The Last of the Last

Until his death in May 2011, Claude Choules was the last man alive to have served in a military capacity in both world wars. In November 1917, he had his first taste of hostile action on the HMS Revenge in the North Sea. He was 16 years old. A year later, he witnessed Admiral Beatty accept the surrender of the German fleet, and in 1919 he witnessed the Germans scuttling their ships at Scapa Flow. During the Second World War, he was responsible for naval demolition for Western Australia.

THE LAST OF THE LAST

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ON 3 MARCH 1901, SIX WEEKS AFTER QUEEN VICTORIA died, with the country still in full mourning, I was born in Pershore, Worcestershire. At that time, Pershore was a town of about 2,000 people and I was christened in its famous abbey. Choules is an Anglo-Saxon name, meaning ‘fisherman’. The name appears in the Domesday Book in Salisbury Cathedral and has remained unchanged since before the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066.

Before I started school, we moved to ‘The Cottage’ in Wyre Piddle, a village on the banks of the River Avon, between Worcester and Evesham, in the beautiful Vale of Evesham. Its population of between 200 and 300 nearly all lived in thatched cottages. There was one pub, the Anchor Inn, one store, one bakehouse, a butcher’s shop and a beautiful Norman church. At that time, local market gardeners and farmers brought their produce to be sold at the market cross in the centre of the village. That cross must have been very old, because the stone steps at the base were worn down by long use.

The Cottage lay half a mile out of Wyre Piddle. It was the only house in Anchor Lane, which petered out amid various orchards and farm meadows. Two miles across the meadows was the village of Throckmorton. I well remember the day we helped fight a fire in a thatched house there, which fortunately stood alone. The fire engine, drawn by six horses, passed our house on its way to Throckmorton from Pershore. All assistance was welcome because the pump was operated by hand, with about eight or ten people on each long handle at either side of the engine. It was hard work and frequent changes of volunteers were required. Despite our efforts, the house was destroyed, as a fire in a thatched building is very difficult to contain. This tragedy occurred when I was only eight or nine years old. We children thought it a most exciting event, as we were allowed to help with the pumping.

The fire service that rushed past Claude’s cottage to combat a thatch fire was one of hundreds of small outfits operated individually by municipal authorities. Until the 1900s most tenders were steam-powered. As he lived in a rural environment, it seems likely that it was this kind of machine that was being used, as innovation was slow to reach rural areas. However, it was about this time that steam-powered appliances were being superseded by those driven with an internal combustion engine. It wasn’t until 1938 that a national fire service was formed, unifying fire fighters across the country.

We also had a black cat called Smut. Smut was quite a character. When we went down into the village she would usually accompany us, walking in front with her tail in the air. On reaching the first house, she would jump through the hawthorn hedge and remain there until our return – then she would hop out and lead the way home. She was a great hunter and would often bring home rats and mice, and leave them on the front doorstep for us to admire. On occasion, she brought in a hedgehog. I thought she had magical powers. When I was left alone in the evenings, as sometimes happened, I used to lie on the sofa with the cat on my chest, feeling sure she would protect me from any harm.

My mother, Madeline Winn, a Welsh actress, left home when I was five. At the time, I was told she had died. In fact, she went back on the stage but I never saw her again. My sister Phyllis went to live with Uncle Leonard Choules and his family of four girls, and my baby sister Gwendoline was adopted by my father’s sister, Adeline Rawlins, and her husband, Herbert, who had no children of their own. Uncle Herbert was a very successful farmer at Pewsey, in Wiltshire, and used to ride around his 600-acre farm on a beautiful horse.

That left my father, my two older brothers Douglas and Leslie, and myself. We were looked after by Mrs Savage, who used to walk over to The Cottage from her home in Pershore each day. She was an excellent cook and cared for us very well. My two brothers went to the Pershore National Boys’ School, a walk of two and a half miles each way. After attending the Infants’ School in Wyre Piddle, I joined them at Pershore.

