Anger Of Long-dead Shearers Still Smoulders On The Darling's Banks
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday August 21, 1994
The spirits of shearers past are stalking the banks of the Darling River north of Mildura this week.
It is 100 years since the great shearing strike of 1894, and Friday marks the infamous burning of the paddle-steamer, Rodney, by striking shearers near Poonecarie.
The Rodney was the pride of the 300-strong Murray and Darling river system paddle-steamer fleet. News of its torching swept across Australia within days, leading to calls for tougher action against militant unionism.
On Saturday night, more than 700 locals gathered at remote Polia Station to watch a centenary reenactment of the burning of the Rodney.
And for the first time, historian songwriter Mr Dennis O'Keeffe , has suggested that writer and poet Henry Lawson may have been part of the torching group of more than 300 union shearers.
The centenary celebrations of the burning of the Rodney have been made more poignant by the severe drought gripping Queensland and NSW.
For the first time in many years, the level of the Darling River is so low the bleached metal ribs of the Rodney's hull can be seen above the sullen waterline.
On its fateful voyage upstream - in the days when almost all the wool clip of southern Queensland and NSW was carried to the port of Echuca by steamships- the Rodney and its captain, Jimmy Dickson, had on board a troublesome load.
Their paddle-steamer was carrying 45 scab shearers - men loaded at Echuca in Victoria and headed for central NSW to beat the strike and get the sheep shorn.
But the effort by pastoralists was unsuccessful. The Rodney was ambushed while it was tied up at night by a mob of loyal union shearers, many of them from Wilcannia and Bourke. The scab shearers were hounded off the paddle-steamer by the attackers as it burned, while Captain Dickson and two women aboard were set adrift on a barge which later came ashore at a downstream sheep station.
The burning of the Rodney was followed by a national outcry against lawlessness. Graziers talked of hanging the attackers, and the NSW Government offered a reward for the ringleaders. Property owners and ship's captains began to arm themselves with intent.
Yet despite eight arrests, no convictions were recorded. And as the great 1894 shearers strike, originally based on reduced shearing rates, petered out, the Rodney's historic burning gradually slid into history.
The organiser of Saturday's reenactment, Mr Max Whiting, believes the burning of the Rodney is one of the most serious events in Australia's class struggle. "Yet it was so long ago, the significance of the Rodney has been forgotten among the younger generation," he said.
Mr O'Keeffe said his studies of newspaper and union files, shipping and transport records, and the letters and articles of Henry Lawson had convinced him the writer had helped torch the Rodney.
"Just two weeks before the night of August 26th, we know Lawson's job with the Australian Workers Union's newspaper disappeared - and he was very close to the unionists at Bourke, who probably led the ambush," he said.
He had been told by an elderly local, Mr Mick Ryan, shortly before his death that his father had said he was there with Lawson when the Rodney was burnt.
However, Mr O'Keeffe believes Lawson later felt sorry for the scab shearers and thought the unionists had gone too far.
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald