Lure of gold

We camped overnight at the Palmer River roadhouse. This was gold country in the late 1800s, founded by James Venture Mulligan after whom this highway is now named. One of the early prospectors and explorers, he discovered gold out here, and started another massive rush. Men came from all directions, most just wheeling barrows filled with their worldly possessions as well as their gold digging equipment. Without even a horse to their name. 

You can sense history out here. Once these hills rang to the clang of metal tools banging on rock, and water gushing down sluices separating out gold bits from the rubble. The number of Chinese miners, moneylenders and merchants who ventured onto these fields astonished us. We had no idea. Some 18,000 at the peak of the gold rush in the 1890s, we were told. More of a presence in these fields than the Europeans at the time. 

Some came overland from other sites in Australia, but not many. Most were indentured labourers sent from Gangzhou. In peak periods boats were dropping Chinese workers destined for the goldfields, in numbers that sometimes reached a thousand a week. Young single men they were, mainly, in their twenties and thirties. 

They were expected to send home gold in return for product and assistance. Some of their tales are traumatic. So difficult did it become for them to ship back the necessary payment that some were forced to hide in the hollowed out body parts of their dead friends and relatives: in the belly cavity, in the stripped out bone marrow.

There are many traumatic tales of these times on the goldfields. One old fellow was found in a camp shelter he had made from a dried out termite mound. He had hollowed it out as his home. He had few utensils, very little food, no swag, so no home comforts at all. He did not, or would not, talk and had no paper identification. When taken to the nearest police station he was found to be a white man of about 50 years or more, with blue eyes, sound teeth, and brown matted hair, going grey. He was never identified. The anthill man, he was called. 

Another, a white man, who was quite naked, walked into a police camp in the late 1890s, gesturing for food. He had no known language and could not read or write English. His hair was matted with barbs and burrs but he was able to make it known that he had survived up here for many years, living as the natives did. After he received some food he disappeared as quietly as he came. The wild man of Mareeba trod softly on the earth. 

As in Charters Towers large fortunes were made. And many, many lives were destroyed, or lost. 

James Venture Mulligan died in a pub fight in 1907. Despite owning the pub. His body lies in the cemetery in Mount Molloy just off the highway there that now bears his name.

Wheelbarrow of worldly goods

All a goldminer needed

Chinese mining shafts were round to keep spirits from lurking in corners

Hollowed anthill could make a shelter

A wrap for warmth

Piercing eyes of a lonely man

James Venture Mulligan