On my way home from Pershore School, I used to pass under the railway bridge over Anchor Lane. This bridge carried the London to Birmingham Express, which passed our village each afternoon. I would watch in awe as the speeding juggernaut sped over the bridge, rattling its rivets. One day my cousin Frank and I climbed the embankment and discovered that there was enough space for two small boys to squeeze into the point at which the great steel H-bar girders which carried the weight of the bridge entered the buttresses of masonry. Next day we hid there to feel what it was like when the express passed over. We could both see and hear the train for some time before it reached the bridge. It looked like a monster swaying towards us. We huddled together in fear, trembling like leaves, almost deafened by the roar, wondering if the bridge would collapse through the terrific vibrations set up by the train. When she had passed, we emerged none the worse for wear and vowing it was the greatest thrill we had ever known. We kept news of this episode to ourselves and afterwards quite often enjoyed the same thrill. If we had told our brothers and sisters, and word got to our parents, that would have put paid to any further such adventures.

The last half of the journey to school took me past a flourmill on the Avon operated by a waterwheel. After winter flooding, the water meadows alongside the river would often be frozen over. In frosty weather, we used to carry our skates slung around our necks. As soon as we struck the meadows, we would strap them on and skate to the jam factory on the outskirts of Pershore, where we would change into our boots and proceed to school.

Just before we reached the jam factory, we had to pass over a low bridge spanning a drainage channel. One foggy morning, I was out in front of the others. Thinking I was heading for the bridge, I skated over the bank and landed on my forehead on the icy surface of the channel. I woke up some time later, in the home of a family friend in Pershore High Street, with the lady of the house putting butter on a large lump on my forehead. I remained there for the rest of the day, until my brothers and sister called to take me home.

My brother Douglas was born in 1893 and Leslie a year later. As they were quite a lot older than me, I made my friends among the village lads. There was no organised sport at school but out of school we often played football. I was keen on running and used to practise doing circuits of the field where we played football. In winter, we often played ice hockey, which was great fun.

Fishing I also enjoyed very much. My friends and I used to cut our rods from withies, a type of willow. A withy rod was considered equal to a cane one, which had to be bought. Our favourite spot for fishing was the Wyre Brook, which joined the Avon near the watermill between Wyre Piddle and Pershore. The catch usually consisted of eels, gudgeons, roach, perch and bream. Sometimes we took them home to cook but often we cooked and ate them at the brook.

One of our favourite pastimes was to lie on our backs in the hay meadows and watch the skylarks in their ever-ascending spirals, bursting their little hearts in urgent song. We could still hear them when they had gone up so far they were out of sight. Then they would reappear, descending in long glides, and land in the grass some way away from their nests. By following carefully, we could track their nests, which were hidden in dense clumps of grass. The skylarks did not sing as they descended, probably so as not to disclose the whereabouts of their eggs or young. Or maybe they had run out of breath!

In one of the meadows alongside the brook was an old elm tree with a hole about 20 feet up. One evening, at dusk, I thought I saw a bat fly out of it. On the summer evenings, we saw lots of bats flying around. I climbed the tree, put my hand in the hole and pulled out a bat. After a good look at it I put it back again. Sometimes friends would ask me to show them a bat, which I gladly did, although I always insisted that they didn’t hurt it and that I should put it back afterwards. I think the bats got to know me because I was never once bitten, though there were quite a number of them resident in that hollow tree.

A lady who was lazing in the sun screamed and fainted. My Uncle Dick, the husband of my mother’s sister, Annie, as well as being the publican, came running down, dived in and fished me out. They pumped the water out of my lungs, gave me a brandy bath and laid me down to sleep in a large double bed at the inn. When I came round, they asked me if I’d like a drink of something. I said lemonade, and insisted that my cousin Frank come to share it. My only sensation whilst in the river was of wonder that everything around me was yellow. I later realised that this impression was caused by the sun shining through the mud particles in the water.

