OLD ARLTUNGA TALES
“ … we found … a granite bed crossing the creek … completely studded with garnets or rubies …”
In the wild rocky hills and valleys dominated by Mt. Gordon and White Range, just over 100 kilometers east of Alice Springs, the gold fields of Arltunga still have the remnants of old miner’s cottages scattered around the countryside, shafts hacked through quartzite rock, crude stone shelters, over-grown alluvial diggings, residences of the government employees such as the manager, assayer and policeman, wells, weathered timber, broken bottles and rusted tins.
Prior to the arrival of white men, the Arltunga locality is claimed to have been traditionally occupied by members of the Eastern Aranda tribe, known as Karo-Linga.
Aboriginal sites in the vicinity are millstones (for grinding) found at the Joker Mine and Mission Well, plus rock engravings and a few cave paintings in the Joker Gorge.
Today, permeating the listening silence of the bush, there is the lingering atmosphere of another age when sometimes desperate men, suffering the privations of isolation, pitted their muscles and needs against an ancient, unforgiving landscape.
In their frantic diggings, the old-time prospectors ravished the hills of almost all its timber to strengthen their shafts, construct shelters and to fuel their forges and campfires.
The intervening years have covered these wounds and the bush has gradually reclaimed its territory with new trees, shrubs and grasses, sometimes completely obliterating the scars left across its surface in days long vanished in memory.
Explorer, Charles Winnecke, in his journeyings over the hills of heavily timbered country north-east of Arltunga, noted garnets or rubies in 1878.
About seven years later, on March 8, 1886, the surveyor-explorer, David Lindsay, reiterated Winnecke’s discovery of garnets or rubies in the Hale River area, 40 kms east of the present-day Arltunga.
On the Giles Creek Lindsay encountered Eastern Aranda tribesmen with “a smattering of English”, who showed him their waterholes and directed him to the area where he made his “ruby” discovery.
Lindsay mentioned in his journal finding “many garnets and some red stones of great brilliancy … at the entrance to, and in, a wild and romantic gorge,” which he named Glen Annie after his wife.
Lindsay added: “At midday we found … a granite bed crossing the creek … completely studded with garnets or rubies …”
Lindsay fully intended to return to the “ruby” site at a later date to stake his private claim.
Before he could do so, Richard Pearson, quietly staked out four 40-acre claims and collected several thousand “rubies” before travelling to Adelaide, Colombo, Amsterdam and London, hoping to establish the true value of the stones.
Another absconder revealed his find to a bushman camped at Emily Gap.
Soon afterwards, two rival groups rushed to the “ruby” fields.
An observer noted: “All the white fellows (were) on horseback, tearing through the scrub, yelling and making an awful noise, and the (Aboriginal) boys (were) were coming up full-steam behind with the packhorses … Some of the men were so anxious that they (searched) about in the creek with fire sticks … looking for those precious gems … I scratched … till I wore all the skin and finger nails away …”
Meanwhile, Pearson, in London, sent telegrams back to Australia, saying that the 50,000 carats of rubies he has taken with him were valued at fifty thousand pounds ($110,000), and that he was being offered between six and twenty pounds ($12 – $40) for some stones.
Within three months about 800 claims, over 32,000 acres, had been registered on the Hale River and its tributaries, with 24 ruby companies floated and various syndicates.
The South Australian government later commissioned the surveyor, David Lindsay to mark out the site for a settlement to be known as Stuart, as a supply depot for the booming Arltunga goldfield.
Interestingly, the famed Lewis Harold Bell Lassetter allegedly visited the ruby site in 1888, hoping to make his fortune.
Bulky consignments, loaded on camels, were taken south to Oodnadatta railhead.
However, after being thoroughly tested, the beautifully coloured stones were finally identified as garnets, not rubies, and had absolutely no value as gems.
Consequently, many of the disappointed prospectors turned their attention to gold.
Around these lonely goldfields, often lawless, the harsh climate, lack of clean water and the isolation ensured the prospectors lived and worked hard, and often died hard, many to leave their remains in unmarked bush graves.
Geologists estimated that the oldest rocks in the region were Pre-cambrian – i.e., 1200-500 million years old, a formidable barrier to men toiling with picks, crowbars and shovels.
Travelling gold prospectors had to pay $20 per ton carried by camel, or by waggon about $40 per ton.
The railhead reached Oodnadatta is 1891.
Alice Springs was 528 kms away to the north over a rough, sandy track, plus another 112 kms on to the Arltunga diggings.
