Writing historical fiction is one long adventure. Every scene or piece of conversation raises questions. I’ve been agonising about which year my story takes place. Was it in 1894 when the new gold rush town of Hannans was still being cobbled together from canvas, bush timber and hessian and its population in flux, or the next year, when it was becoming Kalgoorlie, and history confirms there WAS a hospital, and a local police force, but where life was becoming more constricted. I think I’ve finally opted for the earlier, more hugger-mugger time.
But it’s mainly language that has been sending me back to the dear old internet. Would an Englishman be a pommie at that time? No, unfortunately, but the red-headed fellow can be nicknamed Bluey. This has got me very interested in some of our Aussie sayings.
I’d always thought ‘pegged out’ was a prospecting term, but wondered when it became synonymous with dying, so I was interested to come across this tribute to an old prospector, published in 1895.
DEATH OF A COOLGARDIE PIONEER
Tom Darcy pegs out.
One more miner’s right cancelled.
(By A. G. Hales in the “Courier)
Old Tom Darcy, prospector and works man, has handed in his checks, and is now trying his luck in the mystic goldfields beyond the border. He laid down his swag for the last time in life on Tuesday evening last, just as the sun was sinking in a flood of carmine flame beyond the tops of our western forest. ‘Old’ Darcy was only a simple working man, a child of the people; rough in appearance, rugged of speech, strong with the strength of a splendid manhood, with a heart as gentle as his speech was gruff, and a spirit as loyal to his friends as a good ship to its helm. When his miner’s right ran out for ever, he may have left behind him many a wiser man, but in all the broad Australasian continent from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Southern Ocean, he left no human being who could claim to be a truer friend in time of need, or a squarer, cleaner man. Years ago I met him when he hunted with pick and spade for silver in the Barrier’s rugged ravines. He was the model of an athlete then, and as a man or athlete Melbourne’s great city might well be proud of its son. From mining camp to mining camp he drifted with all a diggers’ love of the feverish excitement of the treasure hunter’s life, until at last the finger of fate which beckons us all onward, whether we will or no, to our journey’s end, lured him to the great mining centre of the west, and at Coolgardie was known and loved as few men are ever loved, and his dog-like devotion to a man who had ever befriended him passed into a proverb. At Hannan’s, at The Feather, at Kurnalpi, at Bardock,
it was the same; this man of the masses left the imprint of his rude, forceful character upon all with whom his daily life brought him in contact; not a religious man, not a Puritan or saint— simply one of that vast brotherhood of humanity whom superficial fools delight to call ‘the great unwashed.’ He has gone over the border. Never again shall we see his sun-tanned face upon the new rushes in the West; but, when it comes to our turn to abandon our claims as worked out and worthless, it will be well for us, whether we be wardens or workmen, if we can show the Great Minister of Mines in the Field above as clean a title to our claim as old Tom Darcy, one of the pioneers of Coolgardie.
The Inquirer and Commercial News, Friday, 1 March, 1895, p.10
Lynne Cairns 