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Tuesday 31 December 2013

Happy New Year 2014


Happy New Year

2013 is over in just a few hours, and a new year will be upon us! What an exciting and great year 2013 has been, we here at The Haunts of Adelaide wish for you to have a successful and fruitful 2014!

 Also, stay tuned in 2014 as Allen appears on Haunting: Australia in February on the Syfy Channel
 In the mean-time here are some photos from Adelaide's State Library showing crowds in the city at New Year celebrations from over the last few decades


New Years celebrations outside the Adelaide Town Hall December 31st 1921


Adelaide 1923 New Years celebrations



Tuesday 24 December 2013

CHRISTMAS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA 1880


CHRISTMAS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA 1880



Christmas Eve, tonight an excerpt from what Christmas was like in Adelaide back in 1880, taken from "The South Australian Register" - Monday 27 December 1880
Christchurch Kapunda 1895 - Christmas Eve

CHRISTMAS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Englishmen are proverbially conservative, and wherever they make their home they seem inclined to retain as far as possible the customs of their native land. In these Australian colonies, however, with the sun registering 100s Fahrenheit, or thereabouts, in the Sun, it would be simple folly to attempt to keep Christmas in the old-fashioned style — to the accompaniment of the blazing Yale-log, the steaming plum pudding, and the heated wassail bowl.

Instead of families gathering around the chimney-corner with the house doors closed and a large crackling fire in every room, the majority of the people of Adelaide seem to turn out on Christmas Eve to see the street decorations to purchase presents on behalf of the good Santa Claus, and to prepare for the outdoor recreation or the religious services of the morrow.

Whatever Australians do in regard to holiday-making they always do it heartily and well. There is no wonder, therefore, that Christmas time is ever with us a time of general rejoicing Old Father Christmas may not come to us in the same garb as he does to the dwellers in England, where fancy always invests him with holly branches and mistletoe and sees him surrounded by flakes of falling snow.

 When we know that we shall be introduced to him under a blazing sun, or with the thermometer registering 90° or 100° in the shade, we prepare to meet him at picnics, excursions by land or by sea, in garden parties, or in other outdoor scenes of recreation and reunion. But Christmas is none the less welcome because he comes unattended by fogs and snow and frost. The Christmas spirit is tho tame, and will be so long as the day is honoured, and as the human heart is moved by joys and sorrows.

Throughout this colony, as throughout the rest of the Christian world, Christmas Day is probably the gladdest day of the year. It is the day when men felt it a duty to be happy, and when that spirit which blesses him. That gives end him that receives is most largely exercised. The general rejoicing over flows in all directions, and for one day at least in the year the inmates of our hospitals, asylums, and prisons are made to feel that they are not entirely forgotten by the great world outside. On Christmas Eve and morning rarely do no carol singers parade the streets to bid'
“Christians awake, salute the happy morn.'

 No 'waits' go from door to door, arousing sleepers, and informing them the time by the clock and the kind of weather at the time. But instead of this on Christmas Eve the Town Hall bells ring out a merry peal to welcome merry Christmas in, and all night long the main thoroughfares are crowded by men, women, and children, who promenade the streets hour after hour gazing upon one another, making purchases, or seeking to catch the inspiration of the time. All vehicle traffic was stopped from east to west in the western half of Rundle-street on Friday evening last, the tramcars being of course allowed to go out to the eastern suburbs, and to return via Grenfell-street as usual. The street decorations were as profuse as we have ever known them before, branches of pines, of gums, and of other trees being need wherever possible, either on shop fronts or on verandah-posts.
 Any one looking down one of the main streets and seeing the abundant foliage might have been pardoned for adopting Macbeth's idea, if not his precise language, and asking what woods had come- there and wherefore had the; come.
 The ornamentation of individual shops was not as conspicuously excellent or as striking as we have seen some on previous occasions, bat a few of the grocers, butchers, fruiterers, and poulterers made good displays.
  The fruit shops were especially gay with the luscious-looking fruit offered for sale, and here, and in toy shops and drapers' establishments, there were crowds of people gathered all Friday evening. Two of the hotels—the York and the Imperial— had gas illuminations in front of their premises, and Chinese lanterns and many lesser lights were to be seen at intervals all along Rundle and Hindley streets.
 The effect was very pretty, and the pedestrians seemed as if they would never tire of promenading or of watching the Lightning Calculator and other wonder-workers who engaged the attention of large crowds of people in side streets and alleys off the main thoroughfares. To the eyes of a visitor from the old country, the decorations of the streets would create great surprise. Scarcely any holly is used, and the mistletoe is rarely seen.

