(From F. T. Smith, member of the Australian Press Delegation now visiting Canada)
In Dawson, fabulous gold town of the Klondike, the old-timers still remember what wild boys the Australians were in the rush of '98. Here they know Ballarat and Bathurst and Coolgardie better than they know some of Canada's own towns, but today all but a handful of Australians, and 30,000 others who made Dawson a rip-roaring frontier town at the turn of the century, have gone.
With a population of a thousand, Dawson is now a ghost of its tumultuous youth, living on a glamorous past, slipping gently into comfortable old age, but anticipating, not without misgiving, the rejuvenation which post-war mining and tourists may bring.
You may still stay at the Royal Alexandra saloon, and you may lounge in what was formerly the gambling room, but the booking clerk and not the head croupier now lives behind the filigreed iron cage in the corner. The lifesize pictures of the exotic ladies in the heavy gilt frames are still there from '98. Australians made names for themvelves in this saloon for their daring play and the vigilant check ther kept on the crooked gambler. You may now sit on high red leather stools in the old liquor bar of the Royal Alex. and order moose steaks and greyling trout from Chinese cooks in the kitchen where the Flora-dora dance hall wsed to be. The ornate Flora-dora set-piece is still over the kitchen door.
A handful of sturdy Australians came in as Cheechakos - newcomers - over the "White Hell" of the Chilkoot pass in '98 and remained ever since to become sourdoughs.
Some made a stake; others washed a comfortable living out of the icy gravel of the Yukon and the Klondike: all of them remember their homeland with affection and nostalgia.
There is a little bit of Australia on this Canadian frontier. The maps still show a tributary of the Klondike as Aussie Creek. I talked to old Dave Bellantine, now Dawson's fire chief, about the old times. Dave isn't an Australian, but he knew most of the Australians in the Rush. He remembered a young man named Giblin, who came in with his pariner Camsell before the last century ended, and he was delighted to learn that Giblin is now a noted professor of economics and an adviser to the Australian Government. Young Giblin's pardner is now Deputy Minister for Mines and Resources in the Canadian Government.
Andrew Baird also made the grade. He came from Coolgardie in '98, and is now a director of a wealthy mining company which scrapes the bed of the Klondike with a mammoth dredge digging up gold. Unlike the other sourdoughs, however, he leaves the Yukon territory often to attend to his business outside. Andrew Baird talks about his relatives in Western Australia. and about the members of his family who are flying with the RAAF.
Jim McNeill also came from Coolgardie in '98, after first trying his luck in Tasmania and at Hillgrove, near Armidale, NSW.
"I got the Barcoo Rot on the Coolgardie field so I left when they made the strike at Bonanza," Mr. McNeill told me. He didn't make a stake on the goldfield, but he remained in Dawson to become Superintendent of Roads in the Yukon Territory, where
he probably has greater problems than any other roads superintendent in the world, for this is a country of snow for most of the year. His sister, Mrs. Elsie Wishart, lives at Leederville, WA, but he hasn't heard from her for quite a time.
Mr McNeill sometimes listens to the Australian short-wave stations, which equal theJapanese stations in reception strength in the Territory. He often talks about Australia to his fellow countrymen, George Vernon and Charlie Mills, who has the Rochester Hotel at Dawson.
Archie Cripp and his pardner, Harry Leaman, came to the Yukon in '98 from Melbourne and they are still there working a mine that has been more successful than many.
Out on Last Chance Creek another Australian, Jimmy Wilson, is still cradling for gold. and further out at Keno, old Ernie Corp works a silver claim far from his native Sydney. This territory is too remote for visitors these days. It is part of the new frontier against Japan, around which airfields, oil camps end military installations have been established. We were the only Australians for a very long time to come in from
outside. The world to the South is officially known as "outside" in this territory.
Before the war the stern wheel steamers brought school teachers and tourists on vacation. They came in in summer from the North around the Alaskan Peninsula, or they took the narrow-gauge railway from Skagway, on the Alaskan Panhandle in the South, got off at the terminus at Whitehorse, and took the stern-wheelers Casca or Whitehorse down the swiftly-flowing Lewes and Yukon Rivers to Dawson. Now the high-tiered white steamers bring in little more than supplies for the river towns, and people with business in Dawson who want a quick trip come in on the Canadian Pacific Airlines planes, which land on the tricky grass airfield 12 miles out of town.
