prospector

See www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/26514771989/

Ernest Henry (1 May 1837 – 26 March 1919) was an English explorer and pioneer grazier. He is best known as an explorer of North-West Queensland and was the first settler on a property on the Flinders River which he named Hughenden Station, later the location of the town of Hughenden. He discovered copper in the Cloncurry area and is considered the father of both towns. Henry's life was summarised by S.U. Pearson: "Few men have encompassed more in their lifetime than he, and not many have known greater toil and hardship. In his unassuming way, he probably did more for North Queensland than any other man. The wide untrammeled bush was his home and he reveled in it." In Brisbane, Henry met George Elphinstone Dalrymple who was planning an expedition to explore the Burdekin River. During this journey, Henry's party passed through an area with many Aboriginal people and became fearful of the armed Aboriginal warriors who the party believed were pursuing them, and so the party set a dog upon the Aboriginal people and also shot at them. Henry's participation in Dalrymple's expedition resulted in him securing three pastoral stations: Baroondah (now the locality of Baroondah) on the Dawson River, Mount McConnel at the junction of the Suttor and Burdekin rivers, and Conway (which adjoined Mount McConnel) at the head of Sellheim Creek. By 1861 he and his brother Arthur had stocked them with sheep and cattle driven from southern Queensland properties. But Henry was never satisfied. Henry wanted to view this new country himself and set out from Mount McConnell on 24 November 1863 with a Mr Devlin and his favourite aboriginal boy, Dick. On the Flinders River he took up land which he named Hughenden Station after his mother's childhood home in England, Hughenden Manor. The township of Hughenden was laid out in the same area in 1876. On an exploring trip in the Cloncurry region in 1867, Henry found lumps of a heavy black mineral and took samples to Peak Downs, the nearest settlement inland from Rockhampton, to report and register their find. The mineral proved to be iron ore, a worthless find as the deposit was too distant from the nearest port. Henry again returned to the Cloncurry area with his aboriginal boy, Dick, fossicking for minerals. On 20 May 1867, he found the mother lode of copper that became the Great Australian Mine. In 1876 the township of Cloncurry was laid out by Surveyor William H Bishop, the same man who laid out the township of Hughenden. In 1883 Tarsis Copper Smelting Company began work on the Great Australian mine. A furnace, rail tracks, rail trucks, and other mining equipment were dragged from Normanton. But the mine soon closed and the furnace on the bank of the Coppermine Creek decayed into a rusty Cloncurry landmark. Henry disposed of his various mining leases over the years, and by 1913 the last of his holdings, Mount Oxide, had been sold for £40,000. He lived alone at the Grange on the outskirts of Cloncurry. His wife, whom he had married in 1870 and by whom he had two children, died in 1888. Henry died at Epping, New South Wales, on 26 March 1919. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Henry_(explorer)

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a miner's candle spike, perhaps?

Dru Great suggestion, Dru! So the white tubey thing would be the candle itself? Slightly disappointed though, I hoped for something exotic...

He's holding two things, a candle spike and a folding ruler. The man at right of shot also has a ruler. You know the ones with brass hinges, like this:

The guy with the galoshes is definitely not a labourer - look at that starched collar and the very clean overalls!

The guy you've tagged as Mr Jackson also appears in the image