Stories

• Tent to town
• Running the cutter
• The hooter

Tent to town

The early mine works consumed a lot of timber for chutes and firewood, attracting wood-cutters, a tough itinerant group whose primitive canvas camps were scattered along the Dee – as close as possible to the works and water supply. As the mine expanded, the settlement grew, especially in Tipperary Flat and Happy Valley.

Primitive canvas camp		Sawmill

Houses were built with scant regard to survey, boundaries stopped just metres short of the mine. Streets were muddy tracks. Houses and shanties perched anywhere. Owners paid no rates.

Clean water and sanitation were scarce but fresh fruit and vegetables were provided by Chinese gardens along the lower Dee.

Mount Morgan from town range

: TOP :

Running the cutter

The local custom of 'running the cutter' began in 1900. Mine workers bought their beer in a billy, or cutter, and drank it outside the hotel at the end of their shift. The billy was filled more than once before the worker trudged home.

Miners with billies

(There was no shortage of hotels to choose from. At various stages, Mount Morgan has had over twenty pubs. Mining is thirsty work.)

The lane behind the School of Arts, from behind the Grand Hotel to West Street was called Cutter's Lane because drinkers from the Grand and the Imperial (since burnt down) assembled there to drink and yarn.

'Running the cutter' ended in 1918 when rising costs apparently led publicans to stop the practice. The origin of the word 'cutter' has been lost.

: TOP :

The hooter

Anyone in Mount Morgan in its heyday could not miss the hooter. On a typical day, it blew at 6:30am (three blasts), 7:30am (two blasts), 8:00am, 10:00am, 10:10am, 12:00noon, 12:30pm, 4:00pm, 4:30pm, 7:30pm, 11:00pm (two blasts), 12:00 midnight and 3:30am. It could be heard as far away as Rockhampton if conditions were right.

Designed by mine engineers and cast in the company foundry in 1919, its two steam-driven whistles were connected to a boiler in the mine power-house.

When the mine closed in 1928, a tin mining company took it to what was then Malaya and installed it on a dredge.

In 1932 when the mine re-opened, general manager A. Boyd brought it back.

It blew for the last time at 8.30pm on 7 July 1984 when the smelter closed down forever on the afternoon shift.

A replica of the hooter can be seen outside the Leichhardt Hotel. The original is in the Historical Museum.

: TOP :

home : visitors orientation : mine : railway precinct : morgan st walk
visit the museum : around town : education : behind the scenes
the hooter

email: mmtic@bigpond.net.au

© Mount Morgan Experience 2002 - 2010

Updates by TuGuys
Want to update your listing? Contact TuGuys

Original site by Toadshow