Morawa Scene: Article 06—Skinny Hern
This is my sixth article that I have done for publishing in the Morawa Scene.
For those that want to see the article in the layout that it was published then you can click on the image provided. Otherwise the content below the ruling is exactly the same as that in the layout image.
The previous article “The Camel Team” is here.
Photographer unknown
[Click to enlarge]
As related to me by my dad, at around 9:00 p.m. on the night of the 26th of October in 1927 —which Google tells me was a Wednesday—my dad was working at the shop and happened to look through the louvre windows on the north side looking towards the hotel. He spotted a ‘flame’ snaking its way through the bush between the hotel and the railway station.
This bush is now where Prater Park is in Morawa but back then it was just trees and scrub with a few trodden dirt paths going through it.
He opened the front door of the shop in order to go out and have a better look. In doing so he met up with the Station Master, Mr. Davidson, who lived three houses down to the south of P. H. Lodge & Sons. The Station Master was, as I understand it, heading home from the hotel.
My father pointed out to him the ‘flame’ in the scrub, which was now very close to the station. So close that by the time the Station Master turned to look there was a massive explosion at the station.
This picture was taken by Maurice Lodge the day after the incident
[Click to enlarge]
A room called the shelter shed at the Morawa railway station had been blown up by George ‘Skinny’ Hearn (52), a well sinker based in Morawa. The shelter shed was often used by Italian migrants hoping to find work in the area.
Skinny had a serious beef with these migrant Italians because they would generally work for just food and board and did not require to be paid. This, it seems, impacted the work available for local blokes desperate for paying work.
The force of the explosion was tremendous. The small shelter shed, in which about eight or ten Italians were camping while waiting to go to another clearing job, was razed to the ground and portions of the roof and flooring were blown a distance of about twenty yards. [The West Australian newspaper, 6/10/1927]
At the time there was no hospital in Morawa. Fortunately there was a doctor: Dr. Hough.
Patrons of the hotel, my father, his older brother Maurice (who was also at the shop at the time), and the station master assisted in getting broken and screaming men from the station over to the hotel where rooms were made available.
The doctor came to the hotel and, as my dad tells it, he handed out morphine loaded syringes to my dad and his brother and told them to “stick this in their thighs anywhere “. The plan being to try and stop some of the pain as quickly as possible.
[Click to enlarge]
According to my father, every one of the ten Italians was injured and five were badly injured. One had serious head damage and at least two that he saw had a badly mangled arm and a severely damaged leg.
One of the Italians had been blown through the door of the shelter and landed past the second set of railway lines about 12 yards from the building.
Miraculously, as far I am aware, none of the Italians died.
In my dad’s telling of the events, the next day a piss pot was found stuck up in a tree in the scrub between the railway station and the shop. My dad’s view being that it was from the explosion and it had been blown some 50 yards from the station to end up upside down on a jutting branch.
Skinny Hearn was sentenced to life in prison, but this was later remitted and he was released in August of 1934.
The following two newspaper clips from the Trove website were not included in the article published in the Morawa Scene due to insufficient space.
The next and seventh article in this series is here.
