I’d much rather wear out than rust out! BY LLOYD GORMAN
THERE WAS A GREAT REACTION TO THE FEATURE ARTICLE ‘KALGOORLIE: WORTH MORE THAN ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD’ IN THE DECEMBER EDITION OF IRISH SCENE AND MANY MORE STORIES ABOUT THE GOLDFIELDS THAN WE COULD FIT INTO THAT FEATURE. HERE ARE SOME OF THEM AND WE WILL HAVE MORE IN THE MARCH EDITION.
The development and extension of the Swan colony’s early rail network from Perth to Northam, Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie amongst other places, was of one of the Tom O’Brien ambitious achievements of the Irish born Engineer-in-Chief Charles Yelverton (CY) O’Connor, who is said to have first learned about railway construction as a junior engineer on the Waterford-Kilkenny railway. The Trans-Australian railway came well after O’Connor’s time and was another massive infrastructure project designed to connect Western Australia with the rest of country. Indeed the promise of a federally funded rail line was held up as an incentive to West Australians’ to vote for Federation. Until the Trans-Australian railway opened in 1917, the only real option for moving goods and people west to east was by ship across the Great Australian Bight, a journey which could be slow and rough. Work on the line to span the Nullabor started from Port Augusta in South Australia in 1912, while at the other end tracks eastward started to be laid from Kalgoorlie during World War One. We have some fascinating insights into this nation building project thanks to the family of the late Tom O’Brien. He came to WA from Tipperary in Ireland in 1913 and two years later found himself working on the building of the Trans-Australian railway, hundreds of miles outside of Kalgoorlie. “[It] was a feat equal to orbiting the moon, in those days,” Tom told a newspaper reporter. A newspaper clipping from the Kalgoorlie Miner from April 1977 has the headline: ‘A touch of the Irish heading our way’. The article reported the Irishman would soon be returning to ‘Kal’ after a gap of 62 years. “Last time he was here was in 1915, when he was working on the building of the Trans Australian railway,” the article said. “He’s looking for anyone who knew him in the old days, or for that matter, anyone who didn’t know him but would like to swap a few yarns. To make sure he would know he was coming he introduced himself at our Perth office and asked in his lilting Irish brogue whether we “might not just do him the favour of putting a little bit in our paper”. He was sure some
36 | THE IRISH SCENE