 Instead of these things, branches of eucalypti and other indigenous trees are used, and what the decorations lack in minuteness of detail and artistic finish they certainly make up in quantity. Cherries supply the place of holly berries and the rose takes the place of the mistletoe— for, as the Rev. Charles Clark used to say, Australian young ladies do not object to being kissed ' under the rose 'instead of beneath the mistletoe. The decorations are by no means confined to the main streets. If every house does not show its sprig of holly, every horse carries its bit of foliage, and every vehicle, from the tramcars to the perambulator, is more or less adorned by leaves, or sprigs, or branches of trees. Christmas Day is always observed as a dose holiday in Adelaide. No ordinary business is transacted, except, perhaps, by the owners of vehicles and the occupiers of public houses.

The publication of the daily newspapers even is suspended, either on Christmas or the following day and for twenty-four hours the news goes by word-of-mouth, as it did in the days before Dick Steele started his ' Tatler' and Addison began to show the follies of the society of his day. Bat Christmas Day is by no means generally observed as a day for religious worship. There are services at a few of the churches perhaps, and the South Australian Sunday-school Union assembles its children in the Town Hall for the usual Christmas morning service of song. But this begins at 9 o'clock and is over in an hour so that it shall not unduly interfere with the full enjoyment of a day of recreation.

 Mr Chief-Justice Way presided at the Sunday-school gathering in the Town Hall this year, and the Rev. W. K. Fletcher, ALA., delivered the address to the children. Special hymns were sung, as usual, each having some relation to the Natal Day of Him who was born in Bethlehem. In the evening a grand mass, composed by Mons. Meilhan was performed in the Town Hall, in the presence of a large audience.
The places of public amusement were closed on Christmas Day, but on the previous night, a new pantomime was produced at the Theatre Royal, while at the Academy of Music there were some special attractions in honour of the season. On Christmas Day, notwithstanding the intense heat, tens of thousands of people left the city either by the railways to the Bay and the Semaphore or to some of the shady nooks and glens among our ever-new and ever-beautiful Mount Lofty hills.


SA Christmas card - notice the  "West End" wheels :)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

© 2013 Allen Tiller
www.eidolonparanormal.com.au

Tuesday 17 December 2013

YOUNG CRIMINAL GANG IN MAKING



YOUNG CRIMINAL GANG IN MAKING


Port Adelaide, long has this seaside city been fraught with an image of being seedy and full of criminal activity. Just like most seaside ports, where the sailors from around the world would come from afar and cause a ruckus, sweet talk the ladies and fight any local willing to defend his ladies honour.

By 1934, Port Adelaide had changed dramatically, although it was still a shipping port, the crime rate had dropped off, people had become more refined, sailors more civilised and respectful, but there was always that criminal element,. And in 1934, that criminal element was a very young one!
Six boys, ranging from the ages of ten years old to fourteen years old were on a crime spree throughout the town.
The boys had scaled a six-foot barbed wire fence at the back of Mrs Dunn's shop on Military Road in Largs Bay. There they had stolen 4 glass half-gallon flagons valued at 2/6, they returned again later and stole four more bottles, this time empty ones valued at 4d. - Along with the bottles, they stole a syphon and other cool drink bottles, some of which had been stored in cupboards in the rear of the shop.


The boys would often be seen by Mrs Dunn, trying to sidle their way along the side of the shop to the rear fence without being seen, she would scare them off, and they would run away.
It was known that these young lads were the cause of other thefts and acts of vandalism in the Largs Bay area and when they were eventually caught by a plains clothes Constable, A.L. Mitchell, the prosecution was not lenient on the boys....or their parents, as you will see in the following excerpt from a newspaper story at the time:

Six boys,, whose ages ranged from 10 to 14 years, admitted charges of larceny, and of having been unlawfully on premises, before Messrs. J. H. Richards and F. A. Elix, in the Port Adelaide Juvenile Court yesterday.
Plainclothes Constable A. L. Mitchell, who prosecuted, said that three of Of boys, aged 11, I2, and 14, were jointly charged with having, on January 21, Access to the spot was gained either through her shop or over a six-foot barb -wire fence. On one occasion she was attracted to the side of the premises by a noise, and she chased away four or five small boys.
 Constable J. Allen, of Largs Bay, said that he questioned all of the boys, who admitted the offences.
 Mr Richards said that the boys were members of a criminal gang in the making. The court wished to impress upon the parents that it was their duty to look after their boys.
 It was no good allowing them to be out at all hours of the night and day. The parents were still responsible, even when the children were out of sight. Parents who refrained from looking after their charges were assisting them to be the criminals of the future. 
The 14-year-old boy, who was regarded by Mr Richards as the ringleader of the gang, was ordered two years' detention at the Reformatory on two charges of larceny and one of having been unlawfully on the premises.
 The father of the 11-year-old boy, who had been bound over in a 12 months 'bond to be of good behaviour, in May 1933 for "having unlawfully used a bicycle", was ordered to enter into another bond of £20 for his son to be of good behaviour for a further 12 months. 
The parents of the other four boys were required to enter into bonds of £10 each for their sons to be of good behaviour for 12 months.” - The Advertiser - Thursday 1 February 1934



