John Forrest and the Western Australian Goldrushes*

472 I. D. HEPPINGSTONE ness of two months. Th, voyage itself continued for another thm and a 1 half years, making four and a half in total, and it yielded 255 barrels of sperm oil, 2,700 barrels of whale oil (sometimes known as black oil) and 43,000 pounds of whalebone. This cargo had a value of$1O,934. In 1876, the Wing brothers of New Bedford built another ship, the Fleet wing, for Captain Heppingstone and he sailed her the following year out of San Francisco. This port was favoured by many whalemen as a base for John Forrest and the refitting. This time, he was gone for five years, making a successful voyage Western Australian Goldrushes* which returned about $5,000 each year. On his return home, in 1882, John Heppingstone retired from the sea, at the age of fifty-one. MARTYN WEBB As has been recounted, the Heppingstone family had a strong interest in whaling, which led many of its members to travel widely in pursuit of this fascinating, if dangerous, livelihood. Others remained here in Western John Forrest was a giant of a man both physically and mentally. He stood Australia, working the land and helping to create the new country to which head and shoulders above his contemporaries. As the State's first Premier their ancestors Robert and his wife Ann had come in 1830, at a time when from 1890 to 1901 he used his undoubted skills and knowledge to lay the economic privation and social upheavals associated with industrialisation foundations of the modern State of Western Australia. He was, however, and urbanisation led many to leave their homelands in search of a better fortunate in that he came to office at almost the precise moment at which life. gold was found in what was Australia's most impoverished and backward colony, left behind by those in eastern Australia, which had already devel oped economies on the basis of wool exports and, from the 1850s, the REFERENCES benefits of gold, first discovered in New South Wales and Victoria and 1. J.W. Turner to T. Salkild, written from Augusta,S July 1839 (Battye Library). later in Queensland. Western Australia was thus, on the eve of its great 2. Journal of the Meneor, 1840 (Battye Library). gold rushes of the 1890s, a land of despondency and despair waiting, 3. ibid. 4. ibid. Micawber-like, for something better to turn up. 5. ibid. John Forrest was himself a product of that past and, born in 1847, only 6. ibid. eighteen years after the founding of the Swan River Colony, knew at first 7. ibid. hand of the warping effects which widespread poverty and distress had on 8. ibid. the hearts and minds of West Australians. 9. Inquirer,S February 1851. 10. Inquirer, 25 November 1846. With a lesser spirit than Forrest, modern Western Australia might have 11. Inquirer, 28 March 1849. been laid on quite different foundations. Part of his success as Premier was 12. Inquirer, 24 September 1851. due to his having grown up and developed his character and learned his 13. Inquirer, 2 April 1856. skills as an administrator before self-government came to Western Aus 14. N. C. Haley, Whale Hunt - The Narrative of a Long Voyage (New York, 1948). tralia and in the days prior to the emergence of the modern disciplined 15. Journal of the Triton, 24 March 1872 (Battye Library). 16. ibid. ideologically-based political party. His was probably the most remarkable non-political apprenticeship for high political office of anyone in Australia. He was Western Australia's greatest explorer-geographer. He rose from the ranks to become, first, Sur veyor General of Western Australia, and then, at a time when it was, prac tically speaking, the most important public office short of the governor, Commissioner of Crown Lands. As an appointed member of Western Aus tralia's Legislative Council immediately prior to self-government, he had already gained invaluable experience of the inner workings of government • Due to limitations of space, Professor Webb's interpretation of the reasons for the suicide of C. Y. O'Connor given in the original paper have been omitted. It is anticipated that this will form the substance of another paper to be given at a later date. 473 474 MARTYN WEBB Forrest and the Goldrushes 475 and the uses of power, before taking office as Premier. He was also the most widely travelled and knowledgeable of his contemporaries. John Forrest was, however, fortunate in that he was appointed Premier at the very beginning of the great Western Australian gold rush, and early enough in his life (he was forty-three years of age when he assumed the premiership) to make full use of all his skills and hard-won knowledge. Forrest, both