Harry Boucher Story

Harry Boucher’s Story

My only memory of my mother was of her being loaded into an ambulance and
nobody knows what happened to her after that – none of my living relatives seem to
know!

My father married an Irish woman and I went to live with my aunt and was later put
into an immigration centre in Birmingham. The boys and girls were separated. One
day the matron came and asked which of us would like to go to Canada – I thought
it was too cold so I didn’t put my hand up! Then she asked which of us would like to
go to Australia? I had an uncle in the Northern Territory on Jindare Station and my
aunty had told me stories about him so I was first to put my hand up! A party of 28
boys from different orphanages were all kitted out with new clothes, suites,
overcoats and hats with peaks and a bit of pocket money ready to go. My father and
aunty came to see me off and we first went to London where we all stayed at the
YMCA for 3 days.

The boat for Australia – The SS Benally, left from Tilbury Docks in London and it
took 6 weeks to reach Australia. We left London in 1928 in January and arrived in
Fremantle on March 3. I was 12 years old and it was the biggest adventure in my
life. The boat called in to different tropical islands on the way and islanders would
row out to our ship selling all sorts of tropical fruit we had never seen before. Some
of the boys stole books from the Masters cabin and sent them down on ropes to the
small boats in exchange for fruit which was then hauled back up in baskets.

At Cape Town we stopped for three days while the ship loaded up with coal as it was
a steamer and used the coal for fuel. The Africans carried the coal up in baskets on
their heads in a continuous stream for 3 days! We went sightseeing in Cape Town
and went up Table Mountain. Wherever we went we had Africans waiting on us and
anything we asked for. We were treated like royalty.

After leaving Cape Town the seas became rough and the waves often towered
above the ship but it was really exciting. One day we were having races on the deck
and my hat blew off and that was the last I saw of it! The crew were good to us and
the cook often brought out a big tray of plum pudding for us boys.

Our first glimpse of the Australian coast was disappointing; it looked so dry and
desolate. After landing we stayed in the WMCA in Perth for a few days before
catching a train to Pinjarra. All 28 of us were sent to the Fairbridge farm. I stayed in
the Henry Hudson cottage but left school there at age 14 and started domestic work
around the farm. They taught me a lot though.

First I worked in the kitchen with its huge stoves and coppers. The kitchen had to be
swept and mopped out every day. Then I went to work in the huge bakehouse and
learnt to bake bread. One day I was chopping wood for the oven and eating a crust
of bread and the warden slapped me for eating the bread which I was entitled to
have because I was working in the bakehouse at the time. I was so upset by this that
I ran away and camped in the bush for three days. I actually enjoyed camping in the
bush on my own and thought it was a great adventure but when I eventually
returned I had to report to the colonel and he made me drop my strides and gave
me a good caning. He then gave us all a lecture about going out in the bush and
getting lost and how dangerous it was.

I was then sent to work in the piggery, then the market garden and then the
orchard. In the dairy I learnt how to milk a cow and in the butchers I learnt how to
butcher sheep, pigs and bullocks and how to dress them. We made our own bacon
by smoking it in a huge fireplace Then I went to work with the teamster doing
ploughing and harvesting. I got a good grounding in every aspect of farming at
Fairbridge. They were paying me then 10 shillings to work on the farm but 5 shillings
went back to Fairbridge. This 5 shillings was later returned to us as a lump sum
when we turned 21 but without any interest!

At age 15 Fairbridge sent me to work on a sheep and wheat farm at Dalwallinu
called Petworth Park and it was here that I got my first sniff of gold. The station was
owned by Phil Gaucher (who painted the curtain in the Boulder Town Hall). Phil
would come to the farm and one day he brought up Charlie Newman a signwriter
with him and he pointed out the low bare hills which had been cleared and which
looked just like the ones near Kalgoorlie.

Charlie walked up to those hills and came back with a quartz rock with gold in it. I
spent a lot of time looking for more gold specimens there but with no luck but at the
time I didn’t know anything about dollying for gold.

A neighbouring farmer came along and offered me 15 shillings a week to work for
him – I was rich! It was the most money I had seen in my life but Fairbridge wanted
me back and I had to go back but got my first ride then in a motorcar.
Fairbridge then hired me out to other farms but all I got was 5 shillings again.

After being sent to a very primitive dairy farm at Capel I decided to jump a goods
train to Pinjarra and that is where I struck another bloke and we both jumped trains
to Merredin and then Kulin. My mate told me to chuck my gear away and just make
a swag with a blanket. So we went ‘on tramp’ like swagmen getting odd jobs in return
for food and camping in creek beds. I ended up jumping a train to Coolgardie and I
was about 16 then. At the time blokes ‘on tramp’ camped in the loco room at
Coolgardie because it was warm and there was always a fire going. I got a few odd
jobs around town and got a job as a woodchopper at the Convent for 2s. 6d. plus
tucker.