© 2013 Allen Tiller
www.eidolonparanormal.com.au

Tuesday 10 December 2013

Know the Law

Do you know the law?

This week we take a look at some of the weirder laws that still apply in South Australia, contained in the summary offences act of 1953 and available online through the SA Government law website
Summary Offences Act of 1953:



21—Permitting premises to be frequented by thieves etc
(1) A person who—
(a) is the occupier of premises frequented by reputed thieves, prostitutes, persons
without lawful means of support or persons of notoriously bad character; or
(b) is, without reasonable excuse, in premises frequented by any such persons,
is guilty of an offence.
Maximum penalty: $750.




47—Interference with homing pigeons
(1) A person who—
(a) without lawful authority, kills, injures or takes any homing pigeon; or (b) enters upon any land for the purpose of killing, injuring or taking any homing
pigeon without lawful authority,
is guilty of an offence.
Maximum penalty: $250.
(2) Upon the conviction of a person for an offence against subsection (1), the court may
order the convicted person to pay to the owner of the pigeon killed, injured or taken in
contravention of that subsection a sum equal to the value of that pigeon.
(3) It is a defence to a charge of killing, injuring or taking a homing pigeon contrary to
subsection (1) to prove that the defendant was the owner or occupier of improved or
cultivated land, or a person acting under the instructions of any such owner or
occupier, and killed, injured or took the pigeon while it was actually upon that land or
any building on that land.
(4) In this section—
homing pigeon means a pigeon having a ring affixed or attached to either or both legs;
take includes to ensnare or catch.

50—Unlawfully ringing doorbells

A person who, without reasonable excuse, disturbs another by wilfully pulling or
ringing the doorbell of a house or by knocking at the door of a house is guilty of an offence.
Maximum penalty: $250.





56—Depositing or leaving dead animals in streets etc
A person who deposits the carcass of an animal, or leaves the carcass of an animal,
belonging to the person upon—
(a) a street, road or another thoroughfare; or
(b) a public park or reserve; or
(c) land or premises abutting any such place as is mentioned in paragraph (a) or
(b),
to the annoyance of persons in any such place, land or premises is guilty of an offence.
Maximum penalty: $750.



© 2013 Allen Tiller
www.eidolonparanormal.com.au


Tuesday 3 December 2013

Ghosts of Kapunda: Copper Mines



Ghosts of Kapunda: Copper Mines



The Copper in the Kapunda Mines was first discovered by Francis Dutton in 1842. He began a partnership with Captain Bagot (Captain was a traditional Cornish term used for a
manager).and together they purchased about 80 acres of land. They paid 1 pound per acre of land.
The pair set about taking samples from the numerous green rocks. The samples were then sent off to England for testing, this would take almost two years before results would return to Australia. Upon the results reaching Australia, the business partners were astonished to find the copper was 22.5% pure, which at the time was the richest deposit found anywhere in the world.
Clare Castle Hotel bottom left corner circa 1860

The mine began small with Bagot employing labourers to dig the copper of the surface with shovels and picks. In their first year alone they removed 600 tons of ore, valued at about 7000 pounds.
Around December 1844, Cornish miners began to arrive on-site, and tunnelling and underground mining began in earnest.
Francis Dutton decided to sell his 25% share in the mine in 1846, earning him the vast sum (at the time) of 16000 pounds, Captain Bagot now had the controlling 55% of the ownership of the mine.

In its beginnings, the mine would transport its ore via bullock dray to port Adelaide, a journey of about 6 days, where it would be loaded onto ships and transported by vessels to Swansea in Wales, where it was smelted by the Welsh. Loads were sent at 2 tonnes per load, by 1850, the mine was producing 100 tones of copper ore per month.

