Shearers' strike engages North Queensland Register's first audience

After turning numerous pages devoted to advertisements, and devouring cables from overseas passing on news of Chilean rebels and assassinations in Hungary, readers scattered throughout northern Queensland – in flimsy canvas tents on goldfields and far away in isolated homesteads – could read a blow-by-blow account of the biggest civic unrest ever seen in the nation, right in their back yard.

The reports gave people the impression that a war was underway, with the headline in the very first edition, on March 4, 1891, describing it as “The Shearer’s Dispute”.

Sub-headings told readers that it was a serious disturbance, that the military and police had been called out and that martial law was proclaimed in central Queensland.

Writing from Clermont on February 22, the newspaper’s “own correspondent” reports that a mounted constable who was acting as a scout, “returned to town late last night with the information that a body of men, consisting of over 100 Western Unionists, were camped 23 miles from here, and expected to reach town to-night”.

After reporting that their leaders had a policy of peace, the unnamed correspondent told readers the strike leaders wanted to induce the pastoralists to hold a conference with them.

“The men say they intend holding a huge demonstration at Clermont, when overtures will be made to the pastoralists.

“They will not sign the agreement as it stands at present, and if the pastoralists will not make concessions, they will hold out in that case and simply sit down quietly and watch the course of events.”

A couple of weeks further on, the situation had escalated.

Headlines shout “The Mounted Infantry to the Front”, “Ball cartridges served out” and “Hot work expected”, all chilling messages.

To the modern reader it sounds like a preparation for war.

“The corps left at 7am on Wednesday by special train for Hughenden, fully equipped with horses, saddles, etc, thence to proceed to Winton, a small township of about 400 souls, south-west of Hughenden.”

This dramatic build-up ends on a limp note, however, when the writer announced that “thought the Charters Towers Mounted Infantry is a fully equipped force compared with most of the Queensland horse companies there is an error in their equipment, which amounts to a disgrace in the total absence of any side arms”.

“The only course for them to pursue were they to come to close quarters with an enemy would be to club their carbines,” he declares.

Today’s readers might have been expecting a newspaper born to serve miners toiling in the earth to be more sympathetic to the cause of the shearers striking in opposition of the freedom of contract demands of the pastoralists, but instead the paper takes a decidedly pro-establishment tone.

Readers are told that the paper’s editor has received a telegram from the (Charters Towers) mayor, Mr George Millican, who was in Brisbane, requesting that his name be placed on the Northern Miner Fund to make the pay received by the local troops while engaged on duty in the present disturbances equal to what they receive in their ordinary work.

“The sum the Mayor contributed is 5 pounds, 5 shillings.”

It also delighted in publishing a letter inciting authorities to bloodshed.

“Your excellent leader of this morning emphasised in a very outspoken manner, the difference between the actual nature of the mobs of strikers assembled at Clermont, and the character given them by their leaders as peaceable and law-abiding citizens.

“There is far too much nauseating sentiment about ‘bloodshed’. I honestly think that if a little blood were shed a great deal of good would result.”

The shearers’ strike threatened an industry that was the lifeblood of western Queensland, and which employed countless thousands of people.

In 1915 the North Queensland Register published a list of the year’s shearing fixtures, beginning with Cranford at Torrens Creek in April, with 10,000 head to shear, and finishing up at Birracania in the Prairie district, who listed 20,000 sheep.

In between, some big sheds were listed, many of them in north Queensland.

They included Cambridge Downs at Richmond, shearing 100,000 sheep and employing a staff of 50, Bowen Downs at Aramac, with 175,000 sheep on the books and needing a shed staff of 80 to get the wool off, and Sesbania at Corfield, which shore 90,000 sheep.