They couldn’t believe how quickly I got through all their mallee wood pile and I soon
ran out of work with them. I then jumped the train to Kalgoorlie and ended up
digging septic drains for a realestate agent. I had to shovel out the rubbish and
rocks, deepen the trench and cover them over. There were 15 to do and I was paid
two pound a day. I considered myself a rich man and booked into a boarding house.
By then Fairbridge had tracked me down again and a policeman came to see me. I
was put on another farm and then on a sheep station in Carnarvon, which was a
real rough squatters farm and the work, was long and hard. I was then about 20 and
decided to write to my uncle in Pine Creek telling him I would work my way up to the
Northern Territory when I left there. At age 21 Fairbridge let me go and sent me the
90 pound they owed me.

I always felt like an outsider when I worked for Fairbridge as there was a bit of a
stigma attached to being a ‘Fairbridge Boy’.

I then got some odd jobs in Carnarvon but a policeman came looking for me to tell
me that my uncle in Pine Creek had just died from lockjaw after cutting his hand. So
I changed my mind about catching a boat going north and took a boat to Perth
instead and made my way back to the Goldfields. I suppose my life was set out for
me from that point onwards as I then went to work in the gold mines.

Photo left of Harry 2006 (back of Coolgardie) as it appeared in the
Kalgoorlie Miner.

I got my first job in a gold mine at Paynes Find as a machine offsider and here they
taught me how to use a jackhammer but my main job was to shovel the dirt. I was
still only 19 or 20. I then got another job at another mine near-by. The work was
dirty and dusty as the owner wouldn’t allow us any water to keep the dust down. I
persuaded the other guys to go on strike as I told them the quartz dust would kill us
but the other blokes ended up going back to work but I decided to leave. I got a lift
to Mount Magnet but there was no work there. I met a bloke who told me I should go
to Big Bell near Cue as there was work there. As soon as I got there I stood outside
the office every morning with a mob of others looking for work. There they took your
name and waited for them to call you up. At the time they preferred the young fellas
with no experience as they could teach them up the way they wanted. So I got a job
straight away. They were desperate for men at that time and needed 400. This was
the most modern mine in Australia at the time.

My first job in Kalgoorlie was as an undeground ‘trucker’ at the Great Boulder
shovelling dirt into a truck for two bob a truckload. You had to push the truck out to
the shaft and pick up an empty one take it back, fill it up and do that all day. There
was always plenty of work for a trucker. Then I was offsider to a machine miner and I
learnt how to drill and fire and sink shafts, man-ways and stoping, I worked on every
shaft in the mine – six in all. One day I picked up a very heavy rock from a rich stope
and dropped it down the man-way to the level down below without looking and it fell
right at the feet of the shift boss. That rock was nearly all solid gold and the shift
boss said thank-you and took it away!

We would take the rubber out of the fracture box and make crib bags out of it. Some
blokes used their crib bag to take rich specimen rock out of the mine and later they
used their thermos flasks. There was often a gold buyer in the Boulder Block Hotel
who would be waiting to buy the gold from the miners . If you were found with
telluride though you would be in real trouble as the gold squad would know exactly
where it came from as there were only two places in the world where it is found – an
island in the Pacific and underground at the Golden Mile.

When war broke out in 39 I enlisted in the army as all the young blokes thought it
would be a great adventure and I had the idea I would be sent back to England. A
whole trainload of us left Kalgoorlie and camped at the Claremont Show Ground and
were later transferred to Northam. The food there was terrible though and the meat
was full of maggots. I got crook during training with suspected ulcers and ended up
in a hospital but they couldn’t find what was wrong with me and I was discharged. I
went back to the Great Boulder where they were pleased to have me back because
so many miners had left for the war. I got crook again and doctor Webster told me to
go to Esperance where I ended up staying for 5 years. I would go fishing in the
summer and back prospecting in the winter. I made a rough boat with a sail made
from a chaff bag and went fishing. Everyone thought I would drown in that boat. I
eventually went to a different doctor and was diagnosed with a diseased gall
bladder. They operated on me and took it out including my appendix and I haven’t
been crook since.

