Kangaroo Island quarry operation 1952

A story of island people intrigue that I was totally ignorant of for quite a while, but at that point in my life, provided me with a place to live and work, and make quite a lot of money in a short time, but the future turned out quite different to what I had originally expected.

This story started some years before I met Barbara, when after years of negotiations, the Kangaroo Island (Kingscote) Council were finally awarded a sum of money to allow part of the Island's roads to be sealed. True – a few short sections in Kingscote's main street of the town were already sealed – but the crushed screenings for this small operation had been laboriously shipped from the mainland by steamer, and certainly wasn't a practical solution. So tenders were called for the supply of screenings to be crushed at a good deposit of basaltic rock on a steep bluff overlooking Shoal Bay on the western side of town. A sometimes local farmer, one Jack Brown, who alternated his time between a small farming operation on Kangaroo Island and his home in Adelaide, with hopes that his son who lived at Kingscote would run the Island interests, tendered and won the contract – but had little idea of how to go about it!

Through some connections, he called upon the expertise of the major quarrying interest in the Adelaide Hills, Quarry Industries. I was working for a small private opposition company in Adelaide at the time and had no knowledge of the impending Island operation, but at a later date, worked with the same group of men who were sent to Kingscote to erect a small run down portable country plant that Jack Brown bought cheaply. These plants were very common simple constructions, built of solid bolted together timbers, that had been torn down and re-erected many times over the years, after moving to a new location in South Australia, for small road surfacing contracts. Three or four men could erect the plant in three to four weeks easily.

The faulted basalt deposit was a large cap on top of a sandstone dome, high up above the shore, the only real access being by a steep climb up the side of the hill. It had been decided that as the stone was totally composed of small hand sized pieces, it could be easily won by workers in pairs, using picks and shovels, wheelbarrows being used to transport the rock to a small purpose built chute, which carried the stone down the bluff at a steep angle to the primary crusher below. A similar, but much smaller deposit right on the shore in Kingscote had been hand quarried many years before, and supplied to Port Adelaide by ketches and used as road base in it's uncrushed form.

So the plant was erected and powered by means of Jack Brown's International TD6 farm tractor, using the PTO. A rough local band of workers were recruited, headed by Jack's son, Jimmy. These men normally stevedored the steamships that plied the Island trade, making up a rough two shift team if needed. In between, most of them had a small boat and fished the local inshore waters, and frequented the town's two hotels. None of them had any long term ambitions, they were all a product of the Island's easy going lifestyle, and few were dedicated hard workers!

The Kingscote Council were happy at last, and plans were made to start on a section of road and all the infrastructure was assembled. It was to be a manual labour operation, but it did rely on a steady supply of crushed stone, which was to be carted to the road work site, by the council's own trucks. While this was all taking place long before I had arrived on the scene, it would have been planned that the crushing plant's small output would have been utilised straight into the road surfacing operation without resorting to the stockpiling of any great amount of the surplus production. As it happened, the crushing commenced, the crushed stone was transported to the road workers, and all went well and the dinnertime break came around. But after the break the council trucks were faced with the fact that the quarry workers had had enough of the pick and shovel work at the quarry face for one day, and the plant was closed down, and the thirsty workers adjourned to the local pub for the rest of the day. The road workers left to pack up their gear with a small section of road half finished.
From what I heard from the Council foreman many months later, this was pretty much the pattern for any succeeding days when the quarry workers could be induced to run the quarry operation! Only a few tons of stone were crushed – the smallest operational problem would initiate an adjournment to the local hotels, with very little actual roadwork being completed.

In late November 1951, I arrived on the Island with Barbara for a short holiday, totally ignorant of any quarrying operation, but chatting in the bar with the locals and mentioning that I was connected to the quarrying industry, soon had two interested factions approach me. The first was the hotel's owner, a mate of Jack Brown, who at this point in time had advertised the whole sorry broken down failed operation for sale, together with the barely started crushing contract. It seemed that he was also being threatened by legal action by the council for breach of contract as only a few hundred tons of stone had been produced over the past two summer seasons, and the deteriorating plant was in danger of collapsing into the bay because of abuse and neglect! Then on the second last day of our holiday, I was contacted by the local council engineer/foreman who was keen to meet with me, and the next morning he picked me up early (in the middle of a violent summer storm as it happened) and took me on an inspection of the quarry operation, which was in an appalling state of neglect. The actual structure was leaning over at an angle that indicated complete collapse at any time – the pouring rain didn't do anything to reassure me!

I was then left with two completely different propositions from the two opposing factions. One – buy the failed operation, finance being assured from the local bank with the Council's support, and get the operation mobile again. Two – Jack Brown would contact me back in Adelaide. I assumed with details of arranging a sale, but as it happened a change of attitude, no longer wanting to sell the operation, but confident that he could do a deal with me to run it!

