{"id":365,"date":"2016-11-06T04:49:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T04:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/?p=365"},"modified":"2016-11-27T10:16:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T10:16:30","slug":"the-hydraulic-man-or-how-teddy-orourke-dried-out-in-the-wet-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/06\/the-hydraulic-man-or-how-teddy-orourke-dried-out-in-the-wet-season\/","title":{"rendered":"The hydraulic man, or how Teddy O’Rourke dried out in the wet season"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hydraulic<\/a>

Hydraulic sluicing on the north-eastern Tasmanian tin fields. O’Rourke’s hydraulic gold mine operated in the same manner. Stephen Spurling III photo, courtesy of Stephen Hiller.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Five Mile Rise goldfield, between the upper Forth River and the Middlesex Plains, north-western Tasmania, showing the position of the O’Rourke’s hydraulic gold mine.<\/p><\/div>\n

Had Tasmanian miner Teddy O\u2019Rourke been an interior decorator, he would have been a shoo-in for a colonial courtroom refit. His familiarity with magistrates\u2019 chambers from Hobart to Deloraine, with dalliances at Kempton, Lefroy , George Town and almost a permanent booking in Launceston, must have been unsurpassed. Unfortunately, he was probably often too drunk to remember the decor. Yet Teddy also seems to have found a way to beat the bottle for two decades.<\/p>\n

Edward Martin O\u2019Rourke was born into an Irish Catholic family in Hobart in about 1856. A newspaper report of his mother Eliza (n\u00e9e O\u2019Donnell or Donnell, a convict[1]<\/a>) leaving home to escape violent attack by his father, ex-convict constable Martin O\u2019Rourke (or Rourke), when he was an infant suggests that his was not a happy, comfortable childhood.[2]<\/a> His education was probably rudimentary, as he remained illiterate.[3]<\/a> By the time Martin O\u2019Rourke drowned trying to ford the Forester River in 1876 at the age of 45, Teddy had at least five siblings.[4]<\/a> It was after that that Teddy, along with his mother and sister Mary Ann Stratton, started making regular appearances in the Launceston Police Court, charged with assault (sometimes of each other), theft and drunk and disorderly behaviour.[5]<\/a> The Jolly Butchers Hotel in Balfour Street kept by Eliza O\u2019Rourke was the scene of some of this action.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

At the age of about 21 Teddy left Launceston for a rollicking lifestyle, racking up fines for public disturbances and learning how to handle a cradle at Brandy Creek, the alluvial goldfield that became Beaconsfield.[7]<\/a> The only treatment he appears to have received for alcoholism was a stint in the slammer. One assault charge against him was dropped because his delirium tremens made him unable to testify.[8]<\/a> Finally, in 1883, the judiciary lost patience and he got six months\u2019 gaol for being idle and disorderly\u2014followed by another three months for the same offence, this time in Hobart.[9]<\/a> He served at least six terms in Hobart\u2019s Campbell Street Gaol.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet after 1892 O\u2019Rourke stayed out of trouble for more than 20 years. Was mining his saviour? Men like Syd Reardon and Paddy Hartnett at Lorinna, 20 km from the nearest hotel, are said to have found an escape from the bottle in the bush. Perhaps Teddy\u2019s experience on the Five Mile Rise when it was a diggers\u2019 gold field in the 1880s was literally a sobering one.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

Then in about 1893 the New Zealand hydraulic craze hit Tasmania, and old gold fields like the Five Mile Rise got another trial, this time with the high-pressure hydraulic hose. Teddy O\u2019Rourke took a claim on Sunday Creek, high up the Five Mile Rise, built a hut nearby and embarked on an unusual seasonal regime. Since it was only in the wet season that he could get sufficient water to operate the high-pressure hose, he combined hydraulic sluicing with hunting. April, May and June were the traditional hunting season. Prospectors and miners in the bush generally snared and shot animals for food anyway, but processing their skins for sale would have enabled O\u2019Rourke to maximise (and perhaps sustain) his winters in the bush. A photo of what is probably O\u2019Rourke\u2019s hut taken by Fred Smithies shows that it was equipped with a skin drying chimney typical of those developed in the Cradle Mountain-Middlesex Plains area for the drying of possum and wallaby skins.<\/p>\n

