As a kid, he skinned cats and sold the meat. What happened years later at the Dolly Pot Mine?

When I interviewed Ernest Skein in 1970, I was told he had recently been let out of jail. 

I didn’t want to close down an interview with a fascinating old-time prospector, so when I got the message that some subjects were not to be touched, I left that one alone. It remained just a giant elephant in the tiny, hot-as-hell tin shack in which I interviewed him in Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory.

What I’ve found out recently deepens the mystery of Ernest Skein. It involves a shocking incident that occurred at the Dolly Pot Mine in Tennant Creek, way back in 1939.

I relate what little I know of this incident at the end of this edition of Red Dust Tapes. But for the most part, this is the story of a north Queensland butcher who got his start selling cat meat, and ended up as a gold miner in the Northern Territory, with a whole lot of rough and tumble along the way.