My early education was at the village infants’ school, under the kindly guidance of Miss Bridgewater, who was in charge of the school for 42 years. As I have mentioned, after this I went on to Pershore National Boys’ School where the headmaster, Mr W.T. Chapman, was a strict but fair man who did not enjoy particularly good health. He nevertheless did a fine job as secretary of the Pershore Cooperative Fruit Markets for many years after he retired.

As I could not run as fast as my two older brothers, they would not let me accompany them when they went down to Wyre Piddle. They said that if we were chased, I’d be caught, and they’d be caught out in any wrongdoing that had occurred. One of their pranks was called ‘tip-tap-the-spider’, played with a pin, a reel of cotton and a button. It has to be remembered that the village was very dark and quiet at night; the local houses were lit with kerosene lamps or candles and traffic consisted of the occasional horse-drawn carriage or bicycle.

For tip-tap-the-spider, the pin was stuck into the woodwork of a windowpane, with the button fastened about a foot away. Unreeling the cotton as they went, Doug and Les would position themselves across the street, from where slight tugs would cause the button to knock on the windowpane. When the door opened, the owner would look around and, seeing no one, return inside. That’s when the boys would start knocking again.

Guy Fawkes Night was a red-letter date for us. We used to save up our pennies for months beforehand to buy fireworks, which were placed in the warm oven for several nights to make sure they were thoroughly dry for the 5th of November. We’d set off our fireworks in the village, much to the annoyance of some residents. I remember one man doing a mad dance to dodge a Jumping Jack, then chasing furiously after the village kids, who all ran off. I couldn’t keep up, so I climbed up into a stack of empty fruit hampers to hide. But the man spotted me, hauled the hampers down, took off his belt and gave me a good walloping, which I still believe was undeserved, as I hadn’t lit a single firework. My brothers and I made sure that man did some more dancing that night! When Les and Doug emigrated to Western Australia in 1911, I’m sure most people in Wyre Piddle heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Australia in 1911 had spent a decade as a country rather than a colony, and was proud to call itself part of the Commonwealth. Before 1901, Australia consisted of four colonies: New South Wales (which included what are now Victoria, Queensland and the eastern part of the Northern Territory), South Australia, Western Australia and Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). Each had its own system of government, of which it was fiercely protective. For a while, it seemed inter-state rivalry might scupper plans to bring everyone under one Australian umbrella. New South Wales was particularly belligerent on the issue.

The Victorian era had ushered in numerous changes in Australian society. New communications technology had a unifying effect, bringing the major cities into closer contact than ever before, even though they were thousands of miles apart. There were some obvious advantages to federation: the states could operate a unitary defence force and it would put an end to much administrative duplication. Tariffs could be scrapped. After two referendums, federation was finally agreed. A census carried out in 1911 revealed there were 4,455,005 people living in Australia, parts of which were still unexplored.

Les and Doug Choules left for Western Australia just as it embarked upon an unprecedented period of growth. Before the twentieth century its population was about 46,000, just under a quarter of whom lived in the capital, Perth. The discovery of goldfields at Kalgoorlie in 1890 had changed all that. Although the gold boom began to decline as early as 1905, Western Australia’s economy remained strong thanks to the riches generated by the wheat and wool trades. The war caused a blip in its growth, however, as it did elsewhere in the country. About 40 per cent of the male population of Australia aged between 18 and 44 fought in the First World War, and about two-thirds of them became casualties.

Once, when I was about halfway to school, a sudden thunderstorm developed and I saw lightning strike a cow in a field. She bellowed and fell over, then struggled to right herself. I went to the farmhouse to tell the farmer, Jimmy Partington. He came over to look at the stunned cow and said his son would soon be back from Pershore, where he was delivering a load of wheat. ‘He’ll help me get her into the house yard,’ he said. He thanked me and asked his daughter Alice to call the school to let them know I’d be late. The school was already mustered for assembly when I arrived, so the head told everyone there about my mishap. Jimmy was so grateful he told me, ‘If ever you want a job, Tommy Boy, come and see me.’

