The Blow-in’s Demise
Brian Maloney Tells a Cautionary Tale
It’s a familiar tale in the outback. A city slicker, rolling into a mining town with dreams of striking it rich, only to be met with the brutal reality of life in the desert. Brian Maloney’s cartoon satirically depicts what Lightning Ridge locals refer to as ‘Going Gougin’,’ reminding us that opal mining isn’t for the faint-hearted.
The cartoon follows a well-off bloke who arrives in town with a fancy car and big ideas. He gives mining a red-hot go, but after a year of backbreaking labour in primitive conditions, he’s got nothing to show for it. In the end, he’s forced to retreat, selling off his once-prized car in nearby Walgett. It was a common occurrence in Lightning Ridge, the work was slow, challenging, and far from the get-rich-quick scheme that outsiders imagined it to be. The softness of opals meant they had to be extracted by hand because heavy machinery would destroy them.
Brian Maloney, the cartoonist behind the story, lived in Lightning Ridge in the mid-60s. With a ‘wingey arm,’ it’s doubtful he was a miner himself, but his artwork became part of the town’s history, and his murals once adorned the walls of the Diggers Rest Hotel.
Built in 1909 and originally known as The Imperial Hotel, when the Diggers Rest burnt down in 2006, the murals were lost, and it was discovered that the liquor license had been sold to a pub ‘on the coast’ years earlier. The license-less pub was never rebuilt, marking the end of an era for the town. The locals mourned the loss of the murals, but Maloney’s work still graces the walls of the Wallangulla Motel’s breakfast room.
Maloney’s cartoons were later turned into a series of postcards, ensuring that his sharp wit and even sharper observations about mining life live on—as do the hard-earned lessons of those who’ve tried their luck in the opal fields of Lightning Ridge.
