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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

In Search of Mordaunt Reid:

12/03/2022 By Moya Sharp 1 Comment

More than one-third of the 62,000 Anzacs who died in WW1 are still listed as missing with no known graves. This is the story of one woman who never stopped looking for her soldier. Lieutenant Mordaunt Reid was paid the ultimate accolade by war historian and correspondent, Charles Bean, on the morning of the Gallipoli […]

Filed Under: People, Places & Towns, Ripping Yarns & Tragic Tales Tagged With: Australian History, Coolgardie, Goldfields History, Western Australia, WW1

Cuddingwarra – ghost town

12/03/2022 By Moya Sharp 8 Comments

CUDDINGWARRA  also known as Dead Finish Latitude 27° 22′ S Longitude 117° 47′ E Cuddingwarra is a townsite in the Murchison goldfields Western Australia near Cue. When gold was first discovered in the area in 1888 this place was known as “Dead Finish”, but when the government gazetted a townsite in 1895, Cuddingwarra was the […]

Filed Under: People, Places & Towns Tagged With: Australian History, Cuddingwarra, Goldfields History, Western Australia

The Murchison – on dust storms and barmaids

12/03/2022 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

Murchison Times and Day Dawn Gazette – 25 September 1897, page 4 The Murchison Author unknown (From the London Financial Times) The Murchison was the earliest explored field in West Australia, not the first goldfield—that was Yilgarn, discovered by my friend Anstey—but the first upon which development work was undertaken. It went with a boom […]

Filed Under: People, Places & Towns, Ripping Yarns & Tragic Tales Tagged With: Goldfields History, Hotels, Western Australia

The Prison Log and “Sky Blue Goannas”

05/03/2022 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

In the early days of Coolgardie, there was no provision for holding prisoners pending their appearance in court, so Corporal McCarthy chopped a four-foot log from a three-foot thick trunk of a blown down salmon gum to which they were chained by a strong steel staple at one end and handcuffs at the other. (A […]

Filed Under: People, Ripping Yarns & Tragic Tales, Towns and Places Tagged With: Australian History, Coolgardie, Goldfields History, police history, Western Australia

Leonard Elvey’s Last Trip – pioneer profile

05/03/2022 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

Found by John Pritchard during his research into those buried in the Cue Cemetery – Murchison Times and Day Dawn Gazette 6 April 1895, page 2 DEATH OF A WELL-KNOWN PROSPECTOR. Leonard Elvey’s Last Trip Throughout West Australia, or wherever diggers may be met who have been associated with these goldfields, the news of Leonard […]

Filed Under: Grave Tales, People Tagged With: Australian History, Cemeteries, Cue, Western Australia

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