Fares from Oodnadatta railhead to Alice Springs were $14 per man, and from Alice Springs to Arltunga, $4 – a considerable sum in that impoverished era.
Other costs were: freight from Adelaide to Oodnadatta, 53 shillings ($3.30), steel posts in two ton lots, 70 shillings ($3.50); anvils, crowbars, galvanised iron, etc., 151 shillings and fourpence ($10.53) per ton; 200 pounds of flour. 50 shillings ($2.50); tinned meat, tea per pound, preserved fruits, two shillings (20 cents); sugar and salt per pound, fourpence (3 cents).
As the gold prospectors came over the plains and hills in search of their fortune, they probably did not realise that they were unknowingly forming the first largest settlement of Europeans in Central Australia.
In 1898 the South Australian government’s Battery Cyanide Works was established at the Star of the North well, which had been sunk in 1892.
It was hoped that the area would quickly develop into large company mines.
The Star of the North well, initially sunk to a depth of 69ft., ultimately produced 1500 gallons every 12 hours.
In 1901 contractors, Du Bois and Schaber, extended the well’s depth to 98ft. which resulted in an increase of 6,000 gallons per day.
However, by 1903, the water supply had decreased to 2,000 gallons, probably due to excessive use.
The Battery manager, J. Woolcock, who arrived at Arltunga in 1897, recorded his observations thus:
There were about 70 white men of different nationalities ( the goldfield), mostly with one thing in common – a craving for liquor. We would notice a preference for Rum … Some of these men came from highly respected families … One typical case was a student from London University … (here) five years and admitted drink was his weakness … A son of a Bishop in Sweden was a similar case – a very capable well-built man. Many of these men were fine characters and quite good types when sober.”
On the other hand, a hopeful assayer, John Collison, had printed on the interior of his tent the hopeful text : “The Lord shall open unto thee His good fortune.”
Along with the Battery manager, J. Woolcock, there was a staff of 11 men: J. A. Gambling, foreman; J. H. Humphreys, engineer and fitter; H. B. Woolcock, assistant fitter; M. Colley, battery foreman; T.Hunter, Sand Pit Foreman; A. Townsend and C. Mitchell, carpenters; M. H. Benda, assistant; N. H. Hardy, blacksmith; M. Colley, labourer; H. P. Wilkinson, clerk and store keeper.
The foreman, Gambling, was paid 14 shillings (about $1.40) per day, while the labourers received 8 shillings and fourpence (about 84 cents) per day.
An unidentified oldtimer writing in the Centralian Advocate on July 5, 1947, reported:
“The inevitable rush set in … men left their jobs and came north, in any old way, by horse drays, buggys, carts, any line that would provide transport … food, swags, and the inevitable array of picks, shovels, etc … The government decided to send up a ten-head battery, a cyanide tank, buildings to cover the Battery, hut for the manager and the employees. Oodnadatta was the nearest railway 340 (560km) long miles away. The only safe transit (was) by donkey waggons and over the most inhospitable roads, sand banks, the Simpson Desert, with its thousands of sand dunes, heavy sandy creeks … Nothing can daunt a man when gold is at the end of the rainbow, and so with waggons drawn by the little midget donkeys, some 40 to a team, the journey started … these tiny little (donkeys) … the gamest animal that man has made for a friend, toiled day after day, hauling, step by step, the ponderous and heavy machinery. Often in a tight jam, the load had to be off-loaded and rolled over the seemingly impossible spots, then tediously … loaded once more by brute strength, coupled with ingenuity that characterised the old pioneer … But coming always onwards towards their goal … the brave little donks at last allowed to earn their rest …”
Their journey is said to have taken about four months.
The battery and cyanide equipment, supplied by the Store Department of the Way and Works Shops, in South Australia, with Jas Marton and Co., of Gawler, provided all additional machinery, carrying with it a cost of two thousand and fifty nine pounds, seven shilling and twopence (about $4,060.72).
The machinery and other equipment weighed approximately 45 tons.
Originally sent up for the Claraville Mine in January, 1897, having been accompanied from Oodnadatta by “13 men, two black boys, 29 camels and two tons of stores and equipment”, due to an insufficient water supply, the equipment was transported en masse 7 miles to the Star of the North well at a cost of one hundred pounds ($200).
However, by 1900 the wells had dried up and the miner’s horses, starving and weak, were found to be incapable of hauling ore to the crushers.
When the government’s battery burst in 1901 ore could not be crushed for seven months and the miners were compelled to exist on borrowed money and food.
General health conditions were poor, it seems.
