|
The city of Newcastle, New
South Wales—Buildings, wharves, cranes, &c.—Badly laid out—The Sand
Drift—Subordination of great national works to petty local wants—Negligence
of sanitary principles—Want of public spirit—Want of a proper water
supply—The filth and squalor of a colonial town—How contagion spreads—The
shipping—Pall of smoke—Port defences—The coal trade—Devices for keeping up
the price of coal—Short history of the relations between the masters and
miners—The Vend Scheme—Both sides—The miners—Their sports and general
characteristics—Chinese gardeners—Miners' houses.
I have endeavoured to avoid
making my rambling notes and jottings suggestive of the directory or
guide-book, and as statistical information nowadays is so easily obtainable,
I do not intend to run into figures, and state liow many inhabitants reside
here or there, what are the imports and exports of this port or that, and
add up the bills of mortality. All these can be found if the reader's tastes
run that way, in the parliamentary blue books and local directories; no
better epitome of the kind can be got than "The Industrial Progress of New
South Wales," being a report of the Intercolonial Exhibition of 1870 at
Sydney, printed by the government printer, Mr. Richards.
Newcastle, as every one
knows, is the second city in New South Wales. It is situated at the mouth of
the Hunter river, which drains one of the richest and most populous
districts in the colony. It owes its importance to the magnificent deposits
of coal which here lie scattered in vast layers all over the district.
The city proper is only about
twenty years old, is built on a hill overlooking the mouth of the Hunter
river, and owes its progress and present importance to the coal-mines that
have been established in the neighbourhood. These give employment to nearly
8000 miners, principally Northumbrians and Welshmen, and for miles inland
there are numerous populous villages clustering round the pits, and but for
the eternal bush and the colonial aspect of the houses, most of them being
mere huts of rough weather-boards, rudely roofed with stringy bark, one
could almost fancy himself in the heart of a mining district at home. The
bar at the mouth of the Hunter is dangerous, and disasters are frequent.
There is a peculiar isolated rock, called " Nobbys," which stands up boldly
at the end of the breakwater, and the lighthouse on this serves as a
prominent mark to mariners sailing along the coast. The shipping is large,
and immense quantities of coal are shipped to the various intercolonial
ports, to China, Java, Singapore, and the East, to the South Pacific
Islands, and to San Francisco, Valparaiso, and other American ports.
The town is dingy, dusty, and
smoky. There are commodious wharves, and a perfect network of rails; huge
shoots for the coal waggons; and magnificent hydraulic cranes, derricks and
raised platforms rear their unsightly limbs in all directions near the
harbour. It is a busy place, and everything wears a smutty grimy look,
reminding the wanderer at every step of the great staple of the district,
Old King Coal. On the north shore of the harbour are extensive copper
smelting works, the lurid fires gleaming redly into the night. Numerous
small craft bring down cargoes of railway sleepers and other timber, country
produce,, and grains from the farms in the interior. A railway runs up to
Tamworth, about 182 miles, through the fertile country stretching along both
sides of the Hunter river. It is being extended, and will eventually run
through the fertile New England district joining the Queensland railway, no
doubt, as population and cultivation extend. There are many banks and public
offices in the town; a large imposing custom-, house and numerous churches;
none of them with great pretensions to architectural beauty. In fact the
principal English church dignified with the imposing title of cathedral is a
most unsightly, tumble-down structure, and would insult a Midlothian barn by
comparison.
Like its great rival Sydney,
the city of Newcastle has been badly laid out. There was not much
.building-ground between the steep hill on which the houses cluster and the
sea. Magnificent hydraulic cranes have now been erected, by which the utmost
expedition in lading and discharging cargo can be attained. To the back of
the city a most phenomenal plague has baffled all the engineering skill that
has so far been brought to bear upon it. This consists of a sand drift, a
sort of perpetually encroaching avalanche or moving earthquake of sand,
which keeps on year after year eating its way onward, has swallowed houses,
engulfed roads, borne down fences and barriers, and threatens to entomb the
city on that side altogether-Formerly a dense scrub sufficed to interpose an
impassable barrier, but with the reckless waste in timber-cutting so
characteristic of the colonists, this invaluable scrub was long ago cut down
to act as struts in the mines or firewood for the miners. Nothing yet
attempted seems to have resulted practically, and the sand drift is becoming
an evil of portentous magnitude. Planting trees would be, I think, the only
sufficient remedy, and for this the Ailanthus would seem to be the best
adapted, having been used for a similar purpose in Algeria and other places.
The formation of great trenches filled with brush, scrub, and dead wood,
might arrest the sand, as has been done at "Montrose and other places on the
east coast of Scotland. On the dunes thus thrown up by the arrested sand,
bent grass might be planted, and would perhaps succeed. In any other
community such experiments would have been tried long ago; but here,
government is expected to do everything, and when every petty parish in the
land is clamouring for a share of the public plunder, great works such as
this are left neglected. I might name a score of national works in one
breath which are thus subordinated to petty local requirements: Drainage;
water supply; irrigation; forest conservation; suburban railway extension;
bridges; viaducts; metropolitan railway extension; tramways et hoc genus
omne. All, all, neglected, gone at with occasional spasmodic jerks, spoken
about, reported on, and then quietly shelved or pigeon-holed for another
decade, till another temporary stimulus is perfunctorily applied. The
railway system, the public works, the administration of the lands office,
are in New South "Wales the symbols for everything imbecile and
contemptible.
In nothing does the want of
system and organized effort more remarkably display itself than in the
almost total absence of all attention to sanitary science.
Mr. Burton Bradley, a
well-known and respected colonist, has written, lectured, and worked, for
years with indefatigable ardour and devotion in this cause, and he has a few
enlightened and sympathetic fellow-workers, but practically the colony is
behind a Hindoo village in this respect. In Newcastle, for instance, a
crowded cemetery takes up the very heart of the city, and the exudations
from it drain into nearly every well in the lower and more crowded portion
of the town. A new cemetery has, it is true, been lately dedicated, but is
likely to be for years unused, by reason of the pitiful bickerings of rival
sects about the acres apportioned to the poor dead dust.
It is now (1879) nearly three
years since Mr. Clarke, the celebrated hydraulic engineer, reported on the
water supply of the Hunter River district towns. The report was highly
approved of, money was to be devoted to carry out the scheme at once. A
great show of activity and zealous effort was made, surveys were instituted,
plans were drawn out. I believe even a skeleton staff of officials was
appointed. What is the result ? Night after night some miserable jackdaw in
the parliament, who has unearthed a bone, in the shape of a petty personal
scandal, moves the adjournment of the House, that the dirty linen may be
washed in public. Session after session is wasted, and great schemes of
national weal, such as this of water supply, get' shelved, while hundreds of
easily preventible deaths annually occur from bad water, defective drainage,
neglect of sanitary laws. Nothing is done by the legislature, absolutely no
progress is made. In November, 1877, 1 wrote as follows. I make no apology
for reproducing this article here, for written with no intention of ever
being put before an English audience, they may be accepted as honest
outspoken criticisms, and give a good idea of the state of things against
which they were written at the time. I am sorry to say that the signs of
improvement seem tardy of approach. My article, written in 1877, applies
with just as much force to the state of things now as it did then. Here it
is :—
The laws of health, the
origin of disease, the conditions of life, in connexion with drainage,
proper ventilation, fresh water, pure air, and free room, have all been
exhaustively studied, and written, and talked about, and acted on, until we
have really very little more to learn in connexion with the science and
practice of sanitation. It would seem, however, as if it had been altogether
and utterly neglected in Newcastle. No provision whatever for a wise
sanitation in our city seems to have been made. Although the town may
.originally have been built at hap-hazard, streets started leading to
nowhere, impassable and impossible thoroughfares projected, houses tumbled
down at every angle to each other, and evidently built without the slightest
regard to order, method, or design : there yet seems to be, as time goes on,
and attention is directed to other matters, a most fatal apathy shown as
regards sanitary measures for the proper conservation of the health of the
town. Go into any back yard, almost in any quarter of the city, or look from
the back windows of almost any street, and the eye roves over the most
inconceivable jumble of nuisances and unlovely sights that could be anywhere
imagined. 'The appearance of our filthy, squalid courts would disgrace the
most tumbledown Irish collection of hovels, or the proverbially dirty
purlieus of a Spanish or Mexican village. On every hand rise out-offices,
placed cheek by jowl with water-tanks; and in close proximity to wells. The
dry earth system never seems to have been heard of in Newcastle, and the
most fearful odours and mephitic exhalations rise and fester in the
close-confined, poisonous, reeking atmosphere, without the slightest attempt
at check, removal, or restraint. Nay, more! This horrible State of things is
accepted without a murmur, as quite a part of the situation, and to all-
appearance irremediable. A sickly steamy smell pervades the air, and in the
worst places, and near some .of the drains, the smell is deadly in its
horribleness. How, in God's name, can children, nay, robust men and women,