At this point I was told (most of) the full story – Jack had an old International loader in Adelaide that he somehow hoped he could get into the stone deposit, but expert (?) engineering advice, and the Kingscote council both agreed that this was impossible. Jack offered me a deal that involved my having another look at the quarry situation, with a view to the possibility of getting the loader into the stone, and if I thought I could do this, he would ship the loader to the Island at his expense, but if I failed – I would have to pay all costs.
So we flew back over to the Island together a few days later and I walked around the top of the bluff above the stone deposit. After a few close observations, in brilliant sunshine – the Island presenting itself at it's best – and Jack's assurance that drilling equipment and explosives were stored and were available for my use, we negotiated a deal that was to prove unbelievably profitable to me, but at a later date presented Jack with a real financial problem.

One strange feature of the whole story was that both the Council and Jack Brown assured me that the existing contract was for a period of 4 years, and with me being used to contract tonnages being anything up to 50,000 tons – this sounded reasonable – some mainland contracts were extended several times. This fact alone, and with the lack of suitable accommodation on the Island, I decided to invest in a caravan. There were no caravan parks on the Island but the Council were quick to find a spot at the local football oval where I had fresh water and toilet facilities. Another problem for Jack Brown, was that the contract price he negotiated with me – he for some reason assumed would be to pay for at least 4 local workers including his son, who somehow considered that he would be a non working foreman or senior partner in the operation. I had to include the son at worst as a loader driver! But as he soon found out as a labourer!

It must be understood at this point that Jack's share of the potential profits were enormous all things considered in relation to his investment. His original financial arrangements were that his contract price per ton was 30 shillings, or 1 pound 10 shillings. Of this he paid his workers 12 shillings which was to be shared – admittedly he had running costs, but this only amounted to diesel and oil for his as new tractor and a few cans of grease! The potential was there for the workers to make good money, provided they were prepared to work a full week of normal hours. My contract price was 5 shillings per ton, and have the use of the loader, but to contribute to all maintenance work. Jack continued to pay for all fuel and oil which compared to his original contract, gave him 7 shillings per ton for all running costs, and his original profit margin for doing absolutely nothing was still 18 shillings (almost a pound) per ton! Once fully mobile, I was crushing up to 80 tons per DAY earning me 20 pounds, which represented four times the WEEKLY wage at that time! Jack's clear profit was four times that amount at least!

The original arrangement that Jack made with the workers with (say) six men co-operating to wheelbarrow 10 tons of stone to the top chute each day, gave the potential for them all to earn better than average wages – but the expectation would have been for them to produce double that amount to support the council's daily road work quota, which would have earned them more than double a weekly wage. It seems that they took all the easy stone, which at that time was only a few metres from the chute, and never resorted to the use of the drilling and blasting machinery which was there for their use at all! So that was the finish of the whole operation!

If Jack's advice as to the possibility of getting the loader working had been different, Barbara and I would never have become Island residents! Part of the deal that I made was that Jack would have to pay me and his son Jim 10 pounds a week each, for two weeks to (hopefully) get the plant back upright and secured back into the hill with steel ropes, to ensure that it didn't start to collapse again as soon as we started the machinery up. Some large timbers were broken and had to be repaired and strengthened, and the puny foundations had in some cases broken and sunk into the loose sand of the area which was barely above the highest tide line.
This whole problem was the result of Jack's ignorance in the sensible running of these small operations, and this had been his downfall. At the onset of winter after the few tons of contract screenings had been crushed though the first summer season, Jack having found that the potential to sell his crushed stone to the residents of Kangaroo Island at odd times and not having any storage facilities, decided that they would crush until the wooden storage bins could hold no more, and that this would provide a nice source of ready cash that he could dispense from the bins throughout the winter.

In this act he committed the cardinal sin against wooden structures, an enormous tonnage of rock pressing down on the timber legs with marginal foundations on sandy soil. After a few months – during which he never visited the site, as he pretty much wintered at his home in Adelaide – having suddenly got an order, he sent son Jim and the buyer off to collect the screenings. Whereupon Jim was horrified to find that someone had vandalised the operation by opening all the bin doors, and allowing the three products to spill out and mix together on the ground below!

Both Jack and Jim had told me about this terrible act of sabotage against his operation, but both forgot to tell me what everyone knew. The Council engineer had told me on that first morning when he showed me the plant and I had noted the near collapse of the structure, that he had visited the site to assess if all was well for the potential start up of the summer season, and was horrified to note the condition of the timber structure, leaning precariously, with bent and partly split support structure, and took immediate on the spot action and opened the doors himself. He told me that as the bins emptied they groaned and creaked and made a visible attempt to straighten, but the damage was already done, but as he rightly stated, had he not visited the site, a full collapse would almost certainly have resulted!