In 1903 a widespread typhoid epidemic occurred, possibly related to the contaminated water and ineffective hygienic arrangements.
When the South Australian government railway terminated at Oodnadatta, this allowed prospective miners to venture, sometimes at great risk, into the wild hill country where Arltunga exists.
The carriage of goods from that point north was monopolised by the so-called “Afghan” camel teamsters, Faiz and Tagh Mahomet.
Adventurous prospectors travelled overland from the railhead by horse, camel, waggon, pushing heavy wheelbarrows, or on foot, searching the wild hills, valleys and creeks for elusive fortunes in precious metals and stones.
According to J. Robinson’s “Bushman Of The Red Heart,” along the rough bush track between Frome Creek and Oodnadatta a poetic traveller allegedly left nailed to a tree a crude sign, stating: “Damn Arltunga, damn the track … Damn it up and damn it back.”
The gold bearing potential of the region was originally determined when, in April, 1887, alluvial gold samples had been panned in a creek bed by Joseph Hele and Isaac Smith near Paddy’s Rockhole.
Probably named after a local identity, Paddy Fitzpatrick, one year later a police trooper, J. East, recorded that the rockhole had earlier borne the Aboriginal name of “Unarundingna.”
In reality, the Eastern Aranda tribes knew the rockhole as “Anurra-ntinga,” meaning “smelly water”; this, in turn, became “Arltunga Bore” and, at a later stage, “Mission Bore.”
By 1888, police further reported there were between 150-200 prospectors camped in the area.
The visiting police noted: “We are informed that … a great amount of drunkenness and unseemly behaviour frequently occurs at the mining camp …”
Apart from gold, other fossickers sought mica, tin, copper, silver and uranium.
Some of the picturesque names of mines were: Wipe Out, Jenkins, Standard, No Name, Round Hill, Fat Dingo, Magdala Wheal, Fortune, Wheal Mundi, Orient, Wild Irishman, Julilee Central, Australian Butterfly, Nuggety, Poverty, etc.
Writing in the “Inland Review” (1966), Mrs A. Purvis wrote: “Among early explorers to Arltunga was (the) intrepid … John Ross. Although an old man, he ventured out on his own with a few horses, travelling alone from Adelaide to Arltunga, not with any thought of winning quick riches, but merely to convince himself that the minerals he always felt were there did, in fact, exist in the rugged hills east of the Alice … He returned to Adelaide, where he died a pauper at the age of 87.”
During their working life the Arltunga and White Range gold mining areas produced an overall total of 19,960 oz of gold bullion, according to the geologist, P. Hossfeld, in 1937. This was valued at fifty five thousand, two hundred and twenty three pounds, one shilling (approximately $110,446.10).
Mining activity was greatest between 1887-1913.
When a later gold mining era boomed in the White Range, more that 550 holes were dug between 1987-1988.
Arltunga’s last miner was said to be Jack Shaw who died in 1960.
His camp existed in the vicinity of The Crossroads.
Once standing at The Crossroads was the famous Glencoe Hotel (opened 1910), and owned by a rotund Scotsman, Alexander (“Sandy”) McDonald.
The old pub was described in “The Northern Territory Times and Gazette” (1911) as: “ … a place of public accommodation, it is a snare and a delusion … Linen is an unknown quantity – no sheets, tablecloths or mattresses … Just a wooden stretcher … No carpets … No lining … The building has never been white-washed inside or out … There are four stretchers on the verandah. Two are occupied by the occupier.”
As mentioned earlier, drunkenness seems to have been a common problem. Excavated bottles from the living and working areas include whisky, gin, bitters, brandy, schnapps and sherry.
A senior warden, L. Gee, in 1903, was completely unimpressed at finding the long term warden, J. Mueller, intoxicated when the former arrived on the goldfield.
The Police Registrar of Prisoners noted that the majority of European offenders were interred on alcohol-related charges, such as selling to Aborigines, sly grog dealing, or displaying the effects.
German-born Johannes Ferdinand Mueller, a one-time Senior Inspecting Officer on the Overland Telegraph Line, in 1895, was paid one hundred pounds ($200) per annum, which he considered insufficient.
Mueller wrote to his employers, stating: “Owing to my stipend being so small, I have hitherto done some other work … without interfering with my Warden’s duties … To enable me to carry out my duties, I have to employ a black boy … to keep my horses within reach …I have already been obliged to make use of private resources …”
In 1899 Mueller’s pay was increased by twenty pounds ($40).