Teddy now revealed that not only could he make the press but he could use it. The secret to raising capital, apparently, was constant self-reference in the mining columns of newspapers. Harold Tuson grew up at Lorinna. In 1911, at the age of thirteen, he started work on gangs making tracks and roads in the upper Forth River region. During this time he came to know O\u2019Rourke well as a fellow road worker, one of the latter\u2019s summer jobs. He recalled the \u2018big lump of a [Tasmanian-born] Irishman\u2019 speaking with a thick Irish brogue. Having survived two or three bushfires, O\u2019Rourke\u2019s hut was then clearly visible from Lorinna high on the hill. Tuson recalled the miner\u2019s struggle with alcoholism and his appearances in both the legal and mining columns of the newspaper: \u2018\u201cO\u2019Rourke\u2019s Hydraulic showing gold freely in the face\u201d. That was one of Teddy\u2019s. He\u2019d write that to the paper to keep it going\u2019.[12]<\/a> Other stock phrases included \u2018sluicing on payable gold\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Hut<\/a>

\u2018Hut at the top of the Forth Gorge track\u2019, probably O\u2019Rourke\u2019s hut, showing the typical skin shed chimney favoured by Middlesex area hunters.
Fred Smithies photo, NS573\/4\/9\/32 (TAHO)<\/p><\/div>\n

O\u2019Rourke\u2019s hut stood near the beginning of the pack track down to the Devon mine in the Dove River Gorge. This pack track had become part of an extraordinarily steep route used by hunters to gain access to the Cradle Mountain region. On the southern side of the Dove River Gorge, the route continued up a steep hill known as Paddys Nut and crossed the Campbell River.[13]<\/a> This was the route used by hunters Tom Jones and Bert Hansen in the winter of 1905 when the latter was tragically lost in a snowstorm near the lake near Cradle Mountain that now bears his name. Jones reported four-feet-deep snow as he began to make his way out to O\u2019Rourke\u2019s hut to raise the alarm, giving some idea of the conditions the gold miner experienced during these winter stints.[14]<\/a> Since there are no mining reports to the press from O\u2019Rourke in 1905, hunting may have been his primary activity during that wet season.<\/p>\n

He also had business elsewhere. In 1904 O\u2019Rourke had taken up a tungsten claim nearby, and by 1907 he was based at Ringarooma in the north-east, where he discovered the Montrose tin mine.[15]<\/a> Later he turned his attention to the Colebrook tin field on the west coast, where he held a claim for a Launceston syndicate.[16]<\/a> Meanwhile, in his absence, his hut on the Five Mile Rise was entered, robbed and forfeited to the Crown.[17]<\/a> Thus the only property Ted O\u2019Rourke ever owned was lost.<\/p>\n

In 1911 he had a child, Edeline O\u2019Rourke, with the recently widowed Annie Bissett (n\u00e9e Garrett) in Launceston.[18]<\/a> She already had five children! Family responsibilities would have necessitated a steady income, hence, perhaps, O\u2019Rourke\u2019s work on the road gang. Eventually he may have got too old for bush life. Again, he was not at his best in town near the pubs. O\u2019Rourke\u2019s declining years contained a familiar litany of court appearances, including charges of disturbing the peace and vagrancy.[19]<\/a> In 1919 the 63-year-old was found lying unconscious with a gashed head on a Launceston street.[20]<\/a> In 1920 he was described as \u2018an old habitue\u2019 when defending a charge of being drunk and incapable in Albert Park on Christmas Day and in Charles Street a few days later.[21]<\/a> He sported a scar over his left eye, perhaps as the result of some drunken escapade.[22]<\/a> In 1922 he absconded when wanted for non-maintenance of his children, being tracked down in Deloraine.[23]<\/a> In 1924, at 68 years of age, he was again found drunk and incapable in the street.[24]<\/a> The trail of self-destruction stops there.<\/p>\n

