The gang and the ganger

The railway line was the Cairns-Chillagoe line and reporters published in the earliest years of the twentieth century have described in prose that is gripping the 'sweep' of the train along a narrow track and 'undulating' vistas and deep gorges, crossing creeks on bridges made out of hewn trees.

I think we will find if we could only properly identify it that in my grandfather's mouth is a tobacco pipe. 

My grandfather is the ganger second from the left (back). 

My guess is we would find by dating this that the town is coming to a stop. They were very much affected by a drought, there is little water sufficient to ... as an example I see in my mind's eye ...work the sluicing channels from which a living was eked by remaining miners after the Smith Creek Mine closed. 

My grandmother would ride off on her stock horse and not be seen all day. She did not let anything get in the way of riding and the pleasure she derived from it. What things she must have seen.