Nic's Blog
George Bell’s visit to Hobart Town and the Derwent Valley, Van Diemen’s Land, 1832
George Bell (1805–52) was born in Scotland and migrated to New South Wales on the barque Minerva in 1832, the voyage from Leith to Sydney lasting 5 months and 10 days, including a a stopover of more than three weeks in Hobart Town. Bell returned to live in Van...
Checklist of the 250 osmiridium diggers in 1922
The diggers were grizzling. In 1921 Tasmania enjoyed a world monopoly on ‘point metal’ osmiridium, that is, osmiridium grains that were just the right size to fuse onto the nibs of gold fountain pens. The ossie price was generally high. Tasmania’s niche in the market...
Lily Gresson’s Adamsfield Airbnb
In November 1926 a Mrs Gresson advertised tourist accommodation at the Tasmanian mining settlement of Adamsfield: ‘See Tasmania’s Wild West, the “osie” diggers, Adams Falls, Gordon Gorge’.[1] What extraordinary enterprise for a simple digger’s wife 120 km west...
A tale of two Staceys: Jim and Tom Stacey and the Adamsfield rush
It was Tasmania’s biggest rush since the Lisle gold craze of 1879. The year was 1925, the commodity was osmiridium, the place was the Adams River, 120 km west of Hobart—and the name on everybody’s lips was Stacey. Two generations of Staceys, a Tasman Peninsula family,...
‘Mulga Mick’, osmiridium field orator; or the poet laureate of Adamsfield
He was Irish, he was a dyed-in-the-wool member of the Labor Party, and he was a socialist. Those are things we can say with certainty about the ‘voice of Adamsfield’, ‘Mulga Mick’ O’Reilly. Beyond that, a lot of his life is open to debate. This well-travelled digger...
‘The Digger’s Rest’ and ‘The Miner’s Delight’, or banking in bottles at Adamsfield
The Adamsfield sly-grog shop was anything but sly—on the contrary, it was an open secret. Commonly known as ‘The Boozer’ and ‘The Miner’s Delight’, it functioned so long as there were thirsts to be quenched, livelihoods to be drowned and punches to be thrown. For two...
On the trail of Hooky Jack, Portuguese ossie digger
Old Hooky was no new chum— All his life he’d chased the gold. And judging by his ‘skiting’ Won—and squandered—wealth untold. He’d chased it in the Yukon, In Alaska’s ice and snow, And north from hot Coolgardie Where the toughest only go.[1] The toughest also...
Osmiridium and anonymity, or Jewelled nights and gender identity
In November 1922 Nineteen Mile Creek osmiridium digger Charlie Prouse slapped a record-breaking lump of metal on the bar of Bischoff Hotel in Waratah, the nearest town. Prouse’s sale of his father Tom’s all-time-Tasmanian-record nugget probably brought them much...
Big Jim Wilkinson leaves a lover grieving
A heartbreaking dedication is inscribed on a ceramic vase on one of the four marked graves in the Balfour Cemetery: To Jim good night love may the night be short that parts we two Alma Big Jim Wilkinson stood almost 200 cm tall—6 foot 5 inches in the old measure. He...