Yes, Prime Minister Traditional Cache
whitejaegar: Archived - Moved from area.
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This cache is located at the birth site of James Henry Scullin, Australia's 9th Prime Minister.
This area was also the scene of the 2006 Trawalla Train accident when a truck crossed the railway crashing into a train killing two people and injuring 18 others.
SCULLIN, JAMES HENRY (1876-1953), grocer, newspaper editor and prime minister, was born on 18 September 1876 at Trawalla, Victoria, fifth child of John Scullin, railway platelayer, and his wife Ann, née Logan, Irish Catholic migrants from Derry.
James was educated at small state schools, at Trawalla in 1881-87 and at Mount Rowan, near Ballarat, until about 14, then at night school in Ballarat. He made good use of the public library, reading avidly, including Irish writers and many of the British classics.
More active in the Catholic Young Men's Society than in the Australian Natives' Association, he developed debating skills, leading to a thirty year association with Ballarat's South Street Society competitions as a successful contestant and respected adjudicator.
James had various part-time manual jobs in the Ballarat district until his mid-twenties. Then for ten years he ran a grocer's shop at Ballarat for James McKay & Sons.
About 1903 he joined the Political Labor Council and helped in Labor's campaigning in State elections. In 1906 he was Labor's candidate for Ballarat in the Federal election against Alfred Deakin, the Prime Minister.
On 26 April 1928 he succeeded Matthew Charlton as Labor leader. The party was in its normal state of disharmony, as left-wingers and moderates denounced each other. There were two Labor parties, said one commentator, 'sundered as widely as the poles in ideals and purposes and methods'.
Scullin already had clashed with Jack Lang and had been involved in the thankless task of trying to restore unity between hostile factions in the New South Wales branch. Despite internecine rivalries and strikes, Scullin gained eight seats at the 1928 elections.
In 1929 economic troubles intensified, and strikes increased, but when the ill-judged attempt by Prime Minister Bruce to dismantle the Commonwealth arbitration system precipitated an early election, circumstances strongly favoured Scullin.
On 12 October he led Labor to a sweeping victory, with 46 of the 75 full-voting seats in the lower house. He thereby became Australia's first Catholic prime minister, and the first native-born Labor prime minister. His ministry of thirteen included the deputy leader, Edward Theodore, as treasurer.
A bit of Ballarat's history.
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FVTA gur YBT
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