{"id":6556,"date":"2026-04-15T07:38:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T21:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/?p=6556"},"modified":"2026-04-15T19:44:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T09:44:36","slug":"digging-up-william-long-or-early-deaths-at-mount-bischoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/15\/digging-up-william-long-or-early-deaths-at-mount-bischoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Digging up William Long, or early deaths at Mount Bischoff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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If William Long was alive today he\u2019d be 210. Or maybe 206. One-hundred-and-fifty of those years have been spent on the Mount Bischoff Tin Mine, which is hard yakka by anyone\u2019s standards. He was there while the mighty Brown Face was whittled away to line food cans and make solder, bronze and pewter. The underground firings shook his bones. Then everything went quiet but for a bandicoot or two. He was probably still lying in state when Bluestone\/Metals X dug a big hole in 2008 to supplement their Renison crushings. Now he\u2019s possibly a native revegetation consultant (NRC), pushing up tea-trees rather than daisies on a parched surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who was this William Long who died at Bischoff in 1876? He may have been one of five convicts of that name. There is insufficient information to make a call. Convict number five was transported to Van Diemen\u2019s Land for seven years for falling asleep at his sentry post at the York Barracks. A bit harsh, surely. Whichever convict (or none) he might have been, 52-year-labourer William Long married 39-year-old schoolteacher Mary Ann Wilson by Congregational rites at her home at Forth in 1872.[1]<\/a> Mary Ann was assistant teacher at the Forth Public School and was probably living in the teacher\u2019s quarters of the school at 97 William Street.[2]<\/a> In 1875 William and Mary Ann Long bought Lot 23 at what is now 684 Forth Road and commissioned or built the cottage there today.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Money was tight for the Longs but the tin mines at Mount Bischoff brought opportunity. William Long packed out \u2018heads\u2019 (nuggets of tin) for the Mount Bischoff Co at a time when the mine was very remote, with bullock and horse teams providing most of the transport. There was no tramway to Waratah, just a boggy track from Emu Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bischoff was no place to get sick. There was no resident doctor. In 1874 a Mount Bischoff mining manager named William Kappler received medical attention too late to save him from pneumonia at the age of only 29.[4]<\/a> In lieu of a cemetery a grave was dug for him on the eastern side of Waratah Falls\u2014but it was never filled.[5]<\/a> William Henry paid for the removal of Kappler\u2019s corpse and he now lies in an unmarked grave at the Don Congregational Cemetery.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

William Long had no posthumous benefactor. The Longs appear to have been practising dietary self-denial to save money.[7]<\/a> William\u2019s official cause of death was \u2018general debility\u2019[8]<\/a> but Mount Bischoff Co Mine Manager Ferd Kayser seemed to blame malnutrition. At a time when Kayser was under fire for his mining methods and harsh treatment of bullock drivers, he felt keenly the wrath of Mary Ann Long, who apparently blamed him for her husband\u2019s demise. \u2018All I can say is that everything [was] done, what was in our power under the circumstances both before as well as after his death\u2019, Kayser told \u2018Philosopher\u2019 Smith. \u2018All he wanted was nutriment and so far as our stores at hand [could] do him any good he was supplied. The greatest fault was that he was fairly neglected by himself and it appears nothing could save him …\u2019[9]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forgotten for 45 years<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill\u2019s demise didn\u2019t make the newspapers for 45 years. Why? Newspaper reports from remote places relied on local correspondents. The Launceston Examiner<\/em>\u2019s Waratah correspondent in January 1876 was Mount Bischoff Co Assistant Mine Manager Charles Hall.[10]<\/a> Perhaps he was too busy helping his boss berate the ore carters and finesse the half-yearly mining report to worry about a Waratah column. No newspaper ran a report from Waratah during the month of January 1876. William Long was not discussed at Mount Bischoff Co directors\u2019 meetings nor mentioned in the half-yearly report tabled that month. Money and careers were at stake. Labourers were of no consequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long\u2019s celebrity began in 1921 and was short-lived. In that year the Advocate<\/em>\u2019s travelling correspondent stated that Long was buried on the mountain, \u2018close to the camp, the grave being marked [in 1921] by a gum-tree planted near the spot\u2019.[11]<\/a> This suggested that Bischoff miners of the time knew of the grave. The camp on the mountain mentioned by the reporter would have been the gathering of huts near the Slaughteryard Gully Face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To fence or not to fence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came some old-time reminiscences of the mine. In December 1921 Charles Thompson revisited his old stamping ground. Forty-five years on the former miner recalled Long packing out \u2018heads\u2019 from the mining face to the ore washing facilities at the Waratah Falls. The packer was buried<\/p>\n\n\n\n

