To be Frank – pioneer profile

The Frank Family at their home in Sylvester Street Coolgardie c1919 Back Row:- L-R Charles Bernard Ceillam FRANK (29/10/1901 to 1977), Henry Bernard Joseph FRANK (16/4/1898 to 4/6/1943),  Gerald Francis Patrick FRANK (15/2/1907) ,Wilfred Ernest John FRANK (8/6/1903 to Oct 1989), Middle Row:- Ivey Alice Mary FRANK (8/6/1903 to 21/1/1992) Married to PURDY, Bernard Joseph […]

Broad Arrow snapshot – all the little children

I have just completed entering the  biographies on the people who are buried in the Broad Arrow Cemetery. Every cemetery provides a social and family history snapshot of the town where its located. Accident and disease show no favorites. I hope that this small section of deaths will provide a good example to compare to […]

The Storming of Grants Groggery:

Roaring Days in Old Broad Arrow 1908 A Pioneer Publicans Troubles The Storming of Grants Groggery There used to be some purple hued hours in the now decadent old ” Arrow,” in tho devil-may-care and open handed Nineties. No one cared about the troubles of today, nor went out of his road to meet those […]

My Own Dear Boy:-

Murchison Times and Day Dawn Gazette 29 July 1897 SUICIDE AT SMITHFIELD Last Saturday week a miner, Thomas McKileen, living by himself in a tent at Smithfield, committed suicide by blowing his brains out. At an inquest held on Monday afternoon before the acting-Coroner, Mr. E. O. Butler, J,P. it was elicited that on Friday […]

Cabbage is a Fossick-King

Cabbage is a Fossick-King-  by Hugh Schmitt (1984) Broad Arrow’s most colourful resident, he makes up a tenth of the permanent population – is a character everybody calls ‘Cabbage’. Joseph OMODEI (few people know his real name) lives in a comfortable tin shack surrounding by his prospecting gear a couple of quartz stone throws from […]