Book Review - The Rush that Never Ended by Geoffrey Blainey

 The Rush that Never Ended : a History of Australian Mining by Geoffrey Blainey

Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1978 (3rd edition)     ISBN 0522841457

When the first edition of this book was published in 1961, export of iron ore from Australia was only just beginning, after the lifting of a ban imposed in 1938. The Rush that Never Ended was the first comprehensive history of Australian mining, which, given the place mining held in the formation and development of colonial Australia, is actually quite astounding. Since this third edition was published in 1978 mining in this country has moved to another level, but Blainey's book is still a worthwhile read, full of interesting facts about the development of the industry.

Blainey explains quite simply the differing rushes for metals throughout our white history... he doesn't quite call it out as greed, but essentially greed is the reason behind all the different phases of our mining history. Gold was "discovered" once the Crown no longer automatically owned what a prospector found, and all the metals were discovered as and when they became valuable and payable commodities - famously Lang Hancock knew about the huge Hamersley iron deposit but kept it secret from 1952 until 1961 when export markets finally opened up for that commodity.

Blainey starts at the beginning with the first and most precious metal sought by prospectors, gold. He clearly maps the incredible effect the gold finds, first in New South Wales and then in Victoria, had on the young colony: the population exploded, and huge economic effort went in to developing the industry. The romantic image of a prospector making it rich by panning some creek or digging up some quartz with a shovel has stuck in our collective memory, but in the history of gold mining in Australia, that era was quickly over, to be replaced by capital and large workforces. 

This change was more painful than it had to be - mining law was skewed to support individual prospectors: mining leases were too small to be developed properly for deep mining. Once this was changed the drawback became the lack of experience of the miners in deep-lead mining. In fact a certain scorn for science and geology was the bugbear for Australian mining for a lot longer than it should have been.

After gold, the most-sought mineral was copper, which was being mined early on in South Australia. Blainey well describes the discovery and development of Broken Hill, with its massive lodes of silver and lead and the share frenzy that accompanied the discovery. To mine on such scale massive capital inflows are required - the various frenzies, scams and massive windfalls that washed over people who invested in mines are covered comprehensively by Blainey - money is just as important as metal in the ground for a successful mine.

As the gold-fields close to "civilization" were mined out, prospectors moved farther afield to try and make their fortune, Blainey describes the move north to the Queensland tropics, west to the bonanza of Kalgoorlie and surrounds, and all the trials and tribulations that went with prospecting in jungles and deserts. Again some people made a fortune, but most barely got by, and usually ended up working for a big company and hoping that they might make a bundle speculating in shares...most people didn't.

Let's not forget Tasmania - perhaps Australia's largest mine up until the 1970s, Mount Lyell and surrounds were a story of triumph over nature and finance to unleash a huge cache of wealth for savvy investors.

With a good bibliography and index, The Rush that Never Ended is a fine introduction to one of Australia's founding, and greatest industries.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Before I Forget by Geoffrey Blainey

 Before I Forget: an Early Memoir by Geoffrey Blainey

Penguin Books, 2020 (first published 2019)   ISBN 9781760899103

What a delightful book: sometimes a book "drops into your lap" without you ever intending to hunt it out or read it, but when it does, and when you do, it leaves you happy. Before I Forget is a beautifully written book describing the early years of one of Australia's finest historians from his own viewpoint.

The son of a Methodist preacher, Geoffrey Blainey spent his early years in a variety of Victorian towns, including Leongatha, Ballarat, and Geelong. These formative years seeded Blainey's love of history, and for the reader, we find out other things as well: he loved football, both playing the game, and supporting the Geelong Football Club, and he was adventurous, travelling and exploring as much as he could. His description of early hitch-hiking trips up and down the east coast of the country are wonderful evocations of the countryside during the late Forties. He was also clever - he won a scholarship to the prestigious Wesley College and his experiences there under the influence of good teachers and fellow students helped turn him into a writer and historian.

As for becoming the world-renowned historian, well, he sort of fell into it. Studying history at Melbourne University, he did well, and was active in student life as editor of  the student newspaper Farrago, but had no plans at that stage to enter academia (astonishingly, Blainey did not even formally take his degree until after he was employed as a lecturer at the University!), feeling rather that he should take up writing or journalism full-time. But how to do that in early 1950s Australia, when even a "best-seller" didn't bring in enough money to keep hearth and home together?

Blainey found a way of  managing to do just that - by being paid a salary to write a book! He fell into doing it by being recommended by one of his university teachers to write the history of the Mt Lyell mining concern, where he was paid a stipend while living on-site. His description of how he went about writing the book, and how he met the locals gives the reader not only an idea of Blainey's working methods, but also an idea of what a personable man he is. He devotes further pages to his other early books, up to and including the book that did the most to launch him as a historian, The Tyranny of Distance. It is a credit to not only his historical work, but to his writing style that many of his books are still in print.

As well as describing his writings, and the people he met through them (which included most of the big names of mining in Australia and indeed the world in the 1950s, and the last of the "old-time" prospectors), he gives us a wonderful little vignette of his journey in 1966 through China and across the USSR, a lone and carefree traveller through the Cultural Revolution and Communism - I have been meaning to read the book he wrote about that journey for a long time; I must hunt it out.

This memoir stops when Blainey has reached his forties, and focuses mostly on his childhood, education and professional life: the reason for this - as he writes in the preface - is that this was enough to make a good-sized book. Here's hoping there is another volume to come.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell