Voices that Should be Heard
(Dr Ronda Jamieson is one of Australia’s most well–known oral historians. This article is the thirteenth in her series based on the oral history collections of the Battye Library.)

first mine. In the years ahead, gold, silver and copper were mined. First called Dallison’s Find, Kundip was officially gazetted in 1901 with a population of 89.
The town was roughly half way between Hopetoun, on the coast, and Ravensthorpe which was 40 km inland.

Gordon’s earliest memory was of the team of 40 donkeys that brought supplies from Hopetoun. His
next memory was of the first pub built of iron and on stilts, followed by the school. The first houses were built from the Gimlet timber which grew nearby, with walls of hessian and galvanised iron roofs. The mines’ batteries were driven by kerosene and empty tins were flattened and used for building walls on other houses. Local quartzite was also used.

Many of the men working on the mines stayed short term and some would buy goods ‘on tick’. They would then leave without paying what they owed, never to be seen again, much to the distress of business owners.

There were eight children in the Halbert family, two of them born in Coolgardie and the rest in Kundip. Gordon was the first baby born there with his mother assisted by a midwife; there was no doctor in the area.
The school had the one room and he rated highly and remembered fondly the mainly female teachers. Teaching was to sixth standard which was considered enough education at that time in such a town. A
common school activity was to press flowers found in the bush and there were competitions to see who had the best ones.

The town’s social life mainly consisted of community picnics, usually on river banks with bower sheds being built for participants. Weekly dances were also a feature with Tom Edwards playing the accordion. Later a piano was bought to add to the music. There was a rifle range, and cricket and football were played with the latter being of a high standard because of the number of miners from Victoria who were better players than the locals, in Gordon’s opinion. Running and bicycle races had cash prizes with bookmakers operating. Horse races followed.

In describing the nights where people gathered in the local pub to drink and socialise, Gordon recalled an incident where a local’s favourite place was near the big stove which was behind the bar to keep people warm. One night to his disgust, someone else had dared sit in what he considered ‘his’ chair. When he was told to move because it was the other man’s favourite place, the reply was, ‘It’s a free country. I think you can sit anywhere as long as you pay for your grog.’ Nothing was
said by the local who went back to his camp and wrapped gelignite paper around a cake of soap in which he inserted a detonator and fuse.
He returned to the pub, lit the fuse and dropped it behind the recalcitrant.
I think there was about 20 in this tap room and the old bloke behind the bar seen it and everyone seen this thing fizzling and they didn’t wait to see whether it was dynamite or not. They had a terrible turnout. They knocked the fire over and set fire to the
pub. The bloke behind the bar seen it, and he went straight through the other side and out through the window. Some other bloke jumped through the window and landed flat on his belly in the bar. He laid flat on the floor waiting for the explosion to go off. And this bloke has to put the fire out with a bit of water, and then he sat in his place. When they all come back eventually,
one at a time, looking around the corner, he was sitting in his usual place having a warm. That’s one way of getting a warm!

Gordon was 13 when he left school in 1916, and a clear memory was how deserted the town and mines were because so many of the young men left for the war. When asked what effect the war had on the town,
he answered: It took all the life out of it, all the young life away. The young blokes working on the mines, they nearly all went. There wasn’t many left. All the older men come back into work to keep the place going. … They never come back, many of them young
blokes.

He also recalled the nightmares some of the men who returned had after what they had experienced during the war.
Gordon joined Gem Consolidated mining after he left school, first working in the Assay office for a year where his teacher was Charlie Grant, my maternal great grandfather, who Gordon rated a very good teacher who taught him a lot which helped him in later years.

