The Coolgardie Safe – a family story

Several members of the McCormick family were to emigrate from South Australia to Western Australia in the late 1890s but the most well know of them, was Arthur St Patrick Creed McCormick who was the inventor of the ‘Coolgardie Safe’. The following photographs are connected to this family but are also valuable in their own […]

Medicine Corner Coolgardie –

The south-eastern corner of Forrest and Lefroy Streets Coolgardie was the scene of a transaction in the early 1890’s that gave the site the name of ‘Medicine Corner’. An old prospector and a young man fresh from Broken Hill camped on the site to which came an old man – he was ‘slab-chested, bow-legged, windmill-armed, […]

The Loader Family – pioneer profile

The following story is an extract from the family history of Reg Blackmore and is reproduced with his permission. Emma and Nathaniel were his Great Grandparents. Emma Jane Loader’s first trip to the WA goldfields December 1895 Written by Emma in 1937 at age 95 years. Mrs. Loader and her daughter, Mrs. Harriet Childs Bottrill, […]

The Kalgoorlie Biplane –

A piece of aeronautical history will be revived by the Kalgoorlie-Boulder community with a biplane replica based on the one built in the Goldfields town during the early 20th century. The two-seater tractor biplane was built in Kalgoorlie in 1914 by mechanical engineering apprentices Paul JAENTSCH, Roy BURTON, and Walter Merlin PETERS from the Kalgoorlie […]

No Good at Sewing –

The old-timer was sitting among the pots and pans in orderly array outside his little camp, he was skewering a startling blue patch to a pair of trousers. ‘Can I do it for you?” asked the young lady visitor with a smile. He regarded her solemnly over his spectacles, then, ‘Thank ye kindly,” he said […]