TOPIC:

A quick look at some of my QSA holder's trades:
Farmer's assistant
Shunter
Boilermaker
Labourer
Miner
Glasscutter
Tailor
Draper
Farmer
School caretaker
Cook
Plater
Seam plate worker

The last two were both black countrymen and the trades were typical of the heavy industrial work of the area. Hard and dirty work. You can see why the army was such an attraction!
Steve

Some occupations of members of Queensland's Third Contingent: -
....Alfred Evans and Archibald Andrew Gordon were kangaroo shooters.
....Henry Grubb was a rough rider and kangaroo shooter
....Richard Hegarty was a stock rider and kangaroo shooter
....David Walker was a kangaroo shooter and bush labourer

I was always intrigued by the occupation of Cyanider.

This article from the The Queenslander, Saturday12 April 1902, suggests the cyanider was employed in the mining industry and helped in the extraction of gold.

David
The use of cyanide to extract gold from tailings - low quality ore - was to spray a solution of cyanide and water over piles of crushed ore and tap the run-off. I understand that the piles of ore were heaped on big metal plates for tapping; sometimes the spraying was just over big piles of tailings and the groundwater was tapped. The run-off contained gold in solution and it could be extracted by a chemical process. Memory fails me on that particular score! I don't know who invented the whole process; it would be /or have been employed by large mining concerns and not by the smaller mines. Using the cyanide process, traces of gold in the tailings were recovered - metal which would have been impractical to otherwise recover.
In addition to Gold Mining in Australia, I would imagine the cyanide process would have been used in South Africa.
Regards
IL.

Owen Gilmore, a Reservist, was a chimney sweep when he rejoined The Buffs in November 1899.