Boiling down

This is a sneak preview at a work in progress. These are all to be painfully short, because that's what the client wants.

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In 1883, Richard Twopeny reported that Melbourne’s tree-lined harbour was pretty, but Yarra river was tiresome, because the steamer went aground every ten minutes, seemingly always close to a boiling-down establishment, where dead animals were rendered into tallow.

By then, these places were common, but they began during a very fierce drought in the early 1840s, many sheep died, and sheep that were worth forty shillings a head in 1841 went as low as one shilling in 1843.

Sheep wash & boiling down vats at Groongal, river Murrumbidgee, N.S.Wales, National Library of Australia, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138910390/view

Several people apparently had the same brilliant idea: kill the sheep and boil them for their fat, which was sold under the old name of “tallow”, which could be used in lighting, but also to grease the axles of carts and coaches, and even slow-moving steam engines.

 

For several years, the sale of tallow kept the squatters going. In New South Wales in 1844, 217,797 sheep, and 20,048 head of cattle, valued at an estimated £83,511 were boiled, in 1845, the value was £102,746 and in 1847 it reached £108,186.

Boiling down sheep in Australia, Illustrated London News, Oct.1868, National Library of 

The smell was vile, and the view was worse, so regulations were brought in to stop new slaughtering establishments being erected within a reasonable distance of any incorporated town, while those already in existence had to be removed, M’Combie said. Judge Roger Therry recalled the smell later:

Sydney became for a time surrounded with boiling-down establishments at short distances from the city, and, in whatever direction one travelled, his sense of smell was revoltingly assailed by the tainted breeze wafted from these establishments along the road. — Roger Therry, Reminiscences, n., 228.

Toby Ryan credited, a John Hamilton, but it has to be said that Toby was an unusually unreliable witness (and this is a special case where a double negative is not a positive!):

[Hamilton] bought up a quantity of four hundred gallon iron ship tanks, and rigged them out so simply that the modus operandi astonished the people. Hamilton had seen a good deal of whaling operations and thus understood the matter. The establishment was in close proximity to wood and water, and could therefore dispose of one thousand bullocks per week, and the rush for boiling down became so general that he purchased or rented a large soap factory at Johnston’s Bay, Annandale, where he also carried on a wonderful trade, the stock still increasing. Tallow and hides-being then a good price, it returned to the squatter for good cattle 40s. to 50s. per head, and some extra good have even realised 70s. each, but that seldom occurred.
— James T. (‘Toby’) Ryan, Reminiscences of Australia, 157 – 9.

In the 1850s, excess animals were often boiled down, and the bullocks which had hauled wool bales to the cities were not worth taking back to the stations they came from, so they were boiled down, yielding around £3 of tallow each.

After the gold rushes began, of course, a lot of the surplus stick could be driven to the goldfields and slaughtered for a much higher return.

Bush telegraphy?

Important news got around by telegraph in the 19^th century, but ‘telegraph’ has a variable meaning. Around the world, there are a number of places called Telegraph Hill: at least six of them in Britain, three in the USA, two in Australia, one in New Zealand, and there is even one Telegraphenberg in Germany.

In each case, these telegraphs had nothing at all to do with wires, because any telegraph on top of a hill was a mechanical system known technically as a semaphore. Tasmania had a system of these in operation as early as 1836, covering the Port Arthur peninsula, and used mainly to warn of convict escapes:

…any occurrence may be known, question asked and answer returned within the whole range of the peninsula, which is above a hundred miles in circumference in the course of a few minutes. This is accomplished at present by means of only nine signal stations and we are happy to learn that the line is forthwith to be extended to Hobart town, which can be done, we believe, by the erecting of only two more semaphores, one on Betsy island and the other at head quarters on Macquarie point.