Old Dawson is falling into decay and desolation. Log cabins, their
earth-packed roofs sprouting grass in summer, jostle ramshackle wooden shanties which lean crazily over the grass-grown, boggy streets, their foundations weakened by 40 odd years of snow and thaws.
The old Australian sourdoughs point out the faded painted signs which tell a glamorous story of the colourful early days of Canada's great Northwest, where
gold-seekers with dog teams and pack-horses opened up the territory which has become a rich and vital possession of the great Dominion.
Delia, the barmaid of the Red Feather Saloon, is dead now, and the decaying saloon is now a smithy.
The old log cabins squat forlornly behind their earth embankments which keep back the snow in winter. Chamber pots, saucepans, and oil tins cover the little
chimneys to keep out the rain in summer.
But old Dawson lives in the poems of Robert W. Service, who came from the Whitehorse bank to be a clerk in the Bank of Commerce early in the century. The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire maintains Service's old cabin in moderate repair as a memorial to the man who put Dawson on the nap as much as did its gold.
Pencilled inscriptions on the paper walls advise: "Difficulties are only strength tests"; "Don't worry - work," and "Rebuffs are only rungs in the ladder of life."
Rough board furniture fills the cabin; a cracked mirror, a pair of wading boots and a stuffed eagle hang on the door. Service left his bowler hat on the knob of the
iron hed before he went to live in Vancouver.
Dawson is still a busy little town with a charn which not many frontier towns possess. The Old Guard Australians say they will be happy to live out their lives
there. Dawson is a quiet, picturesque, comfortable little town with hospitable people.
Most of the amenities of the big cities have come to Dawson through an energetic Territorial Council. Its hospital is better equipped than many an Australian
bush hospital. It has an electricity plant to provide its refrigeration and water system. Its houses are comfortably warmed against the long winters and there is plenty to buy in the stores. even if prices are high, because the Dominion Government exempts the Yukon from commodity rationing.
Dawson enjoys modest wartime prosperity. Pelt prices are high, wages have soared, and although gold has lost much of its importance for the time being, it is still
being won and it is worth 30 dollars an ounce.
With ice 5 ft. thick on the Yukon in winter, Dawson nevertheless maintains its ice rink, and its substantial curling club. There are still plenty of caribou, moose and bears to hunt for food, and the fur animals along the creeks are multiplying through shortage of hunters.
Australian names appear on the list of members of one of the most exclusive lodges in the world - the Yukon Order of Pioneers. To be a member originally you must have been within the watershed of the Yukon River prior to July 1, 1899. But as the old timers died, the membership date was extended to 1902, and the offspring of pioneers were admitted. Today, however, there are fewer than 50 members who parade on August 17, the anniversary of the discovery of gold.
The ice was slow in breaking up this year and Dawson had to call in Flying Fortress*s from the US field at Fairbanks. Alaska, to bomb the ice pack. The huge floes, big as barges, thundered down the river, jammed against the unbroken ice, and in an hour Dawson was flooded with 4 ft. of water.
In mid-May the town was littered with board walks which had floated off their foundations. Flimsy wooden buildings were shifted; every house in the lower part
of the town was a chaos of sodden furniture and household goods with, sometimes, a big chunk of ice inside the house. There was a summer of hard work in front of Dawson before the town could be cleared up and the damage repaired.
Australians could remember the Klondike when it was a turbulent, boulder-strewn stream rushing down to join the Yukon. Now it is filled with the gravel tailings of years of machine dredging, which from the air make fantastic patterns, looking for all the world like the burrowings thrown up by a giant mole.
Two huge dredges work the golden stream along which thousands of miners once milled and fought for a stake. The road to Bonanza Creek is now a dusty summer track across the mountains of tailings.
It was a perfect early summer day when we left Dawson. There was sparse snow on the hills, which looked very much like Australian hills with their bare patches.
Jim McAusland, who works in Dawson's biggest store, bid us good-bye. Jim is an Australian, but he's not a sourdough, because he only came to the Yukon in 1925.
"Guess I'd like to see the old country, he said wistfully. "It's sure
been grand to hear an Australian accent again."