literally and figuratively, grew into the office of premier and by the time he came to resign as Premier in 190I his appearance and bear ing were regal and, whether consciously or not, as though he had modelled himselfon Edward, Prince of Wales. Professor Frank Crowley, Forrest's biographer, painted this word pic ture of him at the height of his political power and influence: Forrest was a big man, titanic in energy, massive in personality, and massive in physique-he stood nearly six feet in height and weighed nearly twenty stone when at the age of fifty three he joined the first federal government .... In the later years of his middle-age he was a tall big-framed, balding, rather obese figure, with a 541f2 inch waist and a rather ungainly walk. He wore a moustache and a full stubby black beard tinged with grey, a medallioned waistcoat which strug gled to encompass its occupant, trousers that had not an obvious suspension device, a derby brown out-of-doors and a rolled umbrella that seemed to be needed for stability rather than to cope with Perth's summer heat, or Melbourne's winter drizzle. He always ate and en joyed very large meals, slept well, occasionally smoked a pipe or cigar, had a sound digestion, rarely declined alcohol on medical or any other grounds, and kept most of his teeth until he was seventy. He wore reading glasses only in his sixties, and was seldom ill, except for winter colds and the occasional troubles of the elderly. He was gener ally full of bluff geniality, with a twinkle in his eye, a crushing hand shake, a wealth of good nature and breezy optimism. 1 Forrest in his early days was known mainly as a surveyor and explorer. There is no doubt that his skills as a surveyor stood him in good stead throughout all of his travels. But since most explorers of his day had to have at least a smattering of knowledge about position-finding, there was nothing unusual about him being a surveyor. Indeed, in this regard he was merely following in the footsteps of his predecessors, Septimus Roe, Augustus and Frank Gregory and Austin-all of whom were members of the Western Australian survey. Similarly, there was nothing special about him being an explorer at a time of widespread inland exploration in Africa, Asia and the Americas, as well as in Australia, except for the fact that he was among the first rank of world explorers. What made Forrest different from virtually all other Australian SirJohn Forrest explorers, apart from Major Mitchell in New South Wales, was that he was, by the tokens of his time, one of Australia's leading geographers. Forrest and the Goldrushes 477 476 MARTYN WEBB By 'geographer' I mean someone with an ability to integrate and general an administrator, but also, guided in his thinking by the application of ise about the world viewed as phenomena in space in much the same firm geographical principles. This is nowhere better illustrated than in his 4 manner as historians generalise about events in time. Like all good geog address to the electors ofBunbury on 22 November 1890. raphers, Forrest regarded reality as a complex of diff~rent elements. ,!,his His Bunbury election speech, probably one of the most important enabled him not only to grasp and understand an amazing range of subjects speeches ever made in Western Australia, was a moving and a masterly but also to deduce from them fresh ideas about the future. His abilities as a depiction ofWestern Australia as it was in times past, and as it could be in geographer were widely recognised by fellow geographers in Australia and times future. It was made when mining was in its infancy, ye::rs before the overseas in England, Italy and Russia and Vienna. He was also a gold discovery of either Coolgardie or Kalgoorlie. Had the speech been from medallist of the British Royal Geographical Society. In 1887, while visit anyone other than Forrest, it would have been of no more than academic ing England with his wife to participate in the celebration of Queen Vic interest. But as it came from the man who was shortly to preside over the toria's Golden Jubilee, he gave, at the invitation of British geographers, a momentous events which were about to unfold, and the arbiter between lecture to Section E, Geography, of the British Association for the Advance the competing interests of the Swan River colonists, the soon-to-arrive ment of Science. hordes of't'othersiders' (as eastern Australians were called at that time) On his way back to Western Australia, Forrest toured extensively in the and British-owned mining companies, his words hold a special place in the United States and Canada.

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