{"id":726,"date":"2017-07-05T08:01:02","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T08:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/?p=726"},"modified":"2017-07-05T08:01:02","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T08:01:02","slug":"the-diggers-rest-and-the-miners-delight-or-banking-in-bottles-at-adamsfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nichaygarth.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/05\/the-diggers-rest-and-the-miners-delight-or-banking-in-bottles-at-adamsfield\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Digger’s Rest’ and \u2018The Miner\u2019s Delight\u2019, or banking in bottles at Adamsfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Adamsfield sly-grog shop was anything but sly\u2014on the contrary, it was an open secret. Commonly known as \u2018The Boozer\u2019 and \u2018The Miner\u2019s Delight\u2019, it functioned so long as there were thirsts to be quenched, livelihoods to be drowned and punches to be thrown. For two decades it was the toast of south-western Tasmania. The greatest bottle dump in south-western Tasmania attests to osmiridium diggers\u2019 habit of pissing their winnings away.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A pack-horse team on its way from Fitzgerald to Adamsfield – all the liquor was brought in surreptitiously. From the Tasmanian Mail, 23 September 1925.<\/p><\/div>\n

Control the liquor, and you control the town\u2014or so the theory went. In the absence of police, church, bank and any moral authority apart from a committee formed by the diggers themselves, a licensed hotel was surely the key to controlling the reputedly 800- or 1000-man-strong Adams River osmiridium rush of 1925. So it was that in December of that year a licence was granted to well-known publican Eldon Joseph. Lot 10 in the newly surveyed township of Adamsfield was set aside for his establishment, but it burned down during construction and never opened.[1]<\/a> In its place, Bernie \u2018Saviour\u2019 Symmons, as he was known, built a billiard room and sly-grog shop which occupied Lots 9 and 10. Symmons\u2019 partner was Ralph Langdon, and there was a bit of history between them. Langdon had previous convictions for running Hobart gaming houses, including one with Symmons.[2]<\/a> When the Adams River rush began the pair first operated a \u2018refreshment\u2019 hut\u2014that is, a sly-grog and accommodation house known as ‘The Digger’s Rest’\u2014as the first staging post along the 42-kilometre track.[3]<\/a> Gladys Langdon was the cook and manager there.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

‘The Digger’s Rest’, the first Symmons and Langdon sly-grog shop on the Adamsfield Track, 1929. Cropped from NS1914-1-29, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office.<\/p><\/div>\n

Now Symmons and Langdon were doing the same thing in Adamsfield itself. This establishment, known officially as Symmons\u2019 Hall, was rocked by a bomb in June 1926. The device probably consisted of sticks of gelignite placed inside a jam tin under a bed, and such was the explosion that it rocked a diggers\u2019 camp kilometres away at the Boyes River.[5]<\/a> Most likely it was not a big job to rebuild \u2018The Boozer\u2019 after that, since it would only have been a large paling hut, and soon, inevitably, it was the scene of further ruckuses, fist fights and raids by visiting police.<\/p>\n

The most celebrated altercation at \u2018The Boozer\u2019 was the one in which digger Arthur Blacklow had the end of his nose bitten off in a drunken brawl, a case which played out as a grievous bodily harm charge in the New Norfolk Police Court. The alleged nose biter was acquitted after a piece of proboscis in a bottle was presented as evidence. Blacklow chose this time to reveal that he could not recognise his own nose:<\/p>\n

‘He could not \u2026 say that the flesh in the bottle was the piece of nose he gave to the sister [Nurse Johnson, the Adamsfield bush nurse]. The piece given to the sister would be bigger.’[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Symmons and Langdon remained partners until 1930, when both left the field. Remarkably, neither was ever busted for selling liquor without a licence. \u2018Remarkably\u2019 refers in particular to a 1926 raid on the two buildings that sat on Lots 9 and 10. Sergeant Arnol entered the building on Lot 10, which appears to have been an alcohol warehouse, something akin to a Russian supermarket. Inside he found<\/p>\n