Kiandra – unique in Australia’s gold rush history

by Wal Ellison

Kiandra would have a lot to brag about if it still existed. For the short time it flourished, it was a rich gold producer; it was the highest and coldest of our goldfields and reportedly the birthplace of skiing in Australia; it was the site of a unique transport enterprise; and it was where one of the most outrageous Gold Commissioners of the 19th century committed his dastardly deeds. As I said, a lot to brag about if it still existed. But it ceased to exist in a physical sense in the 1980s when the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (referred to in many rural areas as the National Pests and Wildfire Service), committed its own dastardly deed. They, the bureaucratic pencil pushers in the city, took their snouts out of the public trough long enough to have one of their meetings. They decided Kiandra didn’t serve any real purpose and therefore needed to be torn down. Despite the inevitable uproar from the local communities and elements of the media, those bureaucrats have never, to this day, satisfactorily explained why they did it. They just roared in with the heavy machinery and ripped the soul out of the place. They left some signs and an information board where an historic town had once stood, so I suppose they figured that was a fair swap. What used to be a thriving gold town but is now a mostly barren locality, Kiandra lies about midway between Tumut and Cooma along the Snowy Mountains Highway, about 90km from either one. From both directions the approaches to Kiandra take the traveller through some of the most breathtaking country in Australia. Originally called Giandarra, meaning ‘sharp stone’, by the local Aboriginal people, the first European name was Gibson’s Plains after an early settler, Dr Gibson, who lived in the area around 1839.

The first town map of Kiandra

The discovery of gold came about by chance and not because someone recognised the land as likely gold country and started digging for it. Initially there wasn’t any drama or excitement, just a couple of cattle men bringing their stock up for a bit of high-country grazing as the weather warmed up towards the end of 1859. David and James Pollock had been coming up every year, but this time they found payable gold in what became known as Pollock’s Gully and the rush was on. The gold would prove to be mainly coarse alluvial with many “good sized lumps” found. Within six months more than 10,000 hopefuls had arrived from all over the world. A rudimentary timber village sprang up on what was then known as the Snowy River Diggings, the present Eucumbene River being known as the Snowy River back then. Inevitably, bushrangers and other vultures were attracted to the district by the stories of rich pickings and it became so lawless that for a time the area was known as Mount Rascal. By March of 1860, the bushrangers were a secondary concern as the diggings became a place where many would battle to survive against the bitter cold, the snow, the mud and the freezing slush as that first cruel winter set in. Some had had the foresight to build simple wooden dwellings, but many survived as best they could in canvas tents.

The rush was frantic but relatively shortlived. Within two years most of those first hopefuls had moved on to the numerous other goldfields opening up throughout NSW and Victoria. One of the main reasons for the rush petering out was the local climate in Kiandra. Anywhere else in the country, if conditions were too wet, too dry, too hot or too steep, it simply meant a digger could leave and go somewhere else. But if a heavy snow fall hit Kiandra and closed the track, that’s where you stayed. The harsh reality was that you either survived the winter in place, or you didn’t. The first town map, drawn in 1862 by surveyer, Thomas Evans, a couple of years after the first main rush, shows quite a bustling setup for such a remote and hard-to-get-to place. The map shows the locations of eight licensed pubs, at least 21 other named businesses, the post office, the ‘Alpine Pioneer’ newspaper, the hospital, two independent doctors, the police barracks and the Gold Commissioner’s quarters. It also shows that banks haven’t changed in that they’ve always been overly greedy. Six banks are shown on the town plan, and three of them have other business enterprises in addition to the banking. Several buildings just have the name of whoever lived there without indicating whether there was also a business operating at the same address, and some buildings are simply identified as ‘Diggers Hut’ with no name. In the winter of 1861, Scandinavian miners introduced ‘snow-shoeing’ or skiing to the region but many of the other diggers came from parts of the world where skiing was well established. Although we now see skiing as a sport or a pastime, in those days it was just a practical means of travelling over snow-covered terrain. So, even though some people make the outlandish and completely false claim that skiing was invented at Kiandra, it might well be the place where skiing purely for fun had a start. The miners were in the main fit and healthy people, there was nowhere else to go on the skis, the severe weather meant working on the diggings was often curtailed, so they figured they may as well have some fun.

This image from a glass plate negative entitled ‘Post Office, Kiandra’ shows a weatherboard cottage built in 1900 as a post and telegraph office in Kiandra. It closed in 1969 and was demolished

In common with just about every other goldfield throughout Australia, Kiandra had a community of Chinese, about seven hundred at most. They had arrived with every intention of gold mining, and this they did with some success until that first dreadful winter of 1860 arrived. As the conditions worsened, so the digging became more arduous and less productive. By mid-winter the goldfield was at a virtual standstill, fully snowed in, and it was the severity of that winter which led to the formation of a transport company unique to Kiandra.

The Celestial Carrying Company came into being after some local European businessmen decided that the good news story of Kiandra needed to be spread further afield. The newspaper covering the general district was The Alpine Pioneer and Kiandra Advertiser, published by Thomas Garrett, and it was decided that it would be a good idea to have a branch operation of the newspaper based in Kiandra. The local businessmen in question, Messrs Templeton, Wilson and Cook, hoped to get it established and make some money out of the enterprise but the weather wasn’t on their side. The Braidwood Observer and Miners Advocate reported on 11th August, 1860, that the printing presses for the newspaper couldn’t get through to Kiandra from Russell’s station. The drays couldn’t get up the blocked tracks which covered a distance of about 20km. The paper said the machinery was ‘twice locked in by the snow in endeavouring to get from Russell’s to Kiandra, and had been sixteen days in getting six miles.’ The problem was the load weights on the drays carrying the equipment and supplies. The loads would have to be broken down into smaller lots.

