Smiler Lawler
Henry “Smiler” Lawless (often Lawler) was an early Lightning Ridge opal miner. Born in 1873 at Clunes, Victoria, to Matthew and Alice Lawless, he worked as a shearer and was one of several men arrested during the 1894 Momba Station shearers strike. Convicted of riot and arson, he served time in prison before turning to opal mining.
By the early 1900s, Lawler was at White Cliffs, where he married Margaret Butcher in 1904. She died the following year. He later prospected further north, including at Carbine Creek near Winton, Queensland, before heading to Lightning Ridge in 1908 with several others. He worked claims on New Chum and later on the Three Mile, holding a Miner's Right from Angledool in 1909.
In July 1915, Lawler and Peter O’Donnell worked an abandoned shaft on Bald Hill and struck one of the richest early opal patches at Lightning Ridge. Over two days, they found up to 120 stones, including a 38-carat harlequin nobby later sold by Lawler for £300. According to Jack Francis, the parcel was sold to A. B. J. “Pappa” Francis for £500 on trust.
Lawler was a tenacious miner, known for reopening abandoned shafts and working difficult ground. He narrowly missed a second patch on Bald Hill, leaving it to be found by the next claim peggers. Stuart Lloyd called him “a tremendous worker.”
He disappeared from Lightning Ridge for many years before returning in the 1940s to mine around the Nine Mile. Bert Smith recalled that he had “gone bush” for decades before quietly reappearing.
Lawler died at Walgett District Hospital in 1946 at the age of 73 at Walgett and was buried at Lightning Ridge Cemetery.
Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, pp. 78-79; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 159; B. Smith, ‘I Remember’, Lightning Flash Newspaper, 29 May 1991; ‘Carbine Creek Opal Field’, The Evening Telegraph, 23 December 1910, p. 2; Lightning Ridge: The Land of Black Opals, Ion L. Idriess, 1940, p. 177; ‘Splendid Opals’, The Gloucester Advocate, 2 November 1921, p. 2; ‘The Momba Shearing Outrage’, The Sunbury News and Bulla and Melton Advertiser, 4 December 1894, p. 2.