The advantage of this simple mode of intelligence is so great and the cost attending it so small, we are only surprised in a colony circumstanced as this is, that a line has not long ago been established across the island from Hobart town to Launceston…[1]

The system had one big weakness, which showed up in 1859, when 14 convicts rushed the gate at Port Arthur, assaulted the Deputy Superintendent, Mr Browne, and ran off. An alarm bell was rung and a body of constables and watchmen chased after the runaways.

 

Ludwig Becker: Telegraph Tree, Port Arthur. [2]

The Commandant asked Lieut. Dowman, the officer commanding the military at Port Arthur, to “write” to Lieut. Lloyd, at Eagle Hawk Neck. In modern terms, he was asking Dowman to send a semaphore signal, but the day was so wet and cloudy, the semaphore failed them, as the Launceston Examiner reported.

Surmising also that the object of the men might possibly be to seize the boat at Norfolk Bay, the Commandant deemed it desirable to proceed thither on horseback in order to get in advance of the convicts. Mr. Boyd selected, when passing the Railroad Station, some of the best men for temporary acting constables, and despatched them to Norfolk Bay. On his arrival there the Commandant made the necessary arrangements for the security of the boat, and proceeded to Eagle Hawk Neck, where he personally arranged with Lieutenant Lloyd, the officer commanding the detachment, for additional sentries, &c., being placed in the most effective position. [3]

By the time the newspaper went to print, eleven of the escapees had been recaptured, but the authorities would have been happier, once there was an electrical telegraph in place. Still, at least the Tasmanians never had to rely on smoke signals, as the good folk of Melbourne did in its early days. William Kelly quoted an 1838 advertisement from the short-lived Melbourne Advertiser which reflected this very method:

The undersigned begs to inform the public that he has a boat and two men in readiness for the purpose of crossing and recrossing passengers between Williams town and the opposite beach.

Parties from Melbourne are requested to raise a smoke, and the boat will be at their service as soon as practicable. The least charge is five shillings, and two shillings each when the number exceeds two. [4]

There was a different sort of signal station near Macquarie Light in Sydney. This used a complex system of flags, sending signals to and from the city to notify the authorities of ships arriving or leaving the port.

An elegant building of white freestone, called Macquarie Tower, on the southern side of the entrance to Port Jackson, the entrance to which it points out by day and night, the revolving light being visible at ten or twelve leagues distance: by its side, is a telegraph and signal post, to communicate to Sydney every thing relating to vessels entering or leaving the harbour. [5]

The other end of the system was in what remained of Fort Phillip, a fort which was started but never completed, on top of what became Observatory Hill in the 1850s. Describing Sydney as it was in 1839, James Maclehose described Fort Phillip this way:

The situation commands the whole of the town of Sydney, its Cove, and Darling Harbour. The north face looks onto Dawes’ Battery, at about 400 yards distance; the east on Fort Macquarie about 800 yards, and is now only used as a telegraphic station. [6]

Melbourne also had a telegraph station at the heads of Port Phillip, though by the time Kelly published his book, this may already have been connected to Melbourne by an electric telegraph, because gold-rich Victoria was usually ahead of the other colonies in matters that involved being “modern”.

The entrance to Port Phillip is about the same width as that leading into the bay of San Francisco, but is not nearly so deep, and is altogether wanting in that majestic grandeur imparted to the portals of the Golden Horn by the lofty mountains of the great coast range. On the top of the projecting cliff to the westward stood the lighthouse and telegraph station. [7]

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[1] The Hobart Town Courier, 13 May 1836, 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4176437

[2] Ludwig Becker, SLV H30987 public domain.

[3] Launceston Examiner, 19 April 1859, 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/38995806

[4] William Kelly, Life in Victoria or Victoria in 1853, and Victoria in 1858, vol 1, 97.

[5] Robert Burford, Description of a View of the Town of Sydney, 1829, 12.

[6] J. Maclehose, Picture of Sydney; and Strangers’ Guide in New South Wales for 1839, 1839, 122.

[7] William Kelly, Life in Victoria or Victoria in 1853, and Victoria in 1858, vol 1, 25.