Friday 15 May 2015

Sepia Saturday 279: Looking for the Bonanza

Sepia Saturday by Alan Burnett and Marilyn Brindley

In the introduction to last week's edition of Sepia Saturday, Alan Burnett asked whether the meme is becoming old and tired, perhaps prompted by a recent reduction in the number of participants. Personally, I find the stimulus of a fresh sepia image chosen by someone else each week is just what I need to keep me blogging regularly, that is when I'm not too submerged in work or other projects to find the time. Following the theme is not a requirement, which gives me plenty of leeway to sail off on another tack when the mood takes me, or on the odd occasion that I fail to be inspired by the chosen image.

Many of my Photo-Sleuth articles are weeks or months in gestation, perhaps searching for that extra bit of information, cosidering the right angle to tackle a particular photograph, or waiting for the right image prompt, so always having images from a couple of weeks ahead to work on at the same time suits me well. My first SS contribution appeared four years ago (SS 64) and my 93 subsequent contributions have been made as and when the opportunity presents itself. I'm very grateful to Alan and Marilyn for the time and effort that they put in to making Sepia Saturday happen. I'd also like to acknowledge the body of fellow Sepians for the inspiring photos they post and thoughtful feedback regularly provided here. Without it, I fear that my blog would have fallen into disrepair long ago.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Unmounted paper print, 61 x 89mm
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

On the face of it, these two snapshots might appear a strange purchase for my collection of old photographs. Of unknown provenance, all contextual information apart from the captions handwritten on the backs has gone, leaving us with few clues to the identity of the subjects, even to where they were taken. It wasn't the challenge of sleuthing, though, that attracted me, but rather the content of the first image.

Even without the brief annotation on the back describing it as "The Mill," I recognised it as a three-stamp mill of the type commonly used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to process gold ore, complete with heavy timber frame, driving wheel, cam shaft with tappets, stamper stems, mortar box with discharge screen, tables and amalgam plates. When I first started work as an exploration geologist in the Midlands of Zimbabwe during the mid-1980s, I came across a few of these antiquated but effective pieces of equipment still being used in remote bush locations, usually by equally aged smallworkers in a forlorn quest for their own bonanza.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Reverse of paper print

The caption identifies the subjects as 'Hamish,' with his back to the camera, 'January,' the mill foreman and presumably one of the two black men standing either side of the tables, and the two children 'A & J.'. The mere fact that January and the other gold mill worker are black doesn't necessarily mean that the photograph was taken in what was then called Southern Rhodesia (it became Zimbabwe after independence in 1980), but the countryside and vegetation depicted in the second of the two snapshots are very familiar to me, and I think it highly likely.

In 1945, after the end of the Second World War, the Southern Rhodesian government set up an ex-serviceman's rehabilitation scheme, whereby returning white soldiers were provided with training in small-scale mining at a former air force training facility at Guinea Fowl, near the town of Gwelo, now called Gweru. (As a sidebar, I might note that black soldiers also returning from the same war got absolutely nothing.) After completion of their training, they were given soft loans to re-open old gold mines closed during the war or start up new operations. With 221 men trained and 279 mines re-opened, the scheme was regarded as successful (Dreschler, 2001), and it seems quite likely that 'Hamish' could have been one of these smallworkers.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Unmounted paper print, 83 x 60mm
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

The second photo shows 'Joan, Heather & Andrew, on lawn, 1950, May' (resumably from right to left), so it was taken about four years later. Now there are three children, all wearing wide-brimmed hats to ward off the harsh African sun, and playing on a manicured lawn, rather than hanging around the dangerous mill site. The wide variety of toys suggests that Hamish had achieved at least some success at the mine.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Reverse of paper print

The snapshots are both roughly 2¼" x 3¼", equating to the 620 roll film format that was introduced by Kodak in 1931, and rapidly replaced the similarly sized 120-format film which used a slightly larger spool. By the mid-1940s various versions of the Six-20 Brownie box and Six-20 Kodak folding camera were probably the most popular options available to casual amateur photographers. Many of the folding models used an eye-level viewfinder by this time, and it looks to me that these shots were taken from the lower, waist-level view point characteristically employed with the box Brownies. In the first shot, the eyes of the older girl are on a level with Hamish's waist.

Image © and courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection
Kodak Six-20 Popular 'Brownie' box camera, 1937-1943
Image © and courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection

I suspect they were taken with something like the Kodak Six-20 Popular 'Brownie' which was manufactured from 1937 until 1943. It also seems safe to assume that the children's mother was both the photographer and the person who annotated the prints once they had been printed. Presumably Joan, Heather and Andrew were children of the said Hamish, and there is a remote chance that some member of the extended family of Scottish origin (after all, who else would have the name Hamish) will recognise them and get in touch.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Visiting smallworker gold claims, Munyati River, Zimbabwe, 1985
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

You might have thought the scene of such a rudimentary mining operation might have long gone by the 1980s. I don't have photos of the mill - which were indeed very much like the one depicted above - but I do have a snapshot that I took of my sister and a friend visiting Uncle Bob Huntly's smallworking near the Munyati/Umniati River south of Kadoma in 1985. The equipment at the head of the mining shaft consists of nothing more than a bucket suspended on a rope around a hand-operated windlass - not even a ratchet in case the hands slipped. I can't believe it, but I went down there, probably without even a hard hat.