Like so many children of ex-convicts who could never escape the cycle of poverty and alcoholism into which they were born, Ted O\u2019Rourke would have died intestate, with few possessions. His death stirred no comment in the press. Perhaps no one mourned his passing. However, I like to think of him as an innovator. He developed an unusual regime of hose, snare and, perhaps, teetotal, which kept him upright for two decades, drying out when the wet winter season brought his mining claim to life. That counts him as a success!<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Eliza O\u2019Donnell was transported on the Midlothian<\/em>. See permission to marry, 4 April 1855, CON52\/1\/7, p.408 (TAHO) and marriage certificate 473\/1855, Hobart.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> \u2018Local intelligence\u2019, Colonial Times<\/em>, 17 March 1857, p.3.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Campbell Street Gaol Gate-book, warrant no.17591, 18 February 1889; records compiled by Laurie Moody; http:\/\/www.tasmanianwarcasualties.com\/gravesofts%20split\/Campbell%20Street%20Gaol\/Rural%20Offences%20Part%209.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> See inquest, POL709\/1\/13, p.31 (TAHO); \u2018Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 20 January 1877, p.3. Martin Rourke was tried at Galway on 23 June 1848, sentenced to seven years, and came to Tasmania on the Lord Balhousie<\/em>, being pardoned in 1855.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> See, for example, \u2018Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner, <\/em>21 September 1876, supplement p.2; \u2018Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 9 November 1876, p.4.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> \u2018Quarterly licence meeting\u2019, Launceston Examiner<\/em>, 8 August 1876, p.3; \u2018Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 9 November 1876, p.4; \u2018No true bill\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 1 March 1877, p.2.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> \u2018George Town\u2019, Reports of Crime<\/em>, 5 April 1878, pp.55\u201356.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> \u2018Launceston Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 26 April 1882, p.3.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> \u2018Launceston Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 12 November 1883, p.3; \u2018City Police Court\u2019, Mercury, <\/em>17 December 1884, p.2.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Laurie Moody, \u2018Campbell Street Gaol: inmates 1873\u20131890\u2019, Tasmanian Ancestry<\/em>, vol.26, no.2, September 2005, pp.24\u201330.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Harold Tuson, interviewed in Canberra, 11 May 1995.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Harold Tuson, interviewed in Canberra, 11 May 1995.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> See, for example, \u2018North Western notes\u2019, Mercury,<\/em> 4 August 1905, p.2.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> \u2018Cradle Mountain mystery\u2019, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times,<\/em> 11 September 1905, p.2.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> \u2018Iris River wolfram field\u2019, Examiner, <\/em>20 September 1904, p.2; \u2018Discovery of tin\u2019, Examiner,<\/em> 26 October 1906, p.2.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> See, for example, \u2018Colebrook tin fields\u2019, Examiner, <\/em>24 February 1912, p.4.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> POL386\/1\/1, Daily Record of Crime Occurrences \u2013 Sheffield 1901-1916 (TAHO).<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Birth registration 4877\/1911, Launceston. See \u2018Branxholm railway accident\u2019, Mercury<\/em>, 26 April 1910, p.2.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> \u2018Police Courts, Hobart\u2019, Mercury,<\/em> 21 September 1915, p.6; \u2018Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 3 November 1916, p.4; \u2018City Police Court\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 13 April 1917, p.4; \u2018City Police Court\u2019, Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 18 June 1918, p.4.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> \u2018An old age pensioner\u2019s plight\u2019, Launceston Examiner,<\/em> 26 December 1919, p.4.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> \u2018City Police Court\u2019, Daily Telegraph,<\/em> 6 January 1920, p.2.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> \u2018Prisoners to be discharged\u2019, Police Gazette<\/em>, 9 April 1920, p.69.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> \u2018Persons enquired for\u2019, Police Gazette<\/em>, 23 June 1922, p.114; \u2018Absconders\u2019, Police Gazette<\/em>, 14 July 1922, p.127.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> \u2018City Police Court\u2019, Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 15 December 1924, p.4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Had Tasmanian miner Teddy O\u2019Rourke been an interior decorator, he would have been a shoo-in for a colonial courtroom refit. His familiarity with magistrates\u2019 chambers from Hobart to Deloraine, with dalliances at Kempton, Lefroy , George Town and almost a permanent booking in Launceston, must have been unsurpassed. Unfortunately, he was probably often too drunk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[174,124,120,121,125,24,123,122,15],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tasmanian-high-country-history","tag-bert-hanson","tag-children-of-convicts","tag-cradle-mountain","tag-edward-teddy-orourke","tag-five-mile-rise-goldfield","tag-gold-mining","tag-hunting","tag-hydraulic-mining","tag-middlesex-mining-field"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}