Eric Catterall
John Eric Catterall was born in 1908 at Geelong, Victoria, son of Charles Webster Catterall and Bessie May Dandy. Eric suffered badly from polio as a child, as a result he walked with crutches his entire life.
After spending some time droving and rabbiting, he came to Lightning Ridge in 1957, living on Western Fall on the Three Mile.
Catterall was an innovator and inventor, and developed the concept of the automatic hoist in the 1960s. The hoist moves opal dirt from underground to the surface, allowing a miner to remain underground and continue working while the dirt is dumped in a pile or into the bed of a waiting truck.
Eric Catterall’s automatic hoist design. LRHS collection.
Unable to use a ladder due to his disability, Catterall lowered himself into his mine shaft using an ingenious counterweighted winch system he built himself, powered by the motor on a rumbler prototype he had also developed. At one point while using the winch, the counterweight failed, trapping Catterall at the bottom of his shaft. He was rescued by neighbouring miners, Eric shouting “My legs!", to which the rescuers responded “Eric, we have good news and bad news: Your legs aren’t broken. But they’re the same as they were before you fell.”
“His strength was in his upper body, especially his arms, which were as strong as a gorilla’s. He was also a bush inventor who did most things sitting down. Although he owned an old van, whenever he moved about the field he did so by way of a Ferguson tractor.”
Catterall also mined at the Grawin, where he would use both a car and a tractor. To get both vehicles home, he would set the tractor in low gear and follow it in the car, stopping the car occasionally to catch the tractor and correct it’s course!
Eric Catterall’s camp on the Western Fall of the Three Mile. Sketch by Len Cram, 1982.
Despite having only three years of formal schooling, Eric Catterall was also a vivid and expressive poet, publishing The Verse and Worse of a Militant Rationalist in 1977. His works were also published in the local newspaper, The Lightning Flash.
“Now Dawson’s Sold the Store”, Eric Catterall, published in the Lightning Flash Newspaper, fortnight ending 29 February 1987.
Eric Catterall passed away 27 August 1977 at Lightning Ridge and is buried at the Lightning Ridge Cemetery.
Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: The Verse and Worse of a Militant Rationalist, Eric Catterall, 1977; Lightning Flash Newspaper, fortnight ending 29 February 1987; Discover Opals: Before & Beyond 2000 with Surface Indications, Stephen Aracic, 1996, pp. 48-49. A Journey with Colour - A History of Lightning Ridge 1873-2003, Len Cram, pp. 214-215.