The people of the Goldfields

The Goldfields of Western Australia was and still is made up of many people, from poets to politicians, from saints and sinners and everything in between. I hope to tell you the stories of some of these people either famous or infamous or just the ordinary folks. Sometime the most ordinary people do the most extraordinry things

The Box Soak Creek Rush

13/05/2023 By Moya Sharp 3 Comments

Where is Box Creek you may ask? As I did myself back in 2000, (I can’t believe it was so long ago), when I received a letter from a lady in Queensland about a distant relative of hers called Ronald Donald McMillen who was supposed to be buried in the Box Soak Cemetery. I had […]

Joseph Kearney – pioneer profile

13/05/2023 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

Southern Cross Times 26 September 1914, page 2 Sudden Death of Mr Joseph Vincent Kearney. Southern Cross was thrown into a state of gloom when it became known that Mr J. V. Kearney had died suddenly at midnight on Monday night. The deceased was one of the best-known men in Western Australian mining circles. He […]

Alexander Henry Thomas CAIRNDUFF grave tales

13/05/2023 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

Alexander Henry Thomas CAIRNDUFF: Fancy good dealer and tobacconist, Kanowna was born in Hobart Tasmania on Jan 20 1873 and is the son of the late Rev Alexander Cairduff M.A, who filled the office of a Presbyterian clergyman in the above city for 40 years. The gentleman under review was educated in his native place […]

The Beaton’s of Cogla Downs Station

06/05/2023 By Moya Sharp 2 Comments

Earlier this year I was in correspondence with Mal Beaton regarding the fascinating history of the Beaton family of Cogla Downs Station in the mid-west Sandstone area of Western Australia. He very kindly granted me access to the family Facebook group and he and his extended family have given me permission to share some of […]

Thomas Joseph Tobin – pioneer profile

06/05/2023 By Moya Sharp 4 Comments

I was recently sent the following story by Mary Mayenfisch about her Grandfather, Thomas J TOBIN, in her words of “the whole story reads like a film! “Outlander” in Australia…. “ On Easter Sunday in the time of Covid 19 – when in the throes of James Joyce “Ulysses” the Jesuit schools in Ireland came […]