be expected to remain healthy, with such an atmosphere and such a state of
things around them ? We are no; alarmists, we have no wish to indulge in
sensational writing, but we do say that we are standing on the edge of a
crater, on the brink of a terrible danger. At every breath we draw we are in
danger of inhaling the ghastly germs of disease, and' strenuous efforts
should be made to at least ameliorate this most forbidding and disgusting
state of things. It would surely not be impossible to have the gutters of
the principal streets flushed at least once or twice a week. The
fire-engines could be utilized for that purpose, and water is plentiful at
least in the harbour. Much can be done by individual efforts and personal
cleanliness. The unsightly collections of litter in back yards should be
removed. The dry earth system should be introduced, and insisted on, by
owners of houses, and heads of families. It can be introduced at very little
extra trouble and expense, and even the dust from our streets could be
utilized, and form a valuable deodorizer and subsequent fertilizer. This
again leads us to inquire where are the gardens that should surround our
town with a belt of verdure and beauty? Is it owing once again to the vile
monopoly in land, which we have so often written against and deplored. What
is to hinder the swamps and flats around Burwood, the Glebe, Hamilton,
Wickham and Bullock Island, from being cultivated? Were the land to be had
at reasonably low rents, we doubt not kitchen gardening would give
employment to hundreds of hardworking honest sons of toil. The town and
shipping would absorb all that could be raised in the way of fruits and
vegetables, and in place of unhealthy swamps, and unlovely mud flats,—the
haunt of mosquitoes, agues, and fevers,—we would have smiling gardens and
trim cottages nestling snugly each in its neatly cultivated patch. These
would beautify the landscape, purify the atmosphere, enhance the value and
attractiveness of the city, and support a large industrious population of
happy, healthy, and prosperous citizens. Carbolic acid, chloride of lime, or
other disinfectants, should be used in all out-offices and cess-pits at
least twice a week, and as citizens we should not rest till our drainage is
made worthy of the scientific age in which we live; our water supply be
secured without further shuffling and delay, and a wise system of sanitation
adopted and insisted on in our midst. Why, the state of our town is a
standing menace, a defiance of nature, a scandal and reproach to our
civilization. In the boasted second city of New South Wales there is not a
latrine, a public urinal, a public bath, one decently paved street, one
healthy drain, or (shall we add ?) one spark of honest regard for the grand
truth, "cleanliness is next,to godliness."
At the present writing (July,
1879) the matter is seemingly no further advanced than it was three years
ago.
All this does not overstate
the case. Sanitary science is practically ignored in New South Wales. Sydney
is just as great a sinner in this respect as Newcastle. The surplus from the
shameful alienation of crown lands is frittered away in a thousand
unproductive directions, and the death-rate yearly mounts up higher.
Newcastle, by its most ardent
admirer, could not be called a beautiful town. But for the ever glorious
sea, rolling, its billows on the sandy beach, there is in fact no animation
in the landscape. The shipping, when the harbour is full, always suggests
pleasant imaginings, the principal of which centre round the suggestion,
that by means of their white sails and glistening hulls, one can be
transported from the stench and dust and grime of this deadly dirty town. A
dense pall of smoke ever hangs over the town and district, and even far out
at sea the captain of your steamer will point to the' distant thick curtain
of lowering smoke, and say, "There lies Newcastle."
There no doubt that with its
mineral wealth and favoured position, it is destined to become one of the
greatest shipping ports of the Pacific "coasts, and numerous costly and
scientific appliances are at work, deepening and improving the harbour,
developing the resources, and utilizing the wealth and productions of this
flourishing district. In this respect there is no cause for complaint, but
then these affect pockets, not lives. A very fine breakwater is being thrown
out into the sea, and serious" attention has been drawn, despite the
short-sighted obstructiveness of a few members of parliament, towards the
efficient defence of this-most important naval station, in case of attack.
Preparation is undoubtedly the best defence, and it is to be hoped the
defence works, begun during the panic of the time when' the British fleet
steamed up to Besika Bay, will not share the fate of the water supply
scheme, and be put off till the Greek Kalends. It is highly probable,
however, that such will be their fate.
Previous to 1874 there was a
keen competition among the collieries for customers, the consequence being
ruinous lowering of prices, reduced wages, and general depression. In that
year an agreement was made between masters and men of certain collieries
(known thenceforth as the Associated Collieries), by which this competition
was, to a certain extent, restricted, the associated masters agreeing on a
uniform fixed price. At the same time one of the, grandest arrangements'
ever entered into between capital and labour was made, so say its authors.
