Walking Murdoch
“…He walked from Peak Hill to Kalgoorlie (600 miles)…”
In the “Western Mail” newspaper of 1904 a bush correspondent scribbled a letter to the editor about a character called “Walking Murdoch.”
He wrote: “Murdoch Matheson was a Canadian. Long and lean and a great walker, he was known as ‘Walking Murdoch’ and he deserved the name. He walked from Peak Hill to Kalgoorlie (600 miles), didn’t like it, and walked back.
“He went to Cue for a holiday. It was 200 miles away, but he walked it. He had a ‘spell’ there walking around all the mines.
“After a week of this he started for the Peak. He took a supply of food sufficient for the journey and an extra 50lb. of flour for the camp.
“He made good time. The day following his return he went out prospecting and on his way back to the camp he met a nigger on the bend of the track about four miles out.
“He had a bag of flour on his head. This he dropped and ‘went bush.’
“Murdoch carried the flour home and found it was the bag he had carried from Cue.
“Niggers were very bad. They were in hundreds. Every one of them, man, woman and child, was a thief.
“One man coming home found his camp had been cleaned out. Not a bite left. He had little hope of recovering any of the food, but they had taken a four-quart billycan, a new one.
“As billies were billies in those days, he made a bid for it. He found it alright. Half a dozen niggers were sitting round a fire over which the billy hung.
“A little foot was sticking out of the top of the billy. They had killed a half caste of about four months old and were making soup of him …
“He tipped out the contents and made his way home. That billy did service for many a day.”
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