When Mueller complained again, the Department graciously allocated an additional ten pounds ($20) per annum.
Mueller was dismissed from his position in August, 1906.
His camp was reportedly “insavoury”, that it was used for drunken sprees, and “black gins” frequented the premises.
Ultimately, he was arrested, tried and convicted in the Port Augusta Court for embezzling government money; he received a six month’s gaol sentence with hard labour for embezzling forty two pounds, nine shillings and one penny (about $84.91).
When released from prison, Mueller returned at once to the goldfields to mine a prospect east-north-east of the town.
Unsuccessful, Mueller then disappeared for ever from Arltunga’s records.
There are purportedly 12 graves in the isolated White Range cemetery, according to researcher, K. Holmes. “These include Henry Luce … one of the first buried … in November, 1903 … He was an educated man … He was on the field by 1890 … By 1895 he, in partnership with Vilkson, owned the Huntingdon Mill brought to Arltunga by the Wheal Fortune Mining Company. Vilkson had brought the mill in rather shady circumstances – paying thirteen pounds ($26) for plant that cost seven hundred pounds ($1,400) … At his death he (Luce) had interests in the White Range Boulder and White Range Extended … valued at almost three thousand pounds ($6,ooo) … and between 1898 – 1904 gold valued at ten thousand and eighty six pounds ($20,172) …
“J. Sutherland, in a letter written on January 30, 1903, said: ‘On the morningof 20th December … C. Williams of White Range came to my place and informed me that Henry Luce had died sometime during the night. I asked him if any person was present when Luce died and he said no. He then said a Lubra (Black Gin) called him at daylight and told him Luce was dead. I then asked him if he had sent (word) to the police. And he said yes … I went to Luce’s camp and viewed the body. The police had not turned up …’
“Corporal Nalty sent word that he would not come to view the body, so Sutherland, as a Justice of the Peace, gave a certificate of burial …
“Joseph Hele (an ex-teamster and camel driver) … was one of the pioneers of the field and said to be, with his partner, Isaac Smith, the first to find gold at Paddy’s Hole (in 1887) … In 1901 he was found suffering from scurvy, so he can’t have made very much money for all his work …
“Charles Williams, who died in 1908, aged 46, was another pioneer … He pegged the Excelsior claim … plus the White Range South and West blocks … He retained his interest in (the Excelsior) when it was floated as a public company in … 1900 …
“The company … suffered a setback … in 1904, when Robert Stuart, who had taken out an option … suddenly died … Stuart (his grave bears a Masonic symbol) was born in Boston, Mass., USA, and he was 55 when he died …
“Frederick May came to the field in 1896 … employed as an engine driver at the government Battery from … 1898 … He worked on Luce’s White Range and Excelsior blocks … May remained at the White Range until his death late in 1912 or early 1913 … He might be buried in one of the unmarked graves …”
The identified graves at the White Range cemetery are: Mounted Constable Matthew Francis Dowdy (17-6-1915), A. G. Georghecan (17-4-1911), Charles Anderson (15-9-1909, Charles William Williams (28-7-1908), Joseph Hele (died 1906), Henry Luce (died 1903), Lewis Nicholson (27-5-1906), and Robert Stuart (5-11-1904).
Another isolated grave is said to exist near the ruins of Paddy’s Rockhole Hotel, on the high ground above the creek, under the redgum trees.
A stone insciption reads: “W. Honley. Died Dec 1897.”
On a sandy rise near Ruby Gorge is understood to exist the grave of a miner who committed suicide.
The rock epitaph says: “Sacred to the memory of F. H. Fox Died May 25th 1888 Aged 55 years.”
Apparently, Fox had invested all his capital in a desperate search for rubies.
When the stones were found to be valueless, in despair the destitute fossicker blew his brains out with his firearm.
His mates buried his body near the Gorge, inscribing his crude inscription with a pick.
Another unidentified grave of an unknown person is located along the first left-hand track off the Ruby Gap road north of the Arltunga Hotel.
Some say it contains the remains of an old stockman, while others say a priest.
The rock-walled police station and lockup was opened on January 14, 1899, and closed in 1943.
Arltunga’s first policeman, 27-year-old Charles Patrick Johnston, arrived on February 17, 1899, accompanied by two Aboriginal trackers, Jack and Wilkie.
He was the first resident policeman on the Arltunga goldfields since its inception.
Conditions in the original police premises were so haphazard that at times prisoners had to be chained to the leg of the constables bed – i.e., four stout mulga poles sunk in the ground with greenhide stretched across.
