Hi All, I am with Wildcat on this one & for the same reasons as well. I too mean nothing derogatory or offensive & nobody does, but that termanology of this type of rock is known by all in this district & beyond for more than one hundred & forty years. If you called them by any other name no one would really know what you were talking about. Ok a geo might but no one else. I too have a great respect for the chinese miners of old & so to did a lot of the european miners, even in the old days as well. It just takes a small minority, like anything.
Try not to shed a tear as you read this poem, based on fact & in the Ida Valley area not too far from the centre of where this whole thread is based.
'ODE TO JOE SHUM 1888-1928'
High up in the Upper Kyeburn lived a gentalman named Shum, he was tall & straight & silent & loved by every one. He lived up in the mountains not far from the Buster Trail, in a small but tidy sod hut with a doorstep made from shale.
One of the last of the Chinese miners, Joe arrived here as a boy, & he learnt to love the gold fields that gave him spirit & brought him joy. He had a dog named Mungo who was a faithful friend & true, & he watched Joe work his gold claim from the dawn 'till the evening dew.
Some times the lonely miner his body needs a break, he needs to find an opening he needs to find that gate. So Shum set off to Naseby where he knew he'd meet his kind, some friendships to rekindle & some perhaps to bind.
Now the word soon reached the township that kindly "Shum come soon!", so the children fled to the post office for the race was on at noon. From the post office to the corner the race was up & down & Shum arranged it monthly when he bought his stores in town.
He lined up all the children - any cheating earned a frown, & the first one back to the starting point received a Half-a-Crown. Then up to busy Leven Street for there stood the Chinese Den & some Pakapoo & Fantan & the journey home again.
On a trip back to his homeland Joe married two lovely wives but times were tough in China & he found it hard to survive. So he returned to the Kyeburn Diggings for he loved the lifestyle there & he worked his lowly gold claim with an energy now so rear.
Now the reason I write this history is to take you back in time, for the murder of Joe the Chinaman was the century's greatest crime.
He hosted a man named Hardie in his warm & friendly shack, but as Joe fixed the evening meal Hardie shot him in the back. Taking Shum's own hunting rifle from the corner where it stood, for when the snow lay thick on the ground it was his only source of food.
They discovered Shum on the morrow, he lay there on the floor, they found him in a pool of blood where he'd crawled towards the door. They also found a footprint in the damp & clinging earth, & at the trial of William Hardie it became his final curse.
But the story of Joe the miner is a story without a cry, & regardless of brutes like Hardie, his good deeds will never die.
There's a bridge in the Upper Kyeburn it spans the German Creek, & if you lean there dead on midnight on July the 17th & listen to the willows you will hear the branches weep, you'll hear the Chinese singsong & the shuffling of their feet, you'll hear their shovels scraping & the stacking of the stones, you'll feel their bodies straighten & sense their woeful groans.
My story has to end here as there's no more I can tell - all I know is Hardie's down below & serving time in hell, while Joe the kindly miner is living like a dream, & he wears a shining heavenly smile as he works the illustrious seam.
by Des Style.
JW
Send me a copy or post it, please.
Are you house bound by snow & cant get out amongst it??
Dont you hate that when you stampers get cloged up with gold. 
