A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION
(By Our Gladstone Correspondent.)
From the Mercury, 1 March 1912
The day had been hot, tiring and enervating. Little gusts of wind had played with the quietly sleeping dust along the sandy roads, and the dust, resenting such treatment, had wrathfully risen in whirling clouds and vented its wrath on our poor unfortunate selves–but it is all over now; the sun has sunk below the distant ranges, the gusts of wind have followed, and the half-moon of night looks down upon a quiet, still world about us.
We leave Pioneer about 8 o’clock, and follow a fair bush road out towards the old Garibaldi mine, some three or four miles distant, for this is the Chinatown of the district. The tall gum trees throw their long shadows across our path, and make it a seemingly corduroy track. Not a leaf is stirring. Not a sound is heard. It seems as if night were once more mourning the death of another day, and a peculiar loneliness steals over us as only an Australian bushman can know. Two miles more, and we emerge from the forest into a few acres of cleared ground. How changed is the scene! Thirty houses–more like sheds with full dome roofs–stand on both sides of a long narrow street. Each house has the same architecture, or the want of it. Each is built close against its neighbour as if appealing for protections. There are no fences, no gardens, no comfortable look about any. One or two seem to hide away behind poles which may be embryo verandahs. Inside the rooms are small, and crowded with all sorts of things, useful and otherwise. Celestials in European clothes are popping in and out, and if bland smiles are evidence of happy, good nature, these citizens of Chinatown are full of it. Every house sports its Chinese lantern and red paper with Chinese hieroglyphics printed thereon. Fruit, sweets, soups, and all manner of refreshments are given liberally to visitors, and the whole place is a hum of activity.
Tin Pot Row, Chinese Tin Miners’ at Garibaldi
Weekly Courier, 21 May 1914
Leaving the one main street we go a few hundred yards to a separate building of larger dimensions. This is the josshouse. Hundreds of visitors are round about it and here, too, we find most of the Chinese congregated. Beautiful and costly lanterns are hung by the josshouse door. Round some lanterns are paper mandarins, etc. revolving on stately procession. Inside the building one is almost overcome with the strong incense and heated air from multitudes of burning tapers. Heavily decorated silks. etc. shut off most of the end view, where, perhaps, Joss himself has his abode for the time. Most of the decorations are very elaborate, and some are exceedingly beautiful. About thirty yards in front of the josshouse stands a huge gallows, so high that our thoughts go back to the story of Haman; a long rope from the cross has a suggestive look too. While are looking and wondering at all this a fearful sound splits the air besides.
It is the opening notes of the Chinese band! The first stroke of the great gong–it is soon joined by the sharp metallic ting, ting, ting of giant cymbals, and the tap, tap, tap of the drum, the said drum reminding one of a cut down drain-pipe, the big end standing on the ground. Now the rope begins to move, and a huge box with a lighted fuse is run up twenty feet, thirty feet, or even more–whish, which, and the box opens. Its four sides fly up, and down falls twenty feet of fireworks, opening out into a square balloon car and occupied by several images, who gaze with a stony stare upon the sea of upturned faces. Whish! whish! whish! whish! and down fall four strings of huge and brilliantly lighted lanterns. The great swinging, blazing mass, lit with twice a hundred fuses, is a picture never to be forgotten. The music (?) all this time is getting faster, shriller, louder, top notes chase each other in endless confusion. Scores of Chinese yabber, yabber in their own singsong language. Now the climax of confusion comes with the bursting of hundreds of gun crackers, balls of coloured lights fly everywhere in the final flare up. Gradually the fuse burn out, the lights grow dim, the music dies away, and twenty-five pounds’ worth of stuff hands dead in the high air–but not for long. No sooner has the last light flickered out than the crowd rushes into the enclosure and tears the whole string to pieces!
Twice was this pyrotechnic display given, and between whiles tho Pioneer Brass Band gave selections, and many, Chinese were busy sending up sky-rockets. Rockets which went hundreds of feet into the air exploded and fell in beautiful balls or stars of colour. Dozens of kinds of fireworks were set off in different parts of the ground, and the finale was a string of crackers fired from a rope from the gallows, about a quarter of a mile of cracker. It seemed like the crack, crack of twenty bolting Maxims.
All the small boys crowded round, but all the girls ran away, as was most proper. We left the scene about this time and once more entered the bush and its majestic stillness was more apparent than ever.
We took out last look before leaving and had to ask ourselves if we were really in Tasmania!
Other thoughts followed, and our walk home was all the more silent on that account. We reached Pioneer before midnight, and, getting out bicycles, once more made acquaintance with the floury dust of the road and thought of our acquaintances of the Flower Land of the Great North-East.
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