A Long Line of Miners...

Mining goes back a long way in my family.

The first miner I was aware of was my own father, Barrie Robert SMITH. In 1966 we shifted to Mt Isa in Northwest Queensland, as he had found a job working underground in Mt Isa Mines. Dad was a fitter and turner so would have worked on the machinery underground. He really hated working underground and re-trained in 1968 to leave and become a teacher.

Barrie Robert SMITH

Dad's adoptive father, (and biological grandfather), Arthur Douglas SMITH had many occupations, but one of them was as a miner. The electoral rolls don't say where he was working as a miner in his early life, but Dad did say that after he retired he went North regularly to do tin-scratching. I don't know how he got up there, as he never had a car or a driver's licence.

Arthur Douglas SMITH

Dad's biological mother, Doris Hamilton BRAY, applied for gold mining licences with her husband, Norbert SMANS, in 1938.

Doris BRAY

Doris was only following in her Cornish ancestral footsteps. Her father Abdiel was a miner at Moonta in South Australia, before relocating to Charters Towers to work in the gold mines. His father, Thomas BRAY, grandfather William BRAY, great-grandfather John BRAY, on and on back in the family were all miners. 

Abdiel BRAY

On Doris' mother's side there were also miners with grandfather William Henry Harris KESSELL being a miner, in Cornwall, Kadina in South Australia, and Charters Towers in Queensland. His father-in-law, Edward VIVIAN was a miner in Cornwall and South Australia, and his wife's grandfather John LAWN was a copper miner in Cornwall. 

An engraving of Cornish miners form the St Ives area in 1866, Source=French publication Date=1866 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cornish_miners_-_1866.png