Samuel Ure – Sandstone Cemetery
West Australian – Perth WA – 6 January 1934, page 4
WHEN DEATH CREEPS IN
A Tale of a Mine.
By Ion L. Idriss, author of ‘Flynn of the Inland
It is nasty, facing death down below, whether under sea or land. Sam Ure worked doggedly though uneasily, for the ground was creaking, a subterranean moan from tortured ground hissed eerily along the stope. It was lonesome down there in the dark, just the glow of the candle, the ‘chip ‘chip’ ‘chip’ of the pick, and a slow, breathless whispering as of some mighty force inexorably working. But men will toil anywhere when on gold. It was April 25 1932. The mine was the Old Oroya, at Sandstone, Western Australia. Old Sam and his mate Doyle had got on to promising stone in abandoned workings. Sam was anxious not to lose a moment, so he worked on while Doyle climbed above to prepare the evening meal. Time means everything when you are toiling to get out stone with the ground coming in.
OMINOUS SILENCE
When the meal was nearly ready Doyle returned to the shaft and listened. Faintly he could hear the ‘tap!’ ‘tap!’ ‘tap!’ of Ure’s pick away in the earth below. Reassured, he returned to camp, boiled the billy, and came back to call Ure. There was no response. Doyle called again. He listened, he knelt down over the shaft and shouted. He shouted again, hearkening to the deathly silence. He ran to a nearby camp and the digger there waited by the shaft lest Ure come up while Doyle raced into Sandstone and hurried back with Constable Farrier, Jimmy Boase and Norman Beaver. These two were lowered down the shaft. The constable hurried away seeking highly experienced men familiar with dangerous ground. Boase and Beaver climbed down 40 feet. Here the shaft dipped on an underlay, slanting down under as an ominous black hole. They shouted! They listened, looking at one another, as faintly, somewhere under below, came a muffled thud where portion of some dangerous roof caved in.
INTO THE DARKNESS
Beaver crouched there ready to warn his mate and help in his retreat if necessary, while Boase crawled down the underlay. Soon his candle dimmed, the yellow glow vanished. Beaver strained his ears — how the ground creaked! Boase crept down into the darkness, he crawled through the narrow places, holding the candle at the lowering roof so close to his head. The air was warm and heavy; a gust near blew his candle out as a fall of earth surged down into a drive. He crawled along, following a tortuous winding route among the mullock heaps where recent workings showed. At last he reached Ure. Fallen rock and mullock completely barred his way. He held his candle at the boneless wreckage and called. A muffled answer came whispering back, and Boase’s heart choked as be realised that old Sam lay under those rocks. In muffled sentences Ure explained that while working his pick has struck a Tom (timber support). With its collapse, the hanging wall had come in and pinned him to the footwall. He was not in pain, he explained in lisping whispers; he had no feeling at all from his arms and chest and feet.
Boase realised this was a job for the quickest and most highly experienced of men. When he returned to the shaft, Constable Farrier had them already there. Tatlow and Pierce. But the old mine was sinking, inch by inch, sinking with the minutes. The roof was bulging, in places the ground was actually moving. As they squeezed through a narrow drive the ground gently closed around Tatlow and he was stuck.
WORKED FRANTICALLY
Pierce worked frantically to free his mate; the candle burned steady and warm. From worked-out stopes, from old levels extending away into the blackness came wheezy moans, the crunch of scraping rocks, the sharp report of snapping timber. Pierce chopped the rock wedging around Tatlow, he pulled him through. They crept on, nerves and ears expecting the avalanche that would cut off their retreat. They crept close to Ure, they set their candles to the side of the broken rocks and worked at heart breaking pressure but with the systematic exactitude of the experienced man. As they cleared away the fallen ground more surged down from the roof, inexorably pressed by great weight as the toilers cleared the ground underneath. Hastily, but like setting up a boy’s mechanical set, they seized fallen timbers and wedged them in place as supports. Even as the slow minutes passed, the roof settled down on the props as they built their own tunnel through the shifting, squeezing debris.
WHILE THE ROOF PRESSED DOWN
Dully they heard a heavy fall of rock somewhere before them. They battled to within three feet of Ure. Bathed in dusty sweat they struggled for two hours expecting every moment to snatch him from the rocks. But the roof pressed down above and before them, grinding down the timbers, crushing tighter the fallen rock, filling each hard won inch of space as surely as they made it. At last Tatlow forced his arm right in through the debris, and holding a cupped candle in his fist called to Ure if he could see. Very faintly he replied in a whisper that his head was jammed, and being crushed, and he could not see the light or move at all. In the whispering silence of the stope, Tatlow felt the squeeze of his arm. He dragged it back. Wild-eyed, they snatched their tools and slaved doggedly on. A long, trembling shudder marked a heavy fall of rock further in ahead. Sam Ure never spoke again. Three quarters of an hour later they panted, exhausted, and not one foot further ahead. Ure must be dead.
Could they get back? They hurried, with the slow haste of extreme caution. Holes through which they had crawled but three hours before were squeezing up, they had to pick their way through timbers which in places were bulging into matchwood; the roof was creeping. They reached the shaft. As those above helped them up, they heard, up there on the surface, the rumbling crash of rock that sealed forever the tomb of old Sam Ure.
About Sam Ure: Samuel ‘Sam’ Ure was just a little man of no account, who had spent his whole life on the fields, looking for gold. He had only just recently arrived in Sandstone and no one even knew his name until he died. Those that could recall him said he was very thin and had a big beard, when beards were long forgotten. The reason being he had once tried to cut his own throat, this might have been after a spree or it might have been out on a perish track. He had grown the beard to cover the scar. When his rescuers had no chance to save him it was said he shouted “I’m done, put up a stick of dynamite and blow me up and go”. Soon after he said his last words
‘Get out, and get out quick! For God’s sake go’.
The Sequel — Early in 1995, part of a human skull, bones and two boot soles, were recovered from the area where Ure was lost. Police investigations confirmed that the remains were that of the entombed man. The Old Oroya Black Range mine is now an open cut, worked by Herald Resources. More than 60yrs later, Ure’s remains were officially laid to rest in the Sandstone Cemetery. A funeral ceremony was held as part of the 100th Anniversary Celebrations
Jack Tatlow, Bill Pearce and Jimmy Boase, all received a Royal Humane Society medal for their acts of courage. Sam’s death was eventually recorded by the Registrar General in Perth in 2000, Reg 9024/2000.
Ref:
Sandstone, From Gold to Wool and Back Again by Sally Senior
Barb of the Spear by Bob Sheppard.
Moya Sharp
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