{"id":637,"date":"2017-02-13T20:03:23","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T20:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/?p=637"},"modified":"2017-02-13T20:39:58","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T20:39:58","slug":"big-jim-wilkinson-leaves-a-lover-grieving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/13\/big-jim-wilkinson-leaves-a-lover-grieving\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Jim Wilkinson leaves a lover grieving"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

‘Big Jim\u2019 Wilkinson, sketched by Miss AJ Campbell at Kalgoorlie in 1898. From Critic <\/em>(Adelaide), 26 March 1898, p.5<\/p><\/div>\n

A heartbreaking dedication is inscribed on a ceramic vase on one of the four marked graves in the Balfour Cemetery:<\/p>\n

To Jim<\/p>\n

good night love<\/p>\n

may the night be short<\/p>\n

that parts we two<\/p>\n

Alma<\/p>\n

Big Jim Wilkinson stood almost 200 cm tall\u20146 foot 5 inches in the old measure. He was proof that even remote Tasmanian mining fields attracted not just local prospectors, labourers, miners, engine drivers and other skilled workers, but international adventurers, men who flitted between gold rushes and boom towns, revelling in the lifestyle, but who eventually settled into the more stable support industries that underpinned every mining field. Wilkinson, who supposedly counted Australia\u2019s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, and the poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, as friends, had been an imposing figure on the Kalgoorlie goldfield, being \u2018a big power with the miners \u2026 He is one of the most popular men in Kalgoorlie, and deservedly so. He has a head like a Roman senator…\u2019[1]<\/a> He hadn\u2019t quite made it into the Australian Senate, being defeated in two campaigns in Western Australia. He was also said to have made \u2018a prodigious impression\u2019 in Gormanston, \u2018with his Uncle Sam beard, his diamonds, his earrings, and his accent which was very good American for a Victorian native!\u2019[2]<\/a> He had discovered gold on the Murchison field, kept livery stables and attained legendary status as a coach driver in the early days of the Silverton-Broken Hill silver field by keeping his passengers\u2014or his horses, if he was carrying only freight\u2014awake through the night with recitations of Gordon\u2019s verses.[3]<\/a> He had been a pearler, a guano dealer in south-east Asia, a race handicapper and a hotelier.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Alma’s inscription on Jim’s grave at Balfour.
Photo by Nic Haygarth.<\/p><\/div>\n

However, none of that counted for anything at Balfour, where Wilkinson achieved another distinction entirely\u2014he was the first interment in the cemetery, in January 1910, after only one month in town. He had come to Balfour to run a hotel for his brother-in-law, the ubiquitous jack-of-all-trades Frank Gaffney. Wilkinson arrived as a diabetic, in a shanty town that had no resident doctor.[5]<\/a> Nor was there a minister to officiate at his grave. Like typhoid victims Haywood and Tom Shepherd before him, he died when there was no tramway from Temma. His grave relics\u2014with their emphatic tale of loss and devotion\u2014must have been hauled in from Temma by horsepower at least a year after his death. For more than a century, Big Jim Wilkinson, bright star of the boom-time, has rested in obscurity on one of Australia\u2019s most obscure mining fields, leaving us to ponder the levelling power of death and the burning question\u2014who was Alma?<\/p>\n

*With thanks to Val Fleming.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u2018Language freaks\u2019, Critic<\/em> (Adelaide), 26 March 1898, p.5.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> \u2018Gormanston notes\u2019, Zeehan and Dundas Herald<\/em>, 27 October 1903, p.4.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> See, for example, Randolph Bedford, Naught to thirty three<\/em>, Currawong Press, Sydney, 1944, pp.98\u2013100.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> See, for example, \u2018Death of Mr JJ Wilkinson\u2019, Kalgoorlie Western Argus<\/em>, 1 November 1910, p.15.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> \u2018Resident doctor\u2019, Examiner<\/em>, 10 January 1910, p.5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u20146 foot 5 inches in the old measure. He was proof that even […]<\/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":[232,230],"tags":[391,53,390,54,389,388],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-circular-head-history","category-tasmanian-high-country-history","tag-adam-lindsay-gordon","tag-balfour","tag-balfour-cemetery","tag-copper-mining","tag-frank-gaffney","tag-james-john-big-jim-wilkinson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","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=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}