Victor Duplain
Victor August Duplain (often spelled Duplane) was born on 2 July 1872 at Bern, Switzerland. He married Annie Cecilia McMahon in Sydney in 1919.
By 1910 he held a Miner’s Right at Lightning Ridge. Duplain worked several fields over the years. At Potch Point he worked with Con Smith and Peter Ferguson; they found good opal along with the heavy potch that gave the field its name. On Old Dry Rush (1913) he worked with Dick (Richard) Huggard; he also held a good claim at Bald Hill in 1915 with Mick McKenner.
Through the 1920s-40s, Duplain lived in town. Miners of the period knew him by the contradictory nickname “Frenchie the Swiss”.
On 2 May 1944 Duplain and partner Huggard’s working relationship came to an abrupt and fatal end. Police and press reports state that, following arguments about a stash of opal hidden during the war years, Duplain shot Huggard and then took his own life in his hut opposite. Notes were left, and an inquest followed. The alleged opal stash was never recovered.
Victor Duplain died at Lightning Ridge on 2 May 1944, aged 71, and was buried at Walgett.
Victor Duplain’s signature sourced from a petition to resist the relocation of residents from Old Town and The Flat to the surveyed town, 1912.
Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: ‘Opal Miners Dead: Alleged Quarrel over Lightning Ridge Mining Leases’, The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 4 May 1944; ‘Two Men Dead on Opal Fields’, Northern Star, 4 May 1944, p. 5; ‘Dead Man’s Notes Tell of Quarrel’, Daily Mirror, 5 May 1944, p. 2; ‘Dispute Over Sugar Led to Death Feud’, The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 6 May 1944, p. 1; ‘Double Tragedy’, Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative, 11 May 1944, p. 13; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, pp. 78, 162; A Journey With Colour: A History of Lightning Ridge Opal 1873-2003, Len Cram, 2003, p. 185.