YUNNDAGA
Latitude 29° 45′ S Longitude 121° 03′ E
Yunndaga is an abandoned town on the Western Australian goldfields located 7 km south of Menzies. Gold was discovered in the area in the mid-1890s, and in 1898, a business and residence subdivision was laid out at what was then referred to as Woolgar. Business and residence subdivisions were very temporary and gave no secure tenure to the inhabitants.
Yunndaga Street Map – 1908 – Image SLWA
By 1904, there was a feeling of permanency about Woolgar, and the mining warden advised it was time to gazette the place as a townsite. As there was already a place in Queensland with this name, an alternative name was required, and the mining warden made three suggestions, one of which was Yunndagar. The Department of Lands and Surveys then applied spelling rules it had adopted for Aboriginal names, and the townsite of Yunndaga was gazetted in March 1904.
Royal Group Hotel Woolgar – Yundaga 1909 – Golden Mile Magazine
Bonzle Map – Location of Yunndaga
Yundaga People
Studio group portrait of 2402 Private Pte Henry Alexander Spalholtz, of Yunndaga, WA, to left seated 2387 Pte John William Reilly of Woolgar, unidentified soldier centre standing, holding a piece of rope tied to a toy poodle (strange)- Photo SLWA & AWM – Photo Ancestry.com
Henry Alexander ‘Alik’ Spalholtz was the son of Bernard Henry Martin Spalholtz and Matilda Rooke. Bernard died in Woolgar on the 13th of June 1918, only eight months after hearing of his son Henry’s death in Belgium, when he was killed in action aged only 19 years. He was a storekeeper in Woolgar for many years and is buried in the Menizes Cemetery.
Harry Spalholtz and Matilda, nee Rooke – parents of Henry Spalholtz – Photo Ancestry.com
John William Reilly was the son of Thomas Edwin Reilly and Mary Josephine Smith. He was from Bendigo, Victoria, and his occupation before enlistment was a miner. This was perhaps how he came to be in Yunndaga. He married Eleanore ‘Nellie’ Richardson in Kalgoorlie in 1914 and died in Perth, WA, in 1973.
Yunndaga townsite 1904 – Photo SLWA
The staff of the Menzies Consolidated Gold Mine, Woolgar – 1916- Thomas ELLIS (back row far left) – Arthur BELDON (centre back row).
Moya Sharp
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Thomas Ellis was my great grandfather, his oldest daughter Ida was my grandmother she married a miner named Fredrick Plummer and they shifted to Kalgoorlie in the 30is and had two daughters the youngest being my mother. The Ellis family all originally came from Cornwall where they were tin and copper miners and came to South Australia when the mining run out in Cornwall.