A CROWN OF GOLD AND A CROSS OF CACTUS
Queensland is one of the gold states of Australia. It is especially
noted for Mount Morgan, perhaps the richest gold mine of the world.
This mountain is twenty-four miles from the city of Rockhampton, on
the coast north of Brisbane. It has already produced more than one
hundred and twenty-five million dollars’ worth of gold, and paid more
than fifty million dollars in dividends. The original fourteen owners
invested only a few hundred pounds.
The mountain belongs to a low range of hills not far from the coast.
It was part of a farm owned by a man named Gordon, who had fenced it
in and was using it for pasturage. One night Gordon was visited by
two brothers named Morgan, who were prospecting. The Morgans stayed
overnight, and Gordon told them he thought there was copper on his
farm as he had noticed green and blue stains in the rocks. The next
day he took the prospectors to the mountain, and when they left they
carried away samples. A few days later they came back and offered him
five dollars an acre for the property. He was glad to sell, and for
this price the Morgans bought one of the richest mining properties
ever known. To get money to work the mine they sold a half interest
to three men in Rockhampton for ten thousand dollars. With this they
experimented, and finally discovered that the ore could be worked by
the chlorination process. The result was that they and their associates
soon became millionaires.
Since then the works have expanded until a town has grown up at the
foot of the mountain. There are great mills, in which more than two
thousand men are employed. The mine has continued to pay big dividends,
but these now come from copper rather than from gold. For, when the
gold began to grow scarce, apparently inexhaustible supplies of copper
were found underneath the deposits of the more precious metal.
Some people think that there may be other gold deposits in the
neighbourhood equally as rich as those of Mount Morgan. However that
may be, it is a fact that twenty miles from the city a little boy one
day found a nugget worth ten thousand dollars.
Rockhampton is a city of twenty thousand founded on the gold and copper
mines. It is now growing as a centre of the dairying and mixed farming
interests fast developing in the surrounding country. The town, which
has the Tropic of Capricorn running through one of its streets, is
built some thirty miles inland on a steamy valley of the Fitzroy River.
It is cut off by a high range of hills from the ocean breezes. Even in
June, the coolest month of the year, the thermometer goes above eighty
degrees Fahrenheit, and in February the mercury often rises to one
hundred and sixteen. In the early gold-mining days the Britishers who
came out to get rich and toiled in the heat nicknamed the place the
“City of the Three S’s”--Sin, Sweat, and Sorrow. Nevertheless, it is a
growing town full of business.
Three hundred miles northwest of Rockhampton is the town of Charters
Towers, the centre of another big gold field a few miles back of the
seaport of Townsville. The gold at the “Towers” was discovered in 1872
by three prospectors, who took out millions of dollars’ worth in a
short time. The principal mining is quartz, some of the workings being
very deep. As at Mount Morgan, copper mining is carried on profitably
along with the gold mining. Another field is that of Gympie, where, it
is said, the boys used to pick up grains of gold in the streets after
a rain, sometimes getting as much as half an ounce a day. In that town
one man found a nugget worth eleven hundred dollars.
So far, Queensland has produced nearly half a billion dollars’ worth
of gold, and mines are still being worked throughout a large area,
although the cream of the known deposits has been skimmed off.
There are also deposits of lead, as well as of iron, bismuth, and
silver. Iron is found in all sections, and in one district there are
little mountains of iron ore. Mt. Leviathan, a hill two hundred feet
high, is said to be composed of pure magnetic iron. In the long tongue
of York Peninsula, which Queensland thrusts up toward Torres Strait,
there are tin deposits over a wide area. Tin is found also in the
southern part of the state.
Some of the finest Australian opals come from western Queensland.
That region has a long belt of opal-bearing country, extending from a
point near the Gulf of Carpentaria across the southern border of the
state and into New South Wales. The opals are brought into Brisbane
by the handful and sold at low prices. Many of the opal miners are
sheep-shearers, who hunt for the stones in the off season. The gems are
found in quartz and in sandstone, from six inches to thirty feet below
the surface. The Queensland black opal brings big prices in Paris,
London, and New York. It is not really black but a mixture of rich
colours, with iridescent green and violet prevailing. Deep down in its
heart is a living spark of flame, which has given it also the name of
the “fire opal.”
About two hundred miles west of Rockhampton are the Anakie gem fields
which are studded with sapphires. Stones to the value of nearly one
hundred thousand dollars are produced there every year. The best
of them are of the clear lemon and orange tints which have become
especially popular with the jewellers of Paris.
So much for Queensland’s crown of gold studded with gems. Her cross
is the greenish-gray cactus, which has ruined vast areas of rich
agricultural lands. I have heard different stories about how prickly
pear came to Australia. Some say John Macarthur, who was such a
benefactor to the country through his introduction of the Merino sheep
from Spain, is responsible for it. Perhaps he had seen the cactus
hedges used in the thickly settled Mediterranean countries to separate
small holdings and thought they would be a good thing for the gardens
and paddocks of the Australian settlers. It is even said that the first
prickly-pear plant was sent to the Downs carefully wrapped in cotton
wool and packed in a sealed box. Now, for mile upon mile the traveller
sees only an impenetrable thicket of this spiny, gray-green vegetation,
growing right up to the settlers’ front doors. It is stated that the
plant covers more than fifteen million acres of Queensland, or an area
nearly twice that of Rhode Island.
[Illustration: When an Australian speaks of clearing the land of
“scrub” he does not refer to a mere matter of brush and saplings, but
to what we would consider a dense forest of full-grown trees.]
[Illustration: In the cattle country of southern Queensland the farm
houses are one-story frame bungalows, roofed with corrugated iron and
often set up on iron piles to keep out the wood-devouring ants.]
[Illustration: An American dropped from an airplane into Martin Place,
Sydney, would feel very much at home. Many of the newer buildings are
of our skyscraper type, while the street is filled with motor cars made
in the States.]
The state government sent a Prickly-Pear Commission on an
eighteen-months’ tour around the world in the effort to find some
parasite or disease with which to destroy the pear. It has offered
great rewards to any chemist who finds a specific against it, and year
by year different methods of extermination are tried out. So far,
however, no cheap and infallible way has been found. Uprooting or
cutting is useless, unless every single leaf is burned. Squirting a
solution of arsenic and soda into each leaf by means of a “pear gun”
has proved effective in the case of small growing plants, but this is
too slow and expensive on such an overwhelming proposition as fifteen
million acres. The remedy probably lies in the closer settlement of
the country and the principle of every man’s keeping his own dooryard
clean.