The Stamping Ground, Rocky Creek Railway
Working Model by Glen Anthony

I'll close off with this entertaining video of an incredibly accurate working model mine, made by a very clever man in Christchurch, New Zealand. Once you've finished watching that I'm sure the rest of this week's Sepia Saturday participants will keep you entertained a while longer.

26 comments:

  1. I wouldn't have known what the first photo was, even with the label. I have never heard of "smallworkers" before, and don't know what they are.

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    1. Postcardy - Smallworkers, I guess, was short for small-scale mine workers, often operating on a shoestring, and a good deal of hope.

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  2. The video was grand fun, & I knew you'd work a camera in there somehow. I wonder what in the world those two little girls in the first photo were doing there in what looks like a very unsafe place for children? Last but not least - you actually went down that shaft in a bucket on a rope? Good Lord! What were you thinking?

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    1. Gail - Goodness only knows, young, no brains ... what can I say, except that I got my come-uppance later

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  3. I will eat my wide brimmed gold diggers hat if Hamish gets in touch with you !! But then maybe I should not make such a rash promise after our recent general election....
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32647981

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    1. Nigel - The eating of hats is something politicians are particularly fond of promising, but I have yet to see one actually doing it ... or anyone else, for that matter.

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  4. The video from my birthplace had to include a man on a toilet of course, with typical NZ sense of humour, and those African mines were and no doubt are still very dangerous places to work.

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    1. Jo - I hadn't even npticed the toilet, but now you point it out, I have to agree, typical NZ humour.

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  5. Thanks for your feedback Brett, but in particular and as always, thanks for your post, which is quite fascinating. Recently I bought some old vintage postcards on eBay and the batch included some of Derbyshire. Wanting some further information about one of them I searched on Google and was directed to one of your authoritative blog posts. It was like meeting an old friend in the middle of a foreign land.

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    1. Thank you for your kind comments, Alan. I don't suppose it was an F.W. Scarratt postcard, was it?

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  6. The mill housing was immediately recognisable. The primitive nature of gold workings have to be seen to be believed in the Muyati photo. The video was a pleasure to watch.

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    1. Bob - Yes, very primitive. Thanks for your comment.

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  7. Your praise for Sepia Saturday matches my own enjoyment of writing to Alan's thematic photos, Brett. Often the theme inspires me to bring all the research together so that I can use an appropriate photo from my collection.

    I enjoyed the model and its demonstration of how the stamp mill worked. Mining seems an unusual employment for government "rehabilitation" of ex-servicemen. It suggests an economic or political purpose to get men to take on such heavy work.

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    1. Mike - We think very much alike!

      The other part of the scheme was settling farmers on plots of land. Agriculture and mining formed a mainstay of the Souther Rhodesian economy, and both suffered from the drain of men who went off to war, so it's not really unusual for the place and time. No doubt there were social and political reasons for it too.

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  8. Great for me to learn about the different forms of gold mining, since I'd only seen gold rush of Calif and Alaska pitures before. But I must say my favorite was the video of the model train diorama. I loved finding out that all those tipping bins were manipulated by hand, and yet the whole thing is so wonderfully done, my inner kid just whooped for joy seeing the little gadgets!

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    1. Barbara - Me too. In many ways I think the early gold mining game must have followed very similar patchs on the various continents, although there are bound to be local differences. In fact, some of the old Californian Forty-niners were among those who participated in the Australian, and then New Zealand gold rushes.

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  9. Hmmm. Interesting information about the mines, and frightening to think of you going down without a hardhat!

    And off-topic comment: the dress the little girl in the first photo is wearing is adorable! Wish I had a pattern.

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    1. Nancy - I'll ask my wife if she has a pattern somewhere.

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  10. Brett, from one of the more slap-dash writers/posters of the group, I really appreciate the time and effort that goes into your posts. Today I came away with a view of a land that I will probably never have the opportunity to see, and to also have a sense of history. Also, really enjoyed the video-- but then I never really got past my love of my first model train set.

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    1. Joan - I don't think your articles are slap dash at all, but thank you for the kind comments. Our memories shared are perhaps better preserved that way.

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  11. A fascinating post Brett. I'll have to show my husband the video because his great-grandfather managed a battery on the Bendigo goldfields (and died young because the dust ruined his lungs).

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    1. Lorraine - Silicosis has been a serious problem for many underground workers. I even visited an underground asbestos mine as a student - horror of horrors.

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  12. Once again I'm transported tp another country and realize how ignorant I am. So much to learn from this post. Thanks.

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    1. boundforoz - Not ignorant, just a different knowledge set, I'm sure. And thanks for leaving a comment.

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  13. Are you familiar with mining in the US and mining cabin appearances? I have a couple of photos of ancestors from abt 1902 standing outside a mining cabin and also inside. I thought they were in Deadwood, SD but a friend from that area said the cabins don't look anything like the mining cabins she had seen.

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    1. Margel - Yes, I am familiar with them from photographs, having read quite a lot about gold rushes in other parts of the world. Can't guarantee anything, but happy to have a look at them and offer an opinion if you'd like to email me (link via Profile at top of this page). Regards, Brett

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