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

A Fine Moustache – ‘It is an Art”

21/11/2020 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

As we are coming to the end of November for 2020, I wish to thank all those brave soles who have ventured, for the first time for some, to grow a mustache to raise funds to help mens health. Not all the mustaches are as fine as our unknown man, but as Hercule Poirot, the […]

Mollie’s Box – a family story

21/11/2020 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

by Pam Caddy In 1999 a television program ‘Adopt A Soldier’ promoting the Perth Battye Library, featured a copy of a photograph of Pam Caddy’s father and four of his brothers all serving in WW1. This was the first time that Pam had seen the photo and she found out that it was from a […]

Russian Jack – the other J F K

21/11/2020 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

Dollypot, Greenhide and Spindrift: a journal of bush history Russian Jack and Synchronicity – by Diane Oldman I rather thought I had made up the word ‘synchronicity’ and when I attempted to look it up in several dictionaries I couldn’t find it. So I decided it was a new noun – my noun. Then […]

Comet Vale Cemetery

21/11/2020 By Moya Sharp Leave a Comment

COMET VALE – Latitude 29° 56 36′ S Longitude 121° 07 34′ E Comet Vale is an abandoned goldfields mining town, situated about 30 kilometers south of Menzies. It is named after a comet, visible at the time gold was discovered in the area, and in 1895 had a population of 500. It was […]

Sigismund Bannan “Barron” SCHLAM, F.G.S

14/11/2020 By Moya Sharp 2 Comments

COOLGARDIE had not emerged from the swaddling clothes stage of civilisation before the rich auriferous district of Menzies was discovered. The hardy prospectors did not hang round the spot where Arthur Bayley made his sensational discovery, but moved ever on. They spread out in all directions, and those who took the Ninety-Mile Road faced a […]