near to the huts on top of Mount Bischoff. At a later time it was discovered that the ground chosen for his burial was in rich tin bearing country. The ground all round [sic] the spot has been worked out, but the grave of Bill Long has been left undisturbed. Its white fence and solitary small gum tree is a landmark<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The site was within a \u2018stone\u2019s throw\u2019 of the Brown Face.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only Thompson mentioned the white fence. How long did it stand? Perhaps it was gone by 1927 when former ore carter Richard Hilder \u2018turned his steps\u2019 from the Brown Face to pay his respects at \u2018the resting place of an early miner whose body lay securely enfolded beneath the gnarled roots of a sickly looking stringybark tree\u2019.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two JH Robinson images showing the conspicuous tree. The top one is 1998_P_1569.02 (QVMAG). The bottom photo is from the Weekly Courier<\/em>, 30 July 1914, p.17.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Finding the solitary stringybark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That solitary stringybark near the huts and the Brown Face should have stood out. Jackie Robinson, Waratah\u2019s resident photographer, must have captured every green filament on the mountain with his roving lens. Working for the Mount Bischoff Co, Robinson recorded all aspects of the Bischoff operation and lease. But I couldn\u2019t find a Robinson photo of a grave on Mount Bischoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was it in his photos anyway? Jackie took several photos of the Bellhouse Dam region above the Bischoff loading bays in the period c1910\u201350. It\u2019s hard to date some of them, the only milestone being the 1914 advent of the aerial tramway that carried ore across the mountain from the North Valley workings. Although it was abandoned in 1920 when fire destroyed the northern section of line the pylons were never removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one tree has a conspicuous presence in Robinson\u2019s photos. A pre-aerial tramway shot of the area covered in snow shows a small tree a few metres to the north-east of the Bellhouse Dam. The tree was there again in a 1914 photo. The clincher for me was another photo which not only showed the tree but a mound of stones beside it. No white fence<\/em>, but a distinctly squared area with a mound of stones upon it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mount Bischoff, showing the site of the possible grave. TOPOGRPAHIC BASEMAP FROM THELIST, STATE OF TASMANIA<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Long\u2019s present whereabouts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bellhouse Dam area had a hair-cut long before Bluestone cropped the surface further. The dam is long gone, but two small patches of vegetation in the same general area drew my attention. The more southerly patch contains two mounds of earth and stone, one about 2m long, the other about 3m. Nice! Unfortunately, the two vegetation clumps also contain the fallen pylons of the old aerial tramway, which is why they were saved from \u2018rehabilitation\u2019. Based on evidence in the old photos, the \u2018grave\u2019 had to be 20 to 30m further to the south-east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That area is a flat, feature-less mining thoroughfare speckled with small tea-trees. It looks as if William Long\u2019s stringybark tree and grave marker were bulldozed away decades ago during mining operations. He is possibly still there beneath the surface, but the ground is hard and compacted, certainly not amenable to the burial pick and shovel. May he rest in peace one day, when Bischoff\u2019s wealth is finally exhausted and all the ore trucks are rusting in their own industrial graves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Henry Walker’s grave in the Forth Congregational Cemetery and the place where he died, the gully where the Bischoff Co Tram crossed Stone Dam Creek near Waratah.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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What’s this post behind the Police Station in an old JH Robinson photo? The remains of a cross?<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Other early deaths at Mount Bischoff\/Waratah<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Waratah Public Cemetery was not established until 1879.<\/p>\n\n\n\n