This was a sliding scale of wages, by which, as the price of coals rose, the
wages of the miners rose pro rata, and this has, without doubt,' materially
contributed ' to the prosperity of the district, and the development of the
coal-mining industry. As the matter is of great interest to capitalists,
both here and at home, I give the agreement in the Appendix.2 Last year,
however, 1878, there were symptoms of a split, and much agitation arose in
the district in consequence. It was said that while ostensibly sticking to
the agreement, some of the associated collieries were resorting to the old
trick of underselling the others. The quarrel waxed fierce and hot. It will
not interest the general reader to recapitulate all the phases of the
controversy that arose. Suffice it to say that the agreement, in its first
integrity, had to be given up. A makeshift was hit upon in the shape of the
Vend Scheme.
By this all the associated
collieries had a certain amount of their total output of coal allotted to
them, corresponding to the amount shipped during the year from the port, the
number of hands employed, the capabilities of the pit, and so on. "When the
allotted output had been reached, the mine had to stop work, and, in fact,
in some cases this has been done. There are symptoms, however, that this
cannot last long. One proprietor has looked on this as an attempt on the
part of the men to fetter his right of free action to raise as much coal as
he can, to sell as much as he can, and to whom he will. Other masters
grumble at their allotment, and the whole scheme is but protection in its
worst form, at the expense of the general public who are the purchasers. The
Illawana mines in the south, and the mountain mines in the interior, are
redoubling their efforts to acquire a share in the trade. Borings for coal
are being prosecuted underneath and around Sydney, and signs are not wanting
that the Newcastle coal monopoly is in danger of being broken up.
Whether this will be an
unmixed blessing or not remains to be seen. The Vend scheme is rotten in
principle. The mutual agreement and sliding-scale was infinitely better.
Even that bore hard on the consumer, but he had to take what he could get,
and be thankful he got coal at any price. Unrestricted competition will to-
a certainty stimulate enterprise. Cheap coal will be hailed as a boon; it
will help to foster and promote manufacturing works, and it may attract
increased shipping and beget a much larger output of coal. We shall see.
The upholders of the monopoly
and high-selling price of coal say that the trade is limited; that only a
certain number of ships come out, or are attracted to the port; and that
there is no scope for an increased export trade. This also has to be proved.
Meanwhile housekeepers and shippers alike grumble, but the coal ring burrow
away and enjoy the goods the gods provide, undisturbed alike by malediction
or laudation.
The miners, it must be said,
are not as a rule a thrifty race. When they have been earning good wages
much more of their earnings might have found their way to the savings-bank
than has been the case. Consequently, when hard times come they quickly feel
the pinch. Gold-mining has been in a depressed state ever since the mania of
1872 ; and other employments are uncongenial to the sons of Pluto. When the
harbour, therefore, is empty, and work slack at the pit, the miner has
rather hard times of it.
They are paid 5s. per ton for
cutting coal, and were they in regular work could make about a pound
sterling per diem. They are not, however, in regular work, and probably
average about 5/. to 6l. a fortnight. They are paid fortnightly on a
Friday, and the Saturday is called spending day. On this day the town
presents a busy sight. The streets are crowded with miners and their wives
making purchases, and a tremendous amount of beer and other liquors is
consumed. They are a peculiar people. They seem rough enough, but there is
much kindly feeling and warm-heartedness beneath their homely casing. They
are surrounded with few of the refinements and beauties of life. Theirs is a
hard, perilous task to bring to the light the deep-buried treasures of the
dark and silent pit.
They are intensely clannish
and not over-delicate in expressing their opinions about either men or
things. All have a darkish rim under the eyes. Many stoop and have rounded
shoulders, and rheumatic and chest affections are pretty common. One
Saturday I took a drive out to Wallsend, in which populous township there
are perhaps congregated more miners than in any other of the numerous
villages round the city. There was a football match being contested between
the local club and the one from Newcastle. There were many very ludicrous
incidents, and as the ground was sloppy and had several deep pools of water
standing in the various hollows, the players were soon covered with mud from
head to foot. During the game there was a contested point, over which a good
deal of excited talk arose. The on-lookers were intensely partisan, and as
the contest waxed hotter and ended in a struggle for possession of the ball,
they could restrain themselves no longer. Imagining there was a fight going
on, they burst all bounds, crowded on to the course, and began hustling the
Newcastle men off the place. In vain their own players expostulated; in
vain' the umpires shouted, commanded, pleaded, and protested. It was of no
use, the miners were on their own dunghill, and were not to be baulked, and
were only restored to good humour and prevailed on to leave the players
alone, after half an hour's fierce wrangling and contention, during which
the strangers had to submit to some rather rough handling.
But for the dense black
tea-scrub bordering the race-course, one could have fancied himself in the
heart of a mining village at home. At one end a number of youths were
engaged in shinty, a sort of polo on foot. With their fur head-dresses,
Scotch caps, and fustian habiliments, they reminded me of long-forgotten
scenes on the village-common in Scotland.
Quoits seem to be the
favourite amusement of the miners. Before every public-house a brawny youth
or two. with arms bared to the elbow, may be seen poising the polished
"discus," and with unerring aim hurling it straight for the iron pin that
marks the goal. The old-fashioned game of fives, too, seems to command the
suffrages of a goodly number of the young men. Cricket also has its
votaries. Horse-racing is largely patronized, and the mysterious game of
knurr and spell is advertised in the miner's favourite medium, the Newcastle
Morning Herald and Advocate. It consists in a ball being let out of a trap,
much in the same way as a pigeon at pigeon-shooting. The player tries to hit
the ball as it bounds from the trap, and some benefit is supposed to accrue
if he succeeds in making good his aim. No one in the town seems to have a
clear idea of what the game really is, and to this day I have not been
initiated into its mysteries.
The valley of the Hunter is
admirably fitted for semi-tropical productions, and very fine fruits and
crops are grown by the farmers. Several large vineries and tobacco gardens
are to be met at intervals along the river, and good wine is made in the
district. In -New England, farther to the north up by Armadale and
Tenterfield, the grapes are magnificent in the season, and scarcely to be
surpassed anywhere for either size, quantity, or flavour.
The coal-pits at Wallsend and
those of the Australian Agricultural Company are about the largest in the
district. They give employment to over 1000 men between them, and there are
nearly 100 horses employed underground hauling trucks and strips. In many
places where the workings have been abandoned and the tunnels have fallen
in, the surface of the hill looks as if it had been rent and riven by some
tremendous earthquake. Here as elsewhere the Chinamen have established small
colonies. They are the market-gardeners and hawkers of the place. Their
gardening is superb. They make the ground grow almost anything. Personally
they are filthy, but their vegetables are swelling, succulent and sweet. One
celestial with a very filthy skin told me he could make about 21, per diem
with his cart and horse. There can be no question of the fact. I think that
the white man could do just as well, and better, if to his energy and
strength and intelligence he would add the plodding patience, the unflagging
industry, and laudable thrift of his Mongolian rival. These children of the
sun, too, are most tenacious of any hold they can get. They are an
independent lot, and with wonderful pertinacity stick to their point till it
is gained. Their usually placid temper, however, seems to be ruffled when
the boys take to calling them Irishmen. What there is between Pat and John
which calls forth such manifestations of temper and mutual dislike I know
not, but a Chinaman here is mortally insulted when you call him Paddy and
repudiates the connexion with bitter scorn.
Land here, too, as in the
vicinity of all colonial towns has immensely increased in value, and has got
into the hands of a few monopolists who stand terribly in the way of needed
reforms. The miners are fierce democrats and out-and-out radicals. They are
keen politicians, and shortly after my arrival in the colony they returned a
representative of their own to parliament, and were taxing themselves to pay
him a salary of 300?. per annum, which they guaranteed him. This
arrangement, however admirable as it might be in theory, did not work well
in practice. A paid delegate may be all very well if the general funds
support him, but the weekly sixpence was found to be a burden, and soon
became small by degrees and beautifully less, till it ceased altogether. The
numbers of public-houses strike one with amazement. The houses of the miners
are rude and miserable-looking in the extreme. The proprietors of the pits
allow their workmen, I believe, to erect a "house, and live rent-free on
their ground, so long as they continue connected with the pit. The hovels
run up are wretched. The walls are rough, upright, undressed posts. The roof
consists of ragged sheets of bark held in place by morticed beams, set
astride the ridge pole and tied at the eaves. The chimney is a fearful and
wonderful construction of earth, clay, battered tin, old iron piping and
shingles. There are few cottage gardens, and yet the land is fertile and
easily worked. The miner will not, or cannot, take the trouble to grow his
own vegetables, and the Chinaman steps in and gets rich in supplying the
welcome products of his trim garden to the very customers who ought to- be
revelling in such delicacies, each from his own garden-plot.
The pits do not in general
work full time, as shipping requirements are rather less than the output of
the mines; but in addition to the mines there are several breweries, tanning
and fell-mongering yards, potteries, smelting works, vineyards, and other
industries, all of which give employment to large numbers of workmen. Then,
again, the shipping provides for many more; so that altogether there is a
very large working population, and the city and district are the very hotbed
of radicalism and ultra-democratic notions. Let not the retired Anglo-Indian
therefore settle near Newcastle. |
