Continuing my occasional reviews of first hand accounts of Australia, I prepared an index of the book Born on the Hill End Gold Fields by Albert Ellwood Howard for the Hill End & Tambaroora Gathering Group. In doing so, I also prepared a preamble to the index to explain the background of the book.
Born on the Hill End
Gold Fields
Albert Ellwood Howard
Albert Ellwood Howard was born at Hill End in 1896, the son
of Albert Peel Howard (1857-1922) and Nancy J Ellwood (1872-1937). Albert grew
up in Hill End ; his father worked in various gold mines and his mother worked
to raise their numerous children. The Howard family were engaged with the
community around them, and his father served as both Alderman and Mayor for
Hill End.
Albert was born into Hill End after it had passed the period
of the gold rushes. Yet Hill End was not dead, nor was it an isolated town, and
gold mining was still an integral part of the local economy. Like all
communities, Hill End was one constantly in flux. This memoir reinforces this,
describing the arrival and departure of residents, and constant interactions
with nearby towns through dances, recreation and sporting matches.
A.E. Howard clearly had a sound memory and a knack for
story-telling, and he maintained a life-long connection with the town of his
birth. His school years are described at great length, along with the
associated activities children partook of. These tales are intermingled with
tales he probably heard as a child (many of which bring a smile), and his
experiences hunting, fishing and gathering food to provide for the family in
the surrounding districts give one a sense of the way people lived and
survived.
Albert confides that school was not to his liking, and so at
a relatively young age his father gained permission for Albert to spend time
off school working at the mines. This experience perhaps provides the central
theme of the book (as the title suggests). Albert describes his time
blacksmithing, feeding boilers, and working in a number of mines in the Turon
Valley. Great detail is given on gold mining techniques, and the hardships
endured.
Ill-health, suffered from a number of mining experiences,
forced Albert to seek work above-ground. There were few opportunities for him
(and mining was soon to cease anyway), and as a result, Albert left Hill End in
1918 to work first in Wellington then farther afield. By necessity then, the
book captures describes the town through the eyes of a child and young man, up
to and during he final burst of commercial gold mining activity (1896-1918).
Remarkably, Howard guides the reader up and down the streets of his youth
describing the families who lived there, the professions they plied, and what
became of them.
When Albert’s father died in 1922 from a lung condition
related to his mining occupation, Albert moved his mother and siblings to
Montefiores, Wellington where they slowly built a new home. Little emotion or
detail is conveyed in such important aspects of his earlier years and the basis
of their decision to move is not given, but it is made clear that for the family
to survive it needed to leave Hill End. NSW BDM records indicate that a
brother, Arthur, died in 1914 when Albert was 18 but this presumably traumatic
episode (or even his brothers name) is not mentioned.
Among the reflections on various schoolmates, mining
colleagues, residents and their families, the author deposits information on
their ultimate fate, making it clear that the Hill End diaspora maintained
connections long after they moved on. Howard ultimately married Minnie Price,
who he met on the coach from Hill End to Bathurst, and after a number of jobs
settled into construction in Sydney’s northern suburbs where they lived at
Killara till the death of his wife. This ultimately prompted his move to the
‘Bowden Brae’ retirement village at Normanhurst. The final component of
Albert’s story is a poignant return to Hill End and surrounds on a bus tour he
organized for his fellow retirement village residents. The home Albert grew up
in still stood, and finally some emotion is permitted as he sits on the verandah
of his childhood home reflecting on all those who he knew and have now preceded
him in finding the answer to the ‘great mystery’.
It appears that book was written over a long period from the
late 1970’s till when it was published privately in 1987 (when Albert was 90),
after encouragement from friends and family (he had no issue), and the National Parks and Wildlife Service
who had begun restoration of the Hill End area. The book in large parts seems
to be a collection of separately written chapters that were compiled in the final
stages of publication. As a result the chronology in the book is poor, and few
dates are given (the death of his parents and his departure from Hill End stand
out as exceptions). The reader therefore returns several times to the same time
and place (school days are regularly re-visited through the book). While this may initially
sound cumbersome, and it was probably unintentional, it allows greater
reflection and yields new names each time. The book includes a number of
photographs, of the family and the author in Hill End, but the text gives the
suggestion that many more were intended to have been included. It is not known
how many copies of the book were published. Touchingly, the author’s forward seeks to
highlight that the family’s reliable horse Toby receives due credit.
There is a sense throughout the book that an era is coming
to an end. The writer clearly recognized his own mortality and the unique
opportunity he had to record life as a gold miner in Hill End – probably the
last chance that existed. In this context, the book is a spectacular success,
and contains a wealth of names, both from Hill End and from farther a field.
Combined with other primary sources this memoir highlights the vibrant
community that existed in Hill End.
On a personal note, I was excited to read that the author worked with my great great great grandfather Thomas Trevithick, when the author was a teenager and Thomas was in his early seventies:
"As I was not learning much and not interested in school my father got permission from Mr Harvey for me to be absent from school for periods of up to three weeks, during which time I got a job feeding the battery at my father's mine. My mate at the battery was Tom Trevidick, a grand old man over seventy years of age, I think he was nearer seventy five. It was pretty hard work for me but with his help we used to do a good day's work with enough energy left to climb the mountain at night. We were known to everybody about the district as 'the old man and the boy'."
On a personal note, I was excited to read that the author worked with my great great great grandfather Thomas Trevithick, when the author was a teenager and Thomas was in his early seventies:
"As I was not learning much and not interested in school my father got permission from Mr Harvey for me to be absent from school for periods of up to three weeks, during which time I got a job feeding the battery at my father's mine. My mate at the battery was Tom Trevidick, a grand old man over seventy years of age, I think he was nearer seventy five. It was pretty hard work for me but with his help we used to do a good day's work with enough energy left to climb the mountain at night. We were known to everybody about the district as 'the old man and the boy'."
Albert Ellwood Howard died on the 6th of July
1991, aged 94 years. While 72 years of that life were lived outside Hill End,
Hill End lived with him every one of those days.