He then went underground and was responsible for the trucking out of ore on the underground railway that had been built. In the Assay office his pay was six shillings a day which became ten shillings when he became part of
the mining team and the working week was 5 and a half 8–hour days.
Other memories were of suicides, which Gordon blamed on gambling debts, and the number of men making good money shooting kangaroos.
They were averaging two pounds a day – four times what he was earning on the mines.
Gordon was 17 when he left the district and moved to Esperance to work on the railway being built to Salmon Gums where his pay doubled.
Survey work followed at Margaret River and Salmon Gums. He remembered that time fondly with ‘Good conditions. Getting good money, and good cooks mostly, and I lived a lot better.’ He was mostly driving wagons and doing compass work. ‘We used to average about 15
mile a day, sometimes 20, on foot. Every day. You got used to it. It was quite easy. Take me about a fortnight now to walk one 15 mile I think!’

He also recalled how ‘young blokes’ sharing this work would build tennis courts ‘out on the clay and build them from white ant hills … They made beautiful tennis courts.’ Rackets were made out of boards.

Later work at Southern Cross led to a memory of it being ‘the worst district we were in. It was too cold. It froze up all the time. About 10 o’clock in the morning you’d still be walking on ice out there in the winter. Terrible place.’ With some of the survey work, water had to be carted for miles. Cooks accompanied the crews and ‘some of them were chefs. Come from Perth. They couldn’t save money in Perth, and they used to come out on them jobs for five or six months and go home with a good few quid.’

After two and a half years on survey teams, time on shearing teams followed and Gordon remembered the cooks still being good but not able to make bread. He was in charge of all the shearing shed machinery, making sure ‘the combs and cutters were ground, sharp’. He had learnt this in Perth and sat for an exam.
I was put through a school there. In the height of the wool boom there was no experts to go around. And if you had knowledge of the machinery well there wasn’t too much in it. … I was in it over ten years.
As is typical when trips were made to country towns to conduct interviews, one interview session was all there was time for and Gordon’s led to only 90 minutes of tape being recorded which meant only part of his story could be covered. You can therefore imagine my
delight when checking the internet to see what might be online about him to find a detailed story written by Pamela Bryant, a great granddaughter of his parents. It included two photographs of Gordon and one of living members of the Bryan, Halbert, McMillan, Perrin
families. The article contained quotes from my interview with him, as well as much more information about what happened after he left Kundip. Apparently his nicknames were ‘King of Kundip, ‘Kangaroo
Jack’ and ‘Post Hole Jack’. He went on to be part of major mining ventures and spent some time salmon spotting, but returned to the Kundip area to spend the rest of his life on an 8–acre property and was credited with finding much more gold.

Dr. Ronda Jamieson

(From “Friends of the Battye Library)  Ronda is an acknowledged expert in the recording and preservation of Western Australia’s history as well as being a loved mentor and much admired leader. Knowledgeable and passionate about Western Australia’s history and heritage, Ronda has the unique ability to inspire the people around her to strive for and achieve excellence in their work.

In 1978 she joined the State Library and soon became renowned for her expertise as the State’s foremost oral historian and conducted hundreds of interviews for the Library. Ronda was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 1991 which allowed her to travel overseas to investigate best practice in oral history. For her services to the profession, she was made a life member of the Oral History Association of Australia.

​As Manager of the State Library’s Preservation Services Ronda introduced reforms and significant improvements to ensure that the State’s unique documentary history was superbly cared for and made available for research.In 1998 Ronda was appointed Director of the J S Battye Library of West Australian History and worked tirelessly to extend and improve the library’s services and enlist broad public support in the task of collecting, preserving, promoting, and making its collections more accessible. She was adept in obtaining several large grants for the Battye Library and was the guiding force behind the successful bid for a $3 million Lotterywest grant sought in partnership with the Friends of Battye Library and other key Western Australian history organisations. The resultant Historical Records Rescue Consortium (HRRC) has been outstandingly successful in preserving our unique newspapers, photographs and film.

​Despite her busy life at the Library, Ronda has found time to research and produce a number of important works on Western Australian history. While Director of the Battye Library she completed a PhD with her thesis on Country storekeeping. Since retiring from the library in 2005 she has researched and written the definitive biography of Sir Charles Court. In addition, Ronda is also deeply committed to volunteer work in the community.