Jim and I worked together over the next two weeks to pull the plant back up straight. This we achieved with second-hand steel ropes from the council's dump and winch machinery, jacks and heavy hand tools borrowed from the council stores and the local blacksmith. I have to admit that Jim worked pretty well with me over this period – his father was around, sourcing needed gear (though not helping us on the job), the money was probably three times what he would have normally earned, and he probably realised that this was the only way left to get the quarry plant operational again. It's almost certain that his father laid it on him pretty hard, that this was his last chance to prove his worth, he definitely considered that it was his birthright to own and run a profitable quarry operation in the future after I had departed the scene!

A couple of weeks later, the loader arrived at the Port and all the previous quarry workers were congratulating themselves that this represented an easy life for them in the future, but were taken by complete surprise when it became known to them that I would not be hiring workers – then or ever! After some problems with the loader, which turned out to be a typical heap of Jack Brown wreckage, one week of hard work on the tracks later, and the replacement of loose and completely detached plates, and dozens of missing bolts and nuts, I was able to drive it the mile or so to the top of the bluff. Up until this point Jimmy had been working alongside me, but he was definitely working on a plan of his own, as I found out later! He was now being treated with contempt by his drinking mates as a deserter to the enemy, and so he never turned up the next morning when the hard work of blasting a track down into the quarry was to commence – his job of finding the missing explosives (another Island story) unfulfilled.

So I tackled the job alone in the blazing summer sun, with a pick, crowbar and shovel, spike and sledge hammer, waiting for him to turn up with the explosives. One way or another, at the end of the day, I had the loader well positioned on the side of the hill, just above the loose stone of the quarry face. That night I finally found the missing explosives after a regular run around at the hands of the locals, and the next morning, after hammering some holes by hand, and setting off a few charges, I had the loader poised with it's bucket hard into a pile of stone some 7 or 8 metres above the quarry floor. It only took a few hard pushes to slide the loader, together with the loose stone, all the way down into the quarry. It would have been nice to have had an appreciative audience to witness my victory, but I only had a flock of seagulls and a couple of soaring pelicans for company!

I don't doubt that Jimmy was observing me the whole two days from some concealed vantage point – he could have even been sitting out in the bay fishing! Whatever, he turned up at the plant as innocent as could be the next morning to start work again!

From the moment that the word went around the town that this newcomer had confounded the critics, and actually had the loader sitting in the quarry moving stone, I suddenly found that I had quite a few well wishers, most of them council members who were suddenly keen to make my acquaintance. Many of these people became good friends when Barbara and I returned to the Island a few months later as man and wife. Barbara's early visits to the Island (sometimes with friends) during my early stone crushing days were viewed with deep suspicion by most, who soon knew that this stranger lived in the caravan at the footy ground,and at odd weekends entertained mainland visitors! Any country town treats strangers with suspicion, but I can assure you that a remote Island community is much, much worse!

So it was that the wheels began to turn, and Jimmy watched in awe as the quantity of crushed stone produced in a few hours topped the daily tallies of a couple of seasons ago! The council foreman who was on hand, also soon became aware of this situation, and had to hastily organise a grader, and prepare an area at the top of the hill next to the local cemetery for surplus production to be stacked, which they did with the council trucks. But after a couple of weeks they negotiated with Jack to stack the stone with a truck that he owned, the driving duties shared by son Jim and myself, both of us now having spare time with the problems fully sorted with the antiquated crushing machinery which I knew well from previous years.

This all cheered Jim greatly, suddenly he saw this moneymaking operation going exceptionally well – but no longer under his control! However as I was soon to find out, he had plans in hand to sabotage my success, and this involved him hijacking his father's truck a few days later on his regular lunch time delivery run, and leave me stranded at the quarry operation. Assuming the truck had broken down somewhere, I continued to crush until all the bins were full, then worked at the quarry face with the loader etc. Eventually I walked back into town to get a meal, where I found the truck parked outside his favourite pub, with him sitting at the bar, drinking and playing cards with a group of his cronies! I was beyond belief and never even hesitated – in full voice I sacked him right there and then, in front of his mates, and half the Island's afternoon drinkers. But I was immediately informed by all in a torrent of laughter that I couldn't sack Jimmy – his father owned the quarry!
It was at this point that I realised what I was up against in this small community – but I did know that I had the Island council members 100% on my side, having already made several solid friendships in the short time that I had been there.