He called me ‘Tommy Boy’ because I was born during the Boer War, when British soldiers were called Tommy Atkins, and my nurse christened me Tommy. This I was known as till I met and married Ethel Wildgoose. She always called me Claude, my given name, and so I remained from then on. I was given the nickname ‘Chuckles’ in the Australian navy.

In fact, British soldiers had been known as ‘Tommy Atkins’ as far back as the mid-eighteenth century, although one anecdote has the Duke of Wellington using the term after being impressed by the conduct of a soldier of that name. In 1794, during the Flanders Campaign, the Duke approached a wounded private who had acted with valour in the field. ‘It’s all right, Sir. It’s all in a day’s work,’ the soldier murmured, before breathing his last. The Duke often used this cameo to illustrate the dutiful courage of the British soldier.

Another story emerged from the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857, when army chaplain Reverend E.J. Hardy recorded how a man called Tommy Atkins remained at his post despite the hopelessness of the battle and eventually died there. Reverend Hardy wrote: ‘Throughout the Mutiny Campaign, when a daring deed was done, the doer was said to be “a regular Tommy Atkins”.’

There’s also a claim that ‘Tommy Atkins’ was included on military forms, particularly when the recruit was unable to write. However, it should also be noted that the name Atkins means ‘Little son of the red earth’. Perhaps for this reason the name at the time was understood to be a generic one, adopted for British soldiers.

A fruit and vegetable market was held each weekday in Broad Street, Pershore, a very broad road indeed – about 30 yards wide. Horse-drawn wagons, drays and carts brought the produce there and it was laid out in regular rows so that the auctioneer could pass along each lane and sell the goods. During my first years at school, Pershore Cooperative Fruit Market was built. Here, the produce was all under cover and the lanes were raised about 18 inches, which reduced the amount of lifting required during handling. Offices were provided for the use of the auctioneer and his staff.

Whenever anyone was sick, the local midwife Gran Rose was called, as she was credited with great healing powers. She was a grand old lady with 12 children and was, I’m sure, loved by all who knew her. Her husband worked as a ganger – or foreman of a group of workers – for the Great Western Railway Company. The Rose family also ran a smallholding of about ten acres and grew fruit and vegetables. All the necessary labour was supplied by the family. They also ran poultry, which Gran used to take to the Worcester kerbstone market ten miles away.

Our family lore has it that Gran Rose once saved our father’s life when he had double pneumonia by forcing some brandy between his lips after the doctor said he was dead. Our father always felt great indebtedness and affection for her ever after. I also had first-hand evidence of her healing skills for, after Doug and Les had gone to Western Australia, I was riding Dad’s bike down Wyre Hill and came a cropper. I managed to hobble into school the next day, but my bruised knee was giving me so much pain that the headmaster decided to take a look but could not pull my knickerbockers over it due to the swelling. Being lunchtime, he took me home on the carrier of his bike, which I think was very good of him.

Towards the end of the First World War I was on leave and, as usual, visited Gran Rose and her family. She told me that things were not too good and asked if I could lend her twenty-six pounds. I said of course I could. She then said, ‘I will only accept the loan if you take my 26 one-pound shares in the Pershore Coop Market in exchange.’

I can only just remember my paternal grandmother, Betsy Anne White. Our great-grandparents were horse-breeders and lived in a lovely old place called Broad Oak in Hampshire. I went there as a child with my father’s sister, Aunt Nellie. It was then occupied by a cousin of my father’s, Annie Fencott. My grandfather, whom I never saw, and grandmother lived at Hartley Wintney, in the old rectory where my father was born. A small sidelight on the times was that my grandmother always addressed her husband as Mr Choules. When I was a small boy, grandmother Betsy Anne lived with my father’s sister, Adeline, at Pewsey, on the farm run by Aunt Addie and her husband, Uncle Herbert Rawlins. Grandmother dressed like Queen Victoria in her later years and looked quite like her. She would sit in an armchair by the fire with her hands in her lap looking into the flames and not saying anything, nor moving, no matter what was going on around her. It reminded me of the old saying, ‘Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits!’