In 1954 I found gold in quartz at Kumarl which is 19km north of Salmon Gums but it
wasn’t really payable at that time. Then in Esperance when I was cutting fence posts
I met Harold Eldridge and he had a show at the Beete Mine and I pegged a claim
next to him. I did a bit of prospecting there but Harold was always talking about
Ryans Find and that’s where I ended up prospecting for three years. When I was
broke I would go back to the Great Boulder on wages. One of my best finds was by
my Blue Heeler dog - I had been taking soil samples all day up and down gullies with
no luck and decided to go back to my car. I would say to my dog ‘Blue Take Me
Home!’ and he would take a straight line back to my car. This time though he
chased a rabbit and as the ground looked good I took a loam sample while I was
waiting for Blue to come back. There was good colour in the dish and it turned out
to be my best find. The Little Nipper Mine was not far away and there were two
miners working there getting some rich patches . I soon became well acquainted
with the prospectors Voumard and Walls who worked the Little Nipper mine. They
were loaming up small enrichments with only a few colours in the panning dish but
some patches went 400 ounces! When a patch cut out they would have to very
carefully follow the traces along the wall till they hit another patch. Often there were
only a couple of colours to follow.

My patch near Ryans was going an ounce to the ton and my first crushing was 4
tons and the next one was 15 tons. All the dirt was taken to the battery in
Coolgardie. I would make holes with a bit and hammer and it would take me all day
to make one hole for blasting one foot deep because the ground was so hard. Then
a bloke brought out a petrol driven jackhammer to lend me and that was much
easier. The only problem was that it was all dry boring but I made a canopy to keep
the dust off me. I shifted 45 tons for an ounce to the ton but gold was only worth 15
pound an ounce then so when I was offered 500 pound for the lease I decided to
quit and sell it and bought a ticket back to England. I would go back to England
many times during my life whenever I sold a lease or made a good crushing. I was
trying to trace my family roots and found my father, sister and elder brother but my
younger brother was killed in a coalmine.

When I came back I camped near Coolgardie and prospected the Hampton Plains
ground and picked up a show not far from Sam Cash’s. After crushing 75 tons for
76 ounces over a period of time I sold it for $5000. Sam Cash wrote the well-known
book ‘Loaming For Gold’ while he was prospecting around Coolgardie. The
Hampton Plains Company had been given 547 km2 of Crown Grants by Queen
Victoria in the Coolgardie-Kalgoorlie area, which was not available for pegging, and
they had a portion of the major nickel and gold deposits inside their boundaries.

In 1963 I pegged an area at Canegrass north of Scotia for nickel. That belt of
country has now been drilled and pegged for nickel. I later found another nickel
area at Londonderry before Kambalda was found. I sold the Londonderry lease for
$10,000 but was offered it back for $2 when the company pulled out of Australia. I
immediately sold it again to another company for $11000! Close to the nickel areas
were gemstones deposits especially chrysoprase and moss agate and this got me
started on cutting and polishing rocks. At Canegrass I picked up a flat rock to jack
up my car when I had a puncture and when it cracked open I saw that it was full of
chrysoprase. I had a shop in the main street of Coolgardie then for many years
selling rocks, gemstones and old bottles.

South of Coolgardie near Burbanks I had a gemstone lease with moss agate on it
which I would sell to a dealer in Perth’.

Photo of Harry and Jack at The Coolgardie Jazz, Gems & Rock'n'Roll
Festival 2006 showing some of his polished rocks.

Harry was made a life member of APLA and back in the 70s as President of the
Coolgardie Branch he led a protest against the new Mining Act regulations which he
said favoured the big mining companies over the small prospector because it
allowed them to peg huge areas of ground locking out the small prospector. Four
hundred prospectors turned up to march in Perth from all over the Goldfields. Harry
said ‘Now there is no longer incentive for the individual prospector to go out into the
bush with his dolly pot and panning dish and loam for gold searching for new
deposits as the ground is blanket pegged by big companies. All these old
prospecting skills will soon be lost for ever. The other mistake the government made
was to close all the government run state batteries which also made it harder for the
small prospector to survive. Most of the best gold finds in WA were originally made
by individual prospectors camping out in the bush dollying and panning for gold.

Harry still has a mining lease at Gibralter and still drives himself around the bush
fossicking in his small car which incidentally has the number plate
‘APLA 1’

He is now a member of the Coolgardie Gem & Mineral Club and teaches members
how to cut and polish rocks. He recently led a convoy of cars from the Perth
Lapidary Clubs on a field trip out of Coolgardie and had a display of rocks at the
Coolgardie Jazz & Gems Festival and at the Hall of Fame open day. He also has a
stall selling his gemstone jewellery and polished rocks every Coolgardie Day.

PS. Harry was born on 23 October 1915 so he will be 92 this year!