Page:History of West Australia.djvu/574

 In the morning he took train for Perth, where he was compelled to remain for some time before he could obtain a printing plant. This was eventually got together, and was sent per rail to Burracoppin, where a teamster, with three horses and a dray, had agreed to meet him to carry the machinery to Coolgardie. When the carrier arrived, it was found that his dray could only accommodate a portion of the consignment. Mr. Clare decided to take the most important part first, and arranged that the rest should follow. It will be readily understood that the return journey was tedious, and it was rendered more so by the teamster, who exhibited no "distressing haste." At Burracoppin Mr. Clare met Mr. Moran, the present member for East Coolgardie, who was pursuing his political campaign for the then huge electorate of Yilgarn. He was asked to take the chair at one of the candidate's meetings held on the wayside. It was a novel election meeting, and the "chair" consisted of a tree stump. The free and independent electors of Yilgarn were represented, says Mr. Clare, by about a dozen teamsters, several "swampers," a boy, two dogs, a dusky daughter of the soil, and a couple of nondescript individuals, whose chief accomplishment was an infinite capacity for drinking. The meeting was at first noisy, but eventually peace prevailed, and Mr. Clare and the teamster were able to get on their way. The teamster often showed eccentric behaviour, and camped in the most ridiculous places on sand plains without water for the horses. Mr. Clare frequently expostulated with him, and urged him to proceed more expeditiously. At Boorabbin the waggoner was still more eccentric, and finally threatened to kill Mr. Clare, and chased him with a huge piece of iron, which was successfully warded off. At Woolgangie the man exhibited unmistakable signs of insanity. He was taken in charge, and removed to the Fremantle Asylum, where he died some months after—a raving lunatic. Mr. Glare now took charge of the horses and dray, and slowly approached Coolgardie, on one occasion being almost lost in the bush while endeavouring to find water.

When his strange travels were ended, Mr. Clare exhibited his printing plant to the populace, who evinced a lively interest in it. The physical travail ended only to give place to the mental. After two months all the plant arrived, and was expeditiously set in order. Then there was "hurrying in hot haste," and when Mr. Glare said he would produce the first number of the paper, appropriately christened the Coolgardie Miner, on the following Saturday, many laughed at the idea, for it was only on the Tuesday that all the machinery came to hand. The experiences of pressmen on American fields were repeated, and the new printing shanty was a hub of excitement. Inside, a couple of compositors worked with their noses in the space-box, sundry people were writing up copy, and Mr. Clare hurried hither and thither in the circumscribed space of the "office." He had difficulty in getting copy; several people volunteered to write up "something," and—did not keep their promises, and it seemed as if the "Long Felt Want" would not appear on the date announced. A couple of Hebraic gentlemen "opened a book" on the event, and several wagers were made in different directions. On Friday night Mr. Clare went round the "town" searching for some one who could set type. Finally he enrolled the services of the local captain of the Salvation Army, a trooper, a chemist, and the manager of a business place in Bayley Street. The assistance of the explorer, David Lindsay, was invoked to produce an article, and he turned it out in two columns. The matter was obtained, but on Saturday morning no Coolgardie Miner appeared. In accordance with the wagers, the paper had to make its journalistic débût by one o'clock. It was 12.25 and still no paper, but at 12.30 an exultant shout heralded the first issue, which sold faster than the machine could print the copies; the "Aching Void" in the district had been filled.

Mr. Clare's troubles did not end with the publication of the paper—on the contrary, they only began. The employees had the educated thirsts peculiar to newspaper offices, and they followed the pernicious habit of getting hilariously intoxicated at intervals, especially on auspicious occasions. Then there was a strike on the part of the compositors, and sundry other annoyances tended to break the monotony of existence. Of the first number of the Coolgardie Miner, 1,200 copies were printed and sold at sixpence each, many of them fetching as much as half-a-crown, and five shillings in the "out back" districts. The succeeding story needs no telling here. Born in tribulation, like the jarrah forest, the Miner became a sturdy giant, opposed to parasitic nuisances. It became the champion of the goldfields' interests, and, perhaps, the strongest newspaper in Western Australia. It evolved into a bi-weekly, and then a daily, with a circulation extending over thousands of miles of local territory, and even into the other colonies and to Great Britain. It has been the nursery of goldfields journalists. From it sprang the Pioneer, a weekly production, without a peer in the colony. Happily, Mr. Clare has had an experience which, probably, no newspaper proprietor in the world can lay claim to; in three years he cleared a comfortable fortune. In company with others, he is about to launch the Westralian Star, a new evening journal, at Kalgoorlie.

Mr. Clare's generosity and kindliness of heart are known all over the fields, and many an impoverished person in Coolgardie has to thank him for his liberality. He can fairly lay claim to being a pioneer of one of the greatest goldfields in the world, and before his visit to England in December, 1895, he was banqueted by one of the most representative gatherings of colonial pioneers that ever assembled to pay parting respects to a friend. Mr. Clare is interested in a large number of Westralian mines, and has his name on the directorate of several. He was the prime mover and instigator of the memorial fund to Arthur Bayley, the pioneer, and organised entertainments on behalf of the fund. He is possessed of splendid commercial abilities, and Coolgardie and Perth people will testify to his social qualities. He and his paper have ever fought the fight of right, and both personally, and through his bright journals, he has been a tower of strength in Western Australia. To his endurance and daring enterprise Coolgardie owes the birth of a powerful journal. And when one glances retrospectively on the many vicissitudes that he encountered in his struggle to gain his end, encomiums for his pluck should be strongly couched. His experiences of the early days of Coolgardie, if recorded, would form an interesting volume, and act as a valuable contribution to the historical sequence of the goldfields. His name is indissolubly linked with journalism in Western Australia.