In the coming years the mine would expand significantly, and so would the town. Many jobs were created, and it seemed in this era that certain cultural backgrounds provided expertise in differing areas, with Welsh men coming to south Australia to operate smelters, the Cornish, who were expert miners, and the Germans who began to cut down trees needed to power the furnaces of the smelters, and began farms to feed the vast amount of workers. Then there were the Irish who began as labourers, and to drive the Bullock teams to Port Adelaide

Kapunda never had one distinct mine instead there were at least five or six
distinct copper lodes in close proximity, which were mined from as many as ten
separate shafts over time: Wheal Bagot, Wheal Charlotte, Wheal Truscott,
Wheal Lanyon, Wheal Harris, Wheal Major. There is no trace of any of them
today, as they have all been obliterated by later workings of the mine (wheal being a cornish mining term of phrase)

In 1849, Smelters made in Germany arrived in South Australia, reducing the need to ship ore overseas, however, the ships now brought back Coal from England for the smelters
by 1851, Kapunda had a population of over 2000 people

In 1850, the mines had reached about 80 feet down and had started to go below the water table, a steam engine was brought in to pump the water out of the mine. At its deepest point, the mine reached about 480 feet, or 150 metres.
In 1852, the Goldrush in Victoria began, this had a huge effect on Kapunda and its surrounds, many men left to try their luck at finding a quick fortune. For almost three years the production rate at Kapunda dropped to a minimal amount, however by 1857, production was at full speed again producing upwards of 4104 tonnes of ore




A sign in the Bagot mining Museum in Kapunda states that in 1861 the mine employed
43 miners - mostly Cornish
106 pitmen
23 children - mostly Cornish
82 labourers - mainly Irish
13 boys - mainly Irish
36 smelters and furnacemen - mainly Welsh
The mine at this time was employing 302 men and 36 boys.

2nd draft house engine room
The Kapunda mines importance declined with the discovery of copper at Burra, with a lode four times greater than Kapunda, but even Burra couldn’t compete with Moonta, which had a lode almost 4 times greater than Burra's!

By 1863 the majority of the high-grade ore had been mined out, the mine was now a low grade ore mine – soon it became an open cut mine.
The mine closed in 1878 and all the equipment was sold

However, it did reopen again and continued until 1912 on a smaller scale. During this time 12,800 tonnes or copper ore were mined
Now, in 2013 the Copper mine stands as a tourist attraction at Kapunda Southern End dominated by the large stone chimney that was used to provide air for the engine boilers below. The mine is the favourite place of artists who love the deep green hues of the water that fills the open cut mine.


looking into one of the open shafts 2010



The mine has an appeal for Paranormal investigators in the area due to stories of a paranormal nature that have appeared on the internet and through the rumour of townsfolk, these include the sightings of a “hairy ape like man” thought to be the “Kapunda Yeti”, to sightings of strange “lamp” lights near the mine, disembodied voices, people being “slapped” across the face and full bodied apparitions of miners, wearing clothes from a different era, in the surrounding area.
Our research has uncovered a few deaths involving miners, a few grizzly events. Such as miners losing limbs, a boy almost drowning in a waste water tank, could these events have scared the interior of the mines with emotions that resonate today, or is it people reaching a state of hypersensitivity due to the scary desolate feeling of the mine interior, and thus scaring themselves into believing a ghost is present?
Whatever is happening within the mine, it still remains a place of historical significance and should be treated as such, this is also a terribly dangerous place to enter, with open mine shafts, large pieces of steel jutting out of rock formations and other unseen dangers, we do not recommend going into the mine at all to anyone as its pitfalls are numerous.

Time Line:

1842 Copper ore discovered
1844 Mine opened
1845 Horse whim installed
Mine Square Cottages built
1846 Dutton sold his share
Captain John Richards appointed
1848 Draft engine purchased
1849 Draft engine at work
Smelter built
1851 Buhl engine installed
Mine closed by Victorian gold rush
1855 Mine re-opened
1859 Captain Bagot retired
1860 Kapunda Mining Company formed in London
Subsidence in workings
Railway reached Kapunda
1861 Draft Engine re-located
1862 East Kapunda mines opened
1863 Mines operated at a loss
1865 Scottish company took over mines
1867 Henderson Plant in production
Captain Osborne appointed
Opencut extraction
1877 Crash in copper price
1879 Mines closed
1880 Hillside mine opened
1912 Tributers finished up
1938 Matthews Gravel Quarry on Block 19 opened
1949 Matthews Gravel Quarry on Block 19 closed
1962 Council acquired Block 24
1972 Council acquired Block 21
Plaque placed on smokestack
Charlotte opencut used as Council dump
1986 Jubilee 150 signage erected
1987 Site entered in SA Heritage Register
2008 Preparation of Conservation Management Plan for the site



Please Remember this is a dangerous site to explore, all signs and restrictions put in place by the local council should be adhered too


© 2013 Allen Tiller
www.eidolonparanormal.com.au