In February, 1905, a H. Sutherland, wrote to a politician, V. Solomon, complaining that an Arltunga policeman, Corporal Charles Nalty, had been drunk at a local race meeting.
Sutherland wrote: “He lay at the back of one of the sheds … with two blackfellows standing guard over him … It was disgusting (to see) a man laying drunk in the sand with his trousers down over his knees.
“I went twice and covered his nakedness.
“Others (were) using disgusting language (and) ladies could not come near …”
A sub-inspector, Clode, from Port Augusta, who visited Arltunga in 1905, wrote in his report: “I saw and spoke to a number of … natives in (the) vicinity of White Range …about 17 working for white people who in payment … supplied them with food which they always shared with the Blacks not employed, especially with the old and infirm.
“A scanty supply of clothing was given to those who worked, but not blankets … Girls from 10 – 13 years of age were in a nude state. There were also two or three white men living with Black lubras … these people have families of halfcastes growing up who are properly fed and clothed … Probably the (white) men may leave … in which case he would leave the lubra and children, who would then be thrown upon the burden of the State. This shows a very immoral state of affairs … I am of the opinion that if food and clothing were supplied to them it would be the means of putting a stop to many crimes committed by them, especially cattle killing …”
In 1900 a Gold Warden reported: “The men (miners) who with very few exceptions are a very low class, keep lubras (Aboriginal women) about their camps to do washing, cooking, etc. They go willingly to work for these men knowing that they can get plenty of food and tobacco for themselves and their blackfellows who are usually camped close by. They steal the food and the blackfellows get the blame. I have repeatedly told the men that if they will keep lubras about their camps they must expect to lose their rations. They have never … stolen anything but food …”
Earlier, in 1875, A. Giles described the Aborigines of the MacDonnell Ranges as “the most villianous looking rascals on the whole route …”
Claraville was rumoured to have been named after “the inevitable dusky spouse” of a miner. “In selecting Aboriginal employees,” noted J. East, in 1888, “ruby gatherers showed a distinct preference for women … As a general rule, a ‘ruby picker’ … furnished himself with a helpmate and a companion in the form of a black lubra …”
During World War 11, when soldiers were pouring into Alice Springs to use it as a military base, the Catholic Church, who had been conducting a mission for Aboriginal children (in 1936) at Charles Creek, decided to transfer the children to Arltunga.
Father Frank McGarry unsuccessfully applied for 86 square miles of land at Arltunga in June, 1942.
Calling itself the Little Flower Mission, the site – now abandoned – was home to 400 or so inhabitants: nuns, priests, lay brothers and children.
Initially, the mission started in 1942 with 21 women and seven men of the local tribe, supplemented by others transported from Alice Springs.
The Little Flower Mission was positioned on the northern bank of Mission Creek, opposite Paddy’s Rockhole.
By September, 1943, the mission had a store, school, presbytery, convent, hospital and vegetable garden, plus pise huts constructed by the Aboriginal residents.
A goat herd of 700 was maintained; six were slaughtered each week for their meat.
The water supply was always inadequate.
The old mission cemetery is understood to have an unmarked communal grave site containing the bodies of 40-47 Aboriginal people, believed to have been the victims of, possibly, a cholera or typhoid epidemic in the 1940s.
In 1953, when a section of Undoolya Station was offered, the mission authorities decided to move the site to its new location which still carries the name “Saint Theresa.”
Nowadays the area has been proclaimed as The Arltunga Historical Reserve, and it was placed under the control of the Northern Territory Reserves Board in June, 1975.
In the overall locality there are six airstrips: at Claraville, on Paddy’s Plain, Ambalindum, Ross River and two at The Garden.
Once part of the Ambalindum Pastoral Lease, the Arltunga locality was declared under section 12 of the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act in June, 1978.
Arltunga, part of the eastern MacDonnel Ranges, 110 kms east-north-east of Alice Springs, consists of 4891 hectares, with an additional 600 hectares at the White Range gold mines.
It has two access roads: via the Ross River Highway to the Atnarpa turn-off and through the Bitter Springs Gorge, or 50 kms north of Alice Springs along the Stuart Highway and then by a graded track going past The Garden, Ambalindum and Claraville homesteads.
Arltunga is listed on the Registrar of the National Estate.
I would like to know who to contact with regard to the restoration and repointing work of the heritage buildings in the area.
— Nick O'Hare · 21 June 2009 · #
Address your enquiry to the Heritage Minister, Government House, in Darwin.
— The Boss · 22 June 2009 · #