My father and I would go fishing together on the river in one of the light clinker-built boats. I would take the oars and pull up and down the stream, while he trolled for pike or cast a fly for trout. For about three or four weeks of the summer holidays, I would pull him down the river to the Wyre flourmill and we would land up near the waterfall that carried the excess water past the mill. On the stones of this fall grew a green weed, like tufts of hair about three or four inches long. This was a great attraction for roach, which waited at the bottom of the fall for any that washed off. We used to break off a small amount and wrap it round our hook (about the size of a herring hook) and cast it into the swirling water. Invariably, we would have an immediate strike. Roach are fatter than herring and make very nice eating. I don’t remember ever seeing another fisherman doing this, so maybe it was a well-kept secret of my father’s.

My father also took me fox hunting, following the Croome Hounds owned by the Earl of Coventry. We would often call in to one of the country inns around Pershore or Evesham and buy our lunch of two pennyworth of cheese – about three to four ounces – and the top of a wholemeal cottage loaf, for one penny. It was a good, tasty meal for the grand total of threepence! Beer in those days was twopence a pint and cider a penny-halfpenny a pint. Prices remained stable until well into the First World War. I remember going on leave from the training ship HMS Impregnable, when my pay was sixpence per day. I’d visit the Anchor Inn to renew acquaintance with the villagers of Wyre Piddle and for two or three shillings I could shout for all hands.

At the time of Captain Scott’s preparations for his expedition to the South Pole, I was a schoolboy. The tremendous interest taken by the general public in this activity intensified after Scott and his companions so tragically lost their lives on their return journey. Throughout Britain and the Empire, the feeling against his Norwegian rival, Roald Amundsen, became very bitter indeed. Amundsen reached the Pole a month before Scott, after a smooth-running expedition; whereas Scott’s journey was fraught with difficulties and ended in disaster. The boys in my school were told to write an essay on Captain Scott’s expedition. As my father had each day read the news to my family, I was well versed in the story and was lucky enough to win the prize.

Later in life, I received first-hand information about the expedition from Edward R.G.R. ‘Teddy’ Evans, who, as a young lieutenant, was second-in-command under Scott and who later wrote South with Scott. Evans became famous during the First World War as commander of the destroyer HMS Broke. He took his ship alongside a German destroyer in the English Channel at full speed one night and gave the order ‘Boarders away’. That signalled members of his ship’s company, armed with cutlasses and pistols, to jump aboard the German ship. They captured her in hand-to-hand combat. This operation called for superb seamanship and extraordinary courage. It was the first time this kind of action had been carried out since the days of sail. His consort, HMS Swift, sank a second German destroyer of three in this action.

Both Evans and Scott became heroes of the age for their ‘against all odds’ courage. Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) was a naval officer invited to join the National Geographic Society’s expedition to Antarctica between 1901 and 1904. Having gone further south than anyone before, Scott was one of a new breed of polar explorers elevated to the status of celebrity. Immediately, he set about raising funds for another expedition, this time with the South Pole as his goal. His ship Terra Nova finally departed from Britain for the snowy south in June 1910 and hopes of a record-breaking trip were high. Only after he left Britain did he hear that Amundsen was also heading for the South Pole. The men were now locked into a race.

While Amundsen used Eskimo know-how to get ahead, Scott was constrained by some preconceived ideas that ultimately proved impractical. Plans to make use of mechanical sledges and ponies were scuppered by the extreme weather. On 17 January 1912 a diminished team reached the South Pole, only to find Amundsen had beaten him there. Dejected and exhausted, the British party turned around in a futile attempt to reach safety.

When the bodies of Scott and two colleagues were found in 1913, a letter to his wife Kathleen was discovered. It began by acknowledging that he was in ‘a tight spot’. He urged her to marry again and went on: ‘You know I have loved you, you know my thoughts must have constantly dwelt on you and oh dear me you must know that quite the worst aspect of this situation is the thought that I shall not see you again. The inevitable must be faced – you urged me to be leader of this party and I know you felt it would be dangerous – I’ve taken my place throughout, haven’t I?’

