In Coolgardie, as late as April 1894, self-styled undertakers were making a fortune by making coffins from old jam cases and boxes and blackening them over to give a semblance of respectability. Only the destitute and friendless were packed away in plain deal coffins, and Jews whose religion demanded austerity in their last rites. By […]
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 Murchison – on dust storms and barmaids
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 […]
The McGinniss family of Kunanulling
Outback Family History reader Meryl Watson has kindly shared these wonderful photographs and stories from her family history. My great-grandmother Edith Rose May nee HOWELL, married John Louis McGinniss aged 22yrs from Huon Tasmania on the 15th February 1890 in Franklin, Huon, Tasmania. John Louis was a widower with one daughter when they married. Edith […]
Harold A S Cocking – pioneer profile
Southern Cross Times – Christmas Eve – 24 December 1904, page 25 Harold Cocking A Plucky Pioneer Mr. Harold Arundle Sidney Cocking was born at Latchley near Plymouth, Devon, England, and is a typical son of an English yeoman. It is slightly over 13 years since he landed in the West, and was extremely surprised to find that […]
Thieves’ Gold – by N.E. Gledhill
Another ‘Ripping Yarn’ from the pen of N E Gledhill, kindly shared by his Great Nephew Allen Gledhill with thanks: The transcontinental roared westward through the shimmering film of heat that hung like a diaphanous curtain over the Nullarbor Plains Nothing but sand stretched away for miles until it was ringed in with a ragged belt […]
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