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Hazel was then asked to go to Bloods Creek to manage a little store and post office. She found it a dirty place
but quickly settled into her new home—a brush shed with ‘a bit of tin over the stove so it wouldn’t catch alight’.
It featured a dirt floor, which she had to keep watered to lay the dust. She was the only white woman at Bloods
Creek for the two years she was there and as well as running the post office and little store she provided meals
for men working on the construction of the rail line to Alice Springs. Sam Irvine, mailman at the time between
Oodnadatta and the Territory, brought in her supplies every week or two from Oodnadatta. Vegetables delivered
by Ly Underdown and his brother from their station, Winton, supplemented these. Sam Irvine also brought water,
in a billy, for Hazel to wash her hair. Bore water at Bloods Creek was so hard she had to boil it in two coppers
before it was at all usable.
In 1929 just before the arrival of the first Ghan train, Hazel arrived in Alice Springs by car, a Buick driven by
Ly Underdown, accompanied by two other men. Having trouble with the car en route from Rumbalara they had to
camp out for two nights, the men making a type of coconut mat for Hazel to sleep on. Not expecting the journey to
take so long, they had very little food and had to exist on potatoes boiled in their jackets and butter.
In Alice Springs Hazel stayed with Mrs Annie Meyer and for a short time worked for her in her boarding house
situated alongside the Todd River in the street later named Leichhardt Terrace. But when men working on the
railway needed a housekeeper and meals provided for them, Hazel was persuaded to move into a Commonwealth
Railway cottage and look after them.
However, this lasted only as long as the railway line was being built and shortly afterwards, Hazel moved into
a small adobe/ant bed house owned by the Nicker family in Leichhardt Terrace and went into business on her own,
providing meals which she cooked on the back verandah. Railway authorities loaned her the necessary crockery
and cutlery to begin with, then George Wilkinson, owner of Wallis Fogarty Store, provided her with what she
needed, allowing her to pay whenever she could. Within three months she had paid every penny she owed and
nine months later pastoralist Jim Turner built her a boarding house in Todd Street (on the later site of the Big Crow
Supermarket in Alice Plaza) that she named ‘The Bushman’s Friend’.
Hazel Golder’s ‘Bushman’s Friend’ remained in existence for about 22 years, providing a home for workers
and station people when they were in town, a place with good food and an easy acceptance of their way of living
but where a certain strict standard of behaviour was insisted upon. She became a friend of many and a number of
people claim Miss Golder aided their beginnings in Central Australia.
A wiry little woman with wispy grey hair plaited and coiled into a bun at the back of her neck, Hazel Golder
was an inaugural member of the Country Women’s Association in Central Australia and patron of the Senior
Citizens Club. Although believed to be Jewish, Miss Golder was very active in the Anglican Church. During the
building of the first Anglican Church of Ascension in 1935 Hazel provided tea and biscuits for the workmen and
later for gatherings after services in the church. Always willing to help wherever she could, she became famous for
her coffee making for large social events in the town and it is thought she would have been offended if she had not
been asked to do it. It was a special coffee made with whole milk and took about two days to make. With no such
thing as instant coffee in those days the coffee would be boiled and strained, the milk heated and then added to it.
It was all made up before the big event.
Hazel Golder retired from her boarding house in 1952 and moved into a house built for her further down Todd
Street on the site now occupied by the Village Square. In 1971 she moved to a new home in McKinlay Street on
the east side where she remained until her death on 23 April 1984.
Centralian Advocate, 15 June 1984; Information from Mrs S Hewitt and Mrs G Turner; Northern Territory Archives Service: oral history
interview by H Tuxworth, 20 September 1980; oral history interview by J Petrick, 14 May 1981.
SHIRLEY BROWN, Vol 3.GONG CHIN, WILLIAM (1891–1982), businessman, who was more commonly known to Territorians as
Chin Gong, was born in Darwin to Chin Toy and his wife. He was the eldest son of a family of seven, which
consisted of four sons—Chin Gong, Chin Ack Ming, Chin Ack Sam, and Chin Ack Nam—and three sisters—
Chin Ack Kim, Chin Ack Yook, and Chin Ack Mon. His father migrated from How Shan district in Canton in 1880
to become an apprentice tailor in his uncle’s store—Wing Cheong Sing and Company. This was a thriving family
business. In 1886 Chin Toy started his own tailor shop—Fang Cheong Loong and Company. This was to be one of
the largest tailoring, drapery and import/export businesses in Darwin before the Second World War.
Chin Toy’s son Chin Gong entered the family business as an apprentice tailor at the age of seventeen, after an
education at Darwin Public School. In 1912 Chin Gong was promoted to manager of the store, and he held this
position until 1942.
In 1911 Chin Gong visited Canton where he married his first wife Kim Que Chin. There were eight children
by this marriage. She died in 1930. He remarried later, his second wife, Sun Ying Chin, being also from Canton.
There were four more children from this marriage.
In 1940 Chin Gong established a new tailoring and import/export business, as well as a Chinese gift store at the
comer of Cavenagh and Knuckey streets, called Sun Cheong Loong and Company. His sons, Sidney and Alfred,
with Chin Gong as the managing director, managed the business. It was established at a time when Darwin’s
economy was beginning to prosper due to the burgeoning strategic importance of Darwin to the defence of Australia
in the late thirties and early forties. In 1942, however, business came to an abrupt halt due to the evacuation of the
civilian population of Darwin to Adelaide as a result of the threat of Japanese air attacks.
Once in Adelaide Chin Gong did not stop his business activities. He opened a coffee shop in Rundle Street
known as the Oriental Cafe. This was a family business and helped to support the Chin family financially until