Scott had invited Evans to join the ill-fated expedition. Although Evans was eminently qualified, Scott’s agenda was in fact to prevent him leading a rival expedition. All the men in Scott’s team were left vying for a place in the group that would make the final push for the Pole. Failing to make the cut and being sent back by Scott was a monumental disappointment for Evans. Even without undertaking the last leg of the expedition, he nearly perished. During his return journey, he was devastated by an attack of scurvy and survived only thanks to his companions, Tom Crean and William Lashly, who pulled him back on a sledge, in direct contravention of Evans’s order to abandon him in the wilderness and save themselves. Evans was, wrote Lashly, ‘turning black and blue and several other colours as well’. All three were in danger of dying. Crean went for help, walking for 18 hours non-stop to reach a camp. Evans made a full recovery and returned to Antarctica in 1913 to fetch surviving support staff from the expedition. Evans readily related his Antarctica adventures to fellow seamen during the remainder of his illustrious naval career. One of his favourite anecdotes was how men would pee on their own feet to prevent frostbite.

In 1929, Teddy Evans became rear admiral in command of the Australian squadron, and used to give us most interesting lectures about the Antarctic, showing slides of penguins, seals, whales and so on to companies on RAN ships. Later still, in the Second World War, he was the first admiral to become commander-in-chief Combined Operations. Between the wars, as captain of a British cruiser on the China Station, he took his ship to the rescue of a British passenger liner that had run aground in a gale and swam to the ship, taking a line which enabled the rescue of all passengers and crew. For this, he was awarded the Albert Medal in gold. It was stories of men like Scott and Evans that attracted me to navy life. I didn’t know many other sailors during my childhood.

The only Wyre Piddle villager in the Royal Navy was Dick Goddard. He was the eldest of twelve children. His family lived in a thatched cottage near the Anchor Inn, whose gardens also ran down to the river. Dick was unmarried, and when he was on leave we would see him as he walked through the village on his way from the Pershore Railway Station, carrying his gear in a black silk handkerchief in one hand with a canary or parrot in a cage in the other. Each forenoon he would go to the inn and take up his customary place on the left side of the chimney base in the tap room, where he would sit and smoke his pipe. Anyone occupying this spot would vacate it for him. It was known as Dick’s seat. There was always a crowd of kids around Dick while he drank his beer – restrictions on children in public houses were not in existence then. He could tell the most wonderful yarns. Dick was a real hero to us kids, and he proved himself to be so to the Service for in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, he was serving in HMS Warrior, an armoured cruiser. She was so severely damaged that she was taken in tow back across the North Sea, but foundered just before reaching the east coast. Dick was then a stoker petty officer.

I think that knowing Dick Goddard influenced me to join the Royal Navy, plus the fact that when I was fourteen, the First World War had been in progress for seven months. I had intended to emigrate to Western Australia as soon as I could leave school (at 14). The war made that impossible. The letters sent home by my brothers were very interesting and my father allowed me to take them to school for the headmaster to read to the senior boys. Western Australia was on the other side of the world, in the most isolated part of the island continent, and Mr Chapman would point out on the map exactly where they were.

Douglas had been driving a camel team out of Coolgardie, taking supplies out for the construction of the Trans-Australian Railway. Leslie had been driving a camel team from Nyabing, down the Rabbit Proof Fence to Point Anne on the south coast as a boundary rider. His job was to keep the fence in good repair; the trip lasted seven days each way. It was very lonely, as there were no settlements between Nyabing and Point Anne in those days. He used to talk to his dog and even to the camels. He said he once met the man who was inspecting the telegraph line from Adelaide to Albany and they spent a whole day together – yarning!

The Trans-Australian railway line was a vital artery to link isolated Perth with the rest of the nation. Funded by all the states of Australia, it had been one of the major inducements offered to bring Western Australia into the federation of 1901 when six states – New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia – were formed into one nation. Prior to the advent of the railway, there was no road for travellers to take, nor watering holes along the way. For those that wanted to get from one side of Australia to the other, the only option was a sea voyage, which took eight days. If Australia was isolated, then Western Australia was particularly so. A railway was seen as a tonic for the economy of both sides of the country.

