about ten or twelve years ago?” he said. Surprised at the sudden switch in the conversation, I asked: “Why?” “Well”, said the prospector, I’m going to tell you. You know he was mates with Joe Simms, and they went out from Leonora some time before the prospectors drifted from Laverton? I found a belt buckle with Billy Allambone’s name scratched on it, and a rifle and a revolver alongside the old fire at the outcrop.
The One Lost Second: When Jack Reidy was going in from Kurnalpi, he came on Joe and Billy. They said they intended to start out East, with the idea of prospecting right up to the edge of the desert. That was as far as I know, the last anyone saw of the two in company. They had six good camels, plenty of tucker, and a rifle and revolver each, with, of course, a lot of cartridges. They were strong enough to go anywhere, and Jack agreed they ought to make the journey and might make a decent strike.
No one knows just which way they went, and no one will ever know just what happened on the trip. After we opened ‘The Gift’ and the Rolling Stone crowd came out there, I was having a yarn with Bob Oldfield one night, and he told me he had been in “The Gift” country two years before and got out of it two jumps ahead of a bunch of natives running at the heels of his camel.
“He did not say be found our show. But what he told me linked Simms and Allambone and us pretty closely. He said that a few months before we went out, a chap staggered to his camp, starving and done for want of water; he could not talk, but Bob pulled him round in a day or two and got his story. He and his mate had uncovered an outcrop miles east of where Bob was then and were napping stone on it when a group of natives came.
It wasn’t much of a yarn for any man to have to tell. He was panic-stricken when the natives struck. Scared for his life, he forgot to get his rifle out. Because of 50 painted natives throwing spears, his nerve went; he bolted and left his mate to it. He left everything, rushed for his own camel, climbed aboard, and raced away while natives were dealing with Billy. In the night, his camel went back to its mates, and he had wandered two days without food or water. That was his story.
The boys kept him until he was strong enough to get going, and then gave him the rules of the camp. You know what they would be. He had left his mate to perish. They gave him a bag of water and said he had better start back at once. That was the last anyone ever saw of him. I didn’t tell Bob what we had found at the old camp. What was the good?
Simms had gone to look for his mate – He had ‘Gone West’ for keeps!
Moya Sharp
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That is a terrifying story indeed. !