So I jumped in the truck to the catcalls of the whole pub, and proceeded back to the job and finished out the day, and next morning put plans into place to run the whole operation on my own. Most of this was already done in any case! Of course Jimmy couldn't ring his father back on the mainland quick enough, and his father flew over the next morning and we had a real confrontation – no way was I going to reinstate his lazy conniving son, while he maintained I couldn't run the operation on my own! He had suddenly realised the enormity of the contract that we had entered into, he had done it with the knowlege of previous daily tonnages, and suddenly here I was with daily outputs of more than double any of the original weekly tallies – I was still blissfully unaware of the real portent of this situation!

However, to Jack's credit, he did now admit to the fact that Jimmy was a complete failure. Jack's many attempts to set him up on the farm had all ended in nothing being done the moment he turned his back and left the Island – he really had hoped that with only the two of us, and me in charge, and the possibilty of good money, Jim would finally show some promise. Jack agreed with me 100% in his assessment of Jimmy's behavior of the previous day – apparently it had happened to Jack in various forms, many times before – and he was sadly disappointed with his son! Jim got even with me over the incident a few months later, but that is told in the story of building sheds!

So I continued on my own, without the financial requirement of paying Jimmy – even fulfilling the additional contract of stacking the crushed stone at two locations. By now I had the entire operation set up to run on automatic, but I was working long days from well before daybreak until after dark, when my last job of the day would be to work the loader in the quarry by the light of flare pots until enough stone for the next day's operations, had been stockpiled at the top of the stone chute. The last job of the day was to deliver one last load of stone and drive home to my caravan, getting up early the next morning and delivering another load before the start of the working day.

So it was that after a few weeks, I was informed by the council that I had fulfilled the contract. It was late May and I mothballed the plant, and went to the local accountant who had been briefed by the council secretary and collected a cheque for close to 1000 pounds, and returned to the mainland where Barbara and I married two days later, and departed on an extended honeymoon/vacation!

Some three months later after winter, we returned to Kingscote to set up house and resume the summer crushing schedule, and this is where the fairytale ended. The council foreman was quick to point out that the contract was finished! The four year contract that everyone had talked about was in fact four years at 1000 tons per year – I had unknowingly gone on my merry way and crushed it all in 4 months! The local council knew what was happening, but why stop me – they had waited long enough for their stone, which was now being neatly stacked, and certainly were not going to stop a willing horse! Jack Brown had retained the local accountant to attend to his financial commitments, but he had no idea what was going on until I presented the certified council chit for the full amount, and he had no alternative but to pay it out.

But worse was to come, Jack Brown heard that I was back and was furious at the situation – he had hoped to lay the crushing profits off over a period of at least four years of his farming operations etc. Now here he was suddenly with an income tax bill accrued over a four month profit period. I could understand his fury – but pointed out that everyone had done their best to use me, for their own devices and I had done my best to fulfil my contract – I had no idea about his intended income juggling arrangements, and the council were finally happy!

WHAT NOW?
I had no problem finding a job as a welder in a local garage that was secure until Christmas, and a rented house went with the deal. Barbara took a job as an airways girl with the same company, and we set up house at 'A Hundred to Buggery' on the top of the hill above Kingscote and revelled in our wonderful new life. Then right on Christmas when we had to quit the house for the new welder and his family to move in, we suddenly had the opportunity to build 14 sheds on the Parndarna Soldier's Settlement Scheme, and our caravan and our now repaired Chevvy fitted neatly into this situation.

From then on our life on Kangaroo Island just fell into place – I was no longer the reviled newcomer who took all the good jobs away from the poor quarry workers and we made a good friend in Glenn Barrett, the Chairman of the local council, who welcomed us as extended family. He was pretty much King of the Island, and helped us in many ways to become established, and to set up a desperately needed panel repair business. We were suddenly accepted as a part of the Island community. Glenn was tickled pink to have another son in the family, and Barbara now being pregnant added to his joy. We spent most of our weekends at his farm just out of Kingscote where I worked on his farm vehicles, and it was he who organised the purchase of the Chevvy wreck that had lain in the yard of the local blacksmith for some months previously. The Chev was actually owned by his good friend and neighbour, Doug Bell, who had lost a casual mainland worker in the fatal crash, and was happy to see this constant reminder of the tragedy removed from the scene. It took Barbara and I just a week of spare time to dismantle the Chev and with the help of the blacksmith's offered facilities, straighten and repair it to the point where we were able to drive it home to our rented house, where I repaired the body and replaced the windscreen – suddenly we had our first real car!

Family ties were very strong on Kangaroo Island, and it was said that half the Island's population were related in some way or another – The Bell family in particular, which by a coincidental twist, are part of the Hamilton family tree, are definitely related to most of the Island population. It was only later that it was pointed out to me that an earlier member of my family, one William Hamilton, had settled on Kangaroo Island and had owned large tracts of land in it's pioneering years, and there were plots of land in the Emu Bay area that were still titled in his name!

The only reminder of our early link now, is a Hamilton Street on the foreshore at Emu Bay.