But building the railway across vast tracts of waterless desert was a mighty undertaking. It took two years to survey the site of the railway, which was to run from Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, a track distance of 1,063 miles (1,711 km) to be built at a cost of some £4 million. Legislation passed in 1911 signalled the start of the project and it began from both ends, heading towards the middle. Keeping the construction workers supplied with food, water and materials proved to be one of the greatest challenges. Fleets of camels proved the most effective method of supply. The project continued throughout the First World War until both ends met on 17 October 1917 at Ooldea, 621 miles east of Kalgoorlie. Five days later the first transcontinental train left Port Augusta, cheered by 1,500 people. The carriages were fitted with electric fans and a fridge but were still uncomfortably hot as they toiled through the emptiness of the Nullarbor Plain, where at one point the track runs for 309 miles without a curve.

Meanwhile the rabbit-proof fence was, in retrospect, one of the most perplexing projects of the century. Rabbits, not native to Australia, had been introduced by early settlers, to provide hunting and food. Possessing an astonishing capacity to breed, rabbits had become a major pest. Where rabbits were abundant crops and grazing were at risk. A fence was suggested as a way of keeping rabbits out of Western Australia. When it became clear that one fence was insufficient, fences two and three were built.

At first they used bicycles for transport, then switched to camels and, later, a motor vehicle. Finally, the most durable option was a buckboard buggy drawn by a pair of camels. Of course, camels were not native to Australia. They had arrived in 1860, having been recruited on a trip to India, after Australians realised that horses and mules had a limited capacity for desert life. Camels and their owners were the unsung heroes of many expeditions into Australia’s unknown interior.

By the time of the Coolgardie gold rush, which began in 1894, the Afghan cameleers were swift to spot the opportunity that awaited them. The goldfields were isolated in harsh terrain. Workers could not have continued without the food and water transported by the camels with comparative ease and at low cost. By 1898 there were 300 Muslims in Coolgardie, the main focus for the Muslim community in Australia at that time. It comprised only men who eventually relocated from Coolgardie to Perth, the new capital of Western Australia. Although they did not exploit the mineral riches of Coolgardie themselves, the cameleers ran a profitable business, which stirred some jealousy among other workers. Racism towards anyone who was not of white, British stock was prevalent at the time. It is thought that a few of the cameleers were murdered while their animals were, in some instances, tortured. There was little that could be done to seek proper justice. This was starkly drawn into focus by legislation passed by the newly federated states at the beginning of the twentieth century, as politicians sought to keep Australia free of non-white immigrants. Cameleers were hard hit by taxes that discriminated against camels in favour of horses. As they were considered foreign workers – no matter that many had spent years in the country – the Afghans could not travel freely between Australian states without being hard-hit by the hindrance of red tape. Nor were they permitted to become citizens to free themselves of the burden. When cameleers could no longer make a decent living many returned to Asia, leaving their animals in the hands of Australians.

The rabbit-proof fence was lauded by some. In 1907 one rabbit inspector declared: ‘I went along portions of the R. P. fence to the north of Burracoppin recently on the outside (east) and there was not a blade of grass to be seen, not even enough to feed a bandicoot. On the west side there was grass from three to six inches high and any amount of old feed.’

But by 1935 the experiment was seen as an unmitigated failure, not least because the fence’s security had soon succumbed to the elements. David Stead, a former rabbit commissioner for the New South Wales government, wrote: ‘There is one thing outstanding very clearly in the matter . . . whatever effective work the fence did . . . it absolutely failed in an effort to prevent the movements of Rabbits [sic] from one part of the state to another. From the beginning it was largely a gigantic make-believe – a danger, too, inasmuch as it, like other large fences, lulled the landholders most concerned, into a false sense of security which numbed his own endeavours and really assisted the spread of the Rabbit [sic].’