It was well known that the Chinese weren’t afraid of hard physical labour, so Templeton, Wilson and Cook established the Celestial Carrying Company and staffed it using the out-of-work Chinese miners. The loads would be broken down and carried on the backs of individual men. The first priority would be getting the printing machinery up to Kiandra. The Braidwood paper reported that ‘fifty Chinamen were engaged for this job, the drays were got at with considerable difficulty, and the entire loading, weighing 4,400lbs, was carried a distance of fourteen miles though snow, and over very broken country in about ten hours.’ This meant that the men first had to fight their way through more than 20km of steep, broken, snow-covered terrain to get to the drays, and when they got there, unload everything, break it down into individual man-sized loads, and then carry it back. Each man carried an average of about 40kg on the way back and completed the journey in about 10 hours. By any measure this was a remarkable effort.

After the success of this first transportation venture, the Celestial Carrying Company grew. The Chinese were often living on the edge of starvation, earning nothing because the diggings couldn’t be worked, so the work was financially good for them, and Kiandra could get the supplies it desperately needed. The Celestial Carrying Company hired 200 Chinese carriers at £2 each per week, set up a sort of halfway base between Russell’s station and Kiandra, and started bringing all sorts of goods in, charging by the ton. By reverting to the use of manpower rather than relying on a large cart pulled by horses, Kiandra was able to carry on. There was even a proposal to expand the operation as far as Merimbula and Eden, with appropriate way stations but I’m not sure this enterprise got off the ground. The story of Kiandra’s early days would not be complete without mention of the quite shocking conduct of Assistant Gold Commissioner Frederick Cooper of the Kiandra and Crack-Them-Back (Thredbo) Goldfields. Until researching this story, I’d always been of the belief that the Gold Commissioners were senior civil servants appointed to the position by the Crown. Somewhere around the level of a senior police officer and carrying the same status and responsibility. The reality was very different. As a brief aside, in the June 2020 edition of this magazine there was an excellent story about the Queensland gold escort and a Gold Commissioner found guilty of the murder of two of his own men. So, it’s clear these guys weren’t always the paragons of propriety and justice I’d always imagined.

Almost from the time he was appointed a Sub-Commissioner in 1860, Cooper was involved in outrageous scandals concerning his behaviour. The following extract from an early report serves to illustrate just how far from the expected behaviour of a man of his standing he was wont to stray. This took place at the Crack-Them-Back diggings. The report reads: ‘Mr Sub-Commissioner Cooper, on or in January 1860, walked through the diggings in a state of drunken nudity, speeching to a drunken mob, after having shouted for some thirty to five and thirty pounds worth of champagne, which he subsequently refused paying for, threatening to fine Rawson for sly-grog selling in case he was requested to pay, and instructing the police so to do’. Cooper came from a very well-to-do Sydney family, and his pretty useless life as a young man possibly led them to try to find him a government position, where being useless was often a virtue. In fact that’s something that hasn’t changed in the best part of 200 years – dolts and wastrels still gravitate towards politics and public service. Cooper resigned his seat in the NSW parliament when he was 26, probably due to a scandal involving his drinking and outrageous behavior. Before this he had been the first undergraduate to be expelled from Sydney University. His family were probably relieved when the fool was packed off to the goldfields but the very fact such a useless person could be appointed to what was a pretty important position, highlights the very real problem that existed on many goldfields. Initially I thought that Cooper would be an anomaly, that he’d be the one bad apple in the barrel, but the more research I did, the more I realised that the Commissioners, as a group, were a pretty dodgy bunch, and that almost the entire barrel was rotten. Even though gold was providing the various levels of government with huge revenues, gold mining was still seen as some sort of rough or unseemly trade, not a real profession. Because of the grubby image it had, the administration of the gold mining industry didn’t appeal to serious and experienced civil servants. It wasn’t seen as being suitable for a ‘gentleman’. This led to positions such as the Gold Commissioner being filled by less than properly qualified people. Another letter published in the Alpine Pioneer on 12th October, 1860, makes this very point. In part it reads as follows: ‘Another crying evil connected with the goldfields is the appointment, by the Government, of Commissioners whose incapacity is the subject of general remark among the miners. Experience seems to be regarded by the Government as of no weight in selecting Commissioners...They appear to have been selected without any test of ability for this situation.’

For the most part, the Commissioners were young and inexperienced, and it seems the main requirement for the position was that they come from a ‘good family’. They were paid well, about £700 a year, and generally lived in selfindulgent comfort. One Commissioner bragged, ‘Those were snug times! We had handsome salaries, all our expenses paid, as many servants as we pleased, all paid for. Nothing to do but order whatever we choose, and send in the accounts’. The Commissioners often designed their own uniforms according to reports of the time, though many just used a police uniform, adding to the confusion. A writer at the time describes them as: ‘Petty tyrants encased in musical comedy uniforms. Young men for the most part they were, a-glitter with buttons and braid and eating their heads off at the expense of a community ill fitted to subsidise such parasites’. I don’t doubt that there were honest and hardworking Gold Commissioners here and there, men who sincerely tried to bring proper organisation and decency to what was a relatively chaotic and brutish industry, but unfortunately, it appears they were in the minority. All of this barely scratches the surface of Kiandra’s past. It’s a place with a rich and fascinating history, and I really do recommend further reading about Kiandra and the rest of our ‘high country’. If possible, go there, take in the emptiness, and listen to the endless whisper of the wind. You’ll hear voices that will tell the story far better than I ever could.

Note: Much of the information about Kiandra and its fascinating and very unusual history, came from the excellent website of the Kiandra Historical Society. Do yourself a favour and check out the site for yourself. I contacted Hugh Capel of the Society and he kindly gave me permission to use material from their website for this article.