Oswald Pryor was the son of one of the managers of the Wallaroo and Moonta Mining Company, and worked in the mines himself as a young man. From 1901 he began contributing cartoons to Quiz, a comic newspaper published in Adelaide. By 1912 his work was appearing in the Sydney Bulletin, and from the 1920s he was producing 'propaganda' cartoons for the local branch of the Australian Labor Party.

Pryor's friend CJ Dennis suggested the artist draw on his experiences of growing up in the Cornish 'Cousin Jack' community of northern Yorke Peninsula, and it was this which inspired the outpouring of cartoons which were to cement the popular conception of the Cornish heritage of the copper mining towns.

Pryor's 'Scatt'n the bal' cartoon commemorates the emotional final closure of the great Wallaroo and Moonta mines in 1923, drawing on the Cornish words - scat (breaking up) and bal (mine). The image is taken from Pryor's own proof in the original manuscript for his history of Moonta, Australia's Little Cornwall.