Cork Tree was situated 24 miles from Laverton on the Erlistoun Road, and about 4km from Ularring. There was also a ‘Cork Tree Bore’ near Yundaga.
The township was gazetted in 1896. In that same year Jack Bain and Ben Miller set up a ‘Pioneer Store’ called Bain & Miller Produce Store. In 1898 they moved the store to Mulline and took on the agency of the Union Bank of Australia before advertising the business for sale. In one advertisement they were selling drinking water for 1/- shilling per gallon.
Bain & Miller, Mulline
Sign on the original location of Bain and Miller Store
The First Gold Escourt to Leave Mulline.
Above:- On driver’s seat: Jimmy Matthews, Miss Sloan, and Mrs. Caire. Back of coach: Jack Bain, Ben Miller and Sam Burrows. In coach: Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Bain. Trooper Mills (on horse). Jim Smith, Union
Bank manager (with dog). Cobb and Co groom.
Western Mail 26 May 1938, page 11
McCann’s Rush by Don Miller:– : the year of this rush, as it happened, was 1895. The railway had not reached Coolgardie when this rush was reported. I cannot remember the month as I was on the road at the time carting to Coolgardie from the head of the line. At that time I had a load on for Jack Murray, who had a store in Coolgardie. On reaching Coolgardie, Billy Weston approached me and asked me to take a party of prospectors out, and Jack Murray saw me also, as he intended to start a store at the new find. I loaded up at his store, and enclose a photograph of the team leaving his store for the rush. (Below)
Bain and Miller leaving Coolgardie for McCann’s Rush, 1895. Jack Bain at the leader’s head, Don Miller at the shafter’s head and Ben Miller on top of wagon. Photograph by Don Miller
My team was the first to return, as we were the first to get word that McCann’s ‘alleged’ find could not be located. On arriving back to Coolgardie, I was asked to go back with a load of provisions as a relief team, but word came that the men were all coming back. It is quite true that the prospectors were desperate. There were all sorts of rumours, and, if the crowd had got McCann, he could have said his long farewell.
Billy Morley, and his brother Alf got furthest out with their teams. They were carting on the road to Coolgardie at the time. The Afghans got out nearly as far as the Morley brothers. I went along the road past the Londonderry mine. Morley brothers and the Afghans went on the Hampton Plains road. I do not know what happened later, as I left Coolgardie the next day for more loading. The only other excitement about that time was the heavy rain in March, when two of Cobb and Co’s horses were drowned at the Canegrass Swamp, on the 90-Mile Road. I arrived at Ullarring to start a store with my partner, the late Jack Bain, in April, 1896, and in February or March the same year the rail line was opened to Kalgoorlie. – DON MILLER, Mullewa.
Sunday Times 20 March 1910, MCANN’S RUSH
PERHAPS the most disastrous rush during the early days of Coolgardie was that which was originated by the notorious McCann. This fellow gave a circumstantial account to the ‘Golden Age” of how be had seen £10,000 worth of gold won by a small party down Lake Lefroy way. Of course the instant result was a mad stampede to the south-east without any definite idea of the objective, and as there was absolutely no water in the country, the lake being as salt as the Dead Sea, many of the diggers had a terrible time. In fact there would have been dozens of lives lost if water carts had not been sent out to follow up the men who had blindly raced out into the dry, parched bush. We have published various accounts of this delirious rush and how the men came back prepared to lynch McCann and incidentally wreck the “Golden Age” offices, but the following throws a new side-light on McCann’s infamous prevarication.Ned Tangney, an old Coolgardieite,
Moya Sharp
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