Thursday, July 15, 2021

BACK TO GULGONG WEEKEND, 1959

The "Black Maria", 1959 parade.
Source: Peter Martin

Caption: SULKY RIDE for Miss Nell English, Barry Hollow, and dog Lassie during "Back To Gulgong Weekend" procession.
Source: The Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982) Wed 11 Feb 1959 Page 13


In Gulgong, A town relives its golden past
By HELEN FRIZELL, staff reporter

• Gold nuggets glittered in shop windows, bearded gentry and their ladies danced in the streets, and the town of Gulgong, N.S.W., last week became a movie director's dream as its 20th century characters celebrated the 19th-century goldrush.

FEW oldtimers could recall the 1870s, when Gulgong—with 20,000 inhabitants—was termed the "Hub of the World," but some remembered how red flags over diggings proclaimed new gold strikes, and Cobb and Co's scarlet-and-gold coaches brought new arrivals to town.

A TUNE on the squeeze-box is played by Mr. Arthur Adams, of Gulgong. During the procession Gulgong residents reenacted scenes from the past. Floats carried old windlasses and rawhide buckets. Others showed recent progress.

Up and down narrow, twisting Mayne Street crawled modern cars bringing visitors to GuIgong's ''second gold rush." "If you haven't got a nugget, a pound note will do." read placards on miners' gold-dishes which were passed round to collect money for Gulgong's great project the Memorial Swimming Baths [sic]. The "modern" money piled in, but people who owned nuggets made no secret of the fact that they considered them too precious to give away. One man who could pull a nugget from his coat pocket was 76-year-old Mr. Val Taylor, son of an original gold miner.

"Look at this town." said Mr. Taylor, pointing to barn dancers who, just before midnight, were whirling over the bitumen of Mayne Street. "The crowds. This is what it used to be like. People everywhere, It's wonderful. "Of course, the town looks different. When I was a boy, the houses down the street were made of stringy box bark, and miners still lived in tents out on the paddocks.
"There were hotels everywhere, a ballroom, and a roller-skating rink. And round the corner Cobb and Co.'s stables, which were pulled down only a few years back. "I was a blacksmith, and used to shoe their horses, as well as putting steel in miners' picks and sharpening them up.
"You should have seen those Cobb and Co. coaches. They looked lovely, painted in red and yellow colors that never faded."

January 1959 "Back to Gulgong Weekend"

BUSHRANGERS creep up from the rear as the Bank of N.S.W. float makes its way down Mayne Street. Gulgong. On float is a set of scales that weighed gold mined in Gulgong during the 1870s. Bank manager Mr. G. Single was president of the committee which organised celebrations to raise funds for a Memorial Swimming Pool.

At the Country Women's Association display of historic photograph of Gulgong, I met Mr. Harry Gudgeon, who could remember many of the old scenes. "What was it like in the old days? I'll tell you what you'd have seen," said the former blacksmith. "Grass growing in the streets. An army of goats walking along; little bark houses and shops; a bark theatre. On a wet day you'd have watched "speckers" looking for gold in the streets. "They often found it, too." said Mr. Gudgeon. "The streets were covered with dirt taken from 'tailings' of the mines. "And the miners were all bearded, you know. You weren't a man if you hadn't a beard. "When the miners came into town they wore red or light flannel shirts, white moleskins with bowyangs, and corks around their hats. Their boots were beautifully polished."
 
The longest memory in Gulgong belongs to Mrs. Blanche Wood, now 93, who was a girl when the goldrush began. "Everyone was making towards the Gulgong diggings," said Mrs. Wood. "They had bullock waggons and big tilted drays. They brought horses and goats. Not much furniture, though, for they travelled light. "The streets were so crowded with miners you could hardly move. And the miners crowded the hotels. The place was strewn with corks, too. Beer bottles were corked then, not capped. And the children used to run around collecting the corks and getting paid for them afterwards. Miners stood round talking and gossiping. At night, the main street was lit by square lamps, with candles in the middle. When it got dark, you'd see thousands of little fires out at the diggings. Henry Lawson was here. I knew him," said Mrs. Wood. "Red flags flew when gold was struck. Then the gold used to leave the bank under escort for Sydney. We children used to run out to watch them go. We loved seeing the red-coated escort riding with his rifle on his knee."
 
The first gold at Gulgong was discovered by Mr. Tom Saunders in 1870 and two years later 134,455 ounces of gold was mined. An interested visitor to the "Back to Gulgong" weekend was Mrs. W. Saunders, of Randwick, who is a daughter-in-law of the discoverer. Today there's no gold mining in Gulgong, though many people are convinced gold is still there for the taking. Now the town—197 miles from Sydney, with a population of 2137—is the centre of an agricultural and grazing area. Grass has covered the yellow mullock heaps, and miners' descendants graze sheep and cattle in quiet paddocks once riddled with shafts and tunnels.
 
Mr. Dal Hollow farms land at Canadian Lead, where his grandfather James was among the miners of the 'seventies. Just across the road is the Canadian Lead Post Office. It was once one of 26 hotels lining the two miles of road from there to Home Rule. Gulgong's present-day hotels were packed during the 1959 celebrations, when visitors bought 1000 copies of "Written in Gold - The Story of Gulgong."
 
Colorful story
This book was edited and written by Mrs. Keith Maxwell, of "Sansgrove," Gulgong. The mother of four young children, Mrs. Maxwell spent months poring over historic records and photographs and interviewing dozens of people, and she worked till after midnight compiling her book.
 
During celebrations, president of the "Back to Gulgong Weekend" committee Mr. G. Single and secretary Mr. Frank Halloran helped organise a dance, giant procession, sporting events, billycart and wheelbarrow derbies, art shows, photographic displays, and tours of the gold areas. All proceeds went towards building the Memorial Swimming Baths. At present. Gulgong people can only cool off in the shallows of Reedy Creek, which had to be specially dammed for swimming sports.
 
They look forward to better swimming in the future but looked back to the past during the weekend, when the Sydney Bush Music Club played squeezeboxes on street corners and led choruses in singing of "Click Go the Shears" and Australian bush ballads. Mr. "Duke" Tritton, who fossicked for gold in Gulgong 50 years ago, came back as a member of the Sydney Bush Music Club, and brought with him a ballad he'd composed specially for Gulgong. The last stanzas read:

"At night I'll hear the rattle And clank of the windlass holes.
As the formless ghosts of the digger hosts Come out of their golden holes
To tell the world they've "struck it'' And hoist the flag that told.
The crimson rag, that bright red flag, The sign of the men on gold.
"Gone is Gulgong's golden glory. And Gulgong's golden ways.
But the mullock heaps where the warm wind sweeps Tell of the olden, golden days."

 


ABOVE: Historic photograph taken by Beaufoy Merlin in Gulgong in 1872 comes from the Holtermann Collection, Mitchell Library. It shows miners, a police officer, and publican on corner of Herbert and Mayne Streets waiting for Cobb and Co's coach to leave.

BELOW: Present-day [1959] shot by staff photographer Ron Berg was taken at same spot early one Sunday morning. In costume are Mr. and Mrs. Athol Meers, of Gulgong, Mr. and Mrs. Bob Rayner, and Mr. and Mrs. Laurie Wright, all from nearby Mebul.

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Bullock train, part of the 1959 procession
Source: Barbara Gurney

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