The Dawn of the Eastern Fields –

This, however, was not to be

for the head of the family made his mind to go to the Hokitiki rush, New Zealand, in company with the late Dicky Seddon, by the SS Oottinberg or Alhambra, in 1866. when the miner contracted a cold in the loins and went back to Williamstown, Victoria, where he died at the early age of 39, his wife, with a broken heart, followed him to the last resting place nine months later, at which time she, also, was 39 years of age. Dick Greaves, on the death of his father, was taken in hand by a Welshman named Hopkins. Dick, who was then 17 years of age was a big, strong lad, and the contractor gave him a job as a hod-carrier, but he afterwards took to the plastering trade, and, being always used to hard work, got on well till the building business slumped in Victoria in the early seventies. In 1874, Greaves was

induced to join the Victorian police force

in which position he remained for only 14 months, during which brief period he received the only education he ever had there being few schools in those days, the nearest one from Dick’s home being at Bendigo, a distance of 80 miles, and even as a lad Greaves was too much of a prospector to bother about the three R’s. After resigning from the police, Dick went to Sydney, and again took to plastering, and then blossomed, as a contractor, though always imbued with the glorious glamour of the quest of the ‘golden god’, and he could not resist two calls from the New South Wales goldfields, wending his way to a rush at Mullin’s Creek, outside Orange, and also making for the Temora rush and around Blayney.

In 1877 Greaves married, and in the same year joined the volunteer artillery, and was promoted to sergeant. For several years he was the crack shot of the regiment, but in 1885 he got word from a man named Inskip that plasterers were in demand for work at the banks in Perth and Geraldton, on which information he sold his house and went to Melbourne to catch a boat for West Australia. The time, Dick said, was the year before the Kimberley was found by Hall and Slattery. He made up his mind to see if gold did exist in this part of Australia, and the first man he met who could give him any information on the subject was the late Mr. William Lawrence, a boat-builder, who, on the first day of Greaves arrival in W.A. took the latter to his home in Mile-street, where the gold-seeker was considerably surprised at the exhibition of a number of mineral specimens, including mica in all sorts of forms,

galena, asbestos, talc, pyrites, lead, ironstone, and much quartz of varied colors.

One piece of ironstone, about the size of a brick, particularly arrested Greaves’ attention, as he detected coarse gold in the specimen, though the boat builder said it was copper, and Dick was quite welcome to it if it was of any use to him.

Now, this was the foundation stone of rich gold discoveries, and the gift eventually led to the dawn of the Eastern. Goldfields. Further inquiries led Lawrence to state that the stone was brought into Perth by a shepherd named Beare, and was left in Mr. Habgood’s office, where it was kicked about as a doorstop until it was secured by the boat-builder as a specimen of iron and copper ore. Greaves dollied the stone, and the gold contents realised £6 8s, though for obvious reasons Dick did not deem it advisable to divulge that result. Beare, the shepherd, had informed people that there were tons and tons of the same class of stone scattered over a wide area where he found the specimen. Greaves, in quest of the El Dorado, made his way to Wongong (now known as Armadale) and prospected along the Darling Ranges, but could meet with no stone resembling that which he was seeking, though the will-o-the-wisp hunt was continued with indefatigable vigour, every place where the shepherd had been being visited in turn by Greaves.

Then a man nicknamed ‘Moondyne Joe’, otherwise John Johns, induced the gold-seeker to prospect a creek near Bailup, on the way to Newcastle (now Toodyay), though there, also proved a fruitless search. Other localities were equally disappointing, and in November 1885, Greaves went to Geraldton to plaster the Union Bank. In the meantime, Lawrence prospected further inquiries, and later on, he and Greaves met a Mr Watson, who had been with Hargreaves, the former (Watson) giving the information that Hargreaves, so far as gold deposits were concerned, had

condemned Western Australia up hill and down dale.

However, Watson volunteered the statement that the shepherd Beare was out at Gallaway some years previously, and this led to Greaves visiting and prospecting the back flats of the Chapman River and Gallaway country –  though he was, no more successful there than he had been at other places, not a trace of gold being revealed.

Returning to Perth in 1886, and backed up with the advice of Lawrence and information received by the boat-builder, Greaves prospected about Bindoon, Gingin, thence to the Banister, Williams River, and Arthur River, at all of which place Beare had shepherded his flocks. During these many wild golden goose chases, Dick made the acquaintance of many farmers and sandalwood cutters, a few of whom knew something about gold, whilst others volunteering information, knew little or nothing of the vagaries of gold deposits, in consequence of which many places were visited in vain.

Late one night Lawrence came up to a house where Greaves, who had returned to Perth, was living, and informed Dick that at last, he had found out the spot from whence the Golden specimen came and he wanted the prospector to get off the mark right away on another search for the elusive gold, but at this time Dick had a plastering contract at the Governor Broome Hotel, which had to be completed on a certain date, and he could not go at once, so induced a man named Robert Kirkman, in company with Ted Payne (Dick’s old mate), to go out on the hunt for gold. They went in the direction of the Victoria Plains district, and in about a fortnight’s time returned with quartz showing free gold, which they found on Glover’s run. Greaves, when shown the specimen, was working outside the Governor Broome Hotel on the cement columns, and the sight of the precious metal gave him another severe attack of gold fever, the ‘affliction’ being so strong that

he dropped his tools and declared there was no more plastering for him,

as he was going to make a name for himself as well as for West Australia, which acclamation was hailed with keen delight by old-man Lawrence, who had great faith in Dick’s ability as a prospector. The party then equipped and went out to where Payne and Kirkham found the specimens and prospected the locality for several days, though not another colour could be found. They then chummed in with the Well brothers and found them right good fellows too as they’d showed them all the likely-looking places they knew of. By what they thought was the best of luck, they met a shepherd named Burns, who had known Beare very well, and they were put on to the run where the latter had shepherded his sheep for years. Bindoon and Gingin were again prospected, including intervening country, but the party returned to Perth with barren results.

Here Lawrence had continued inquiries, and he informed the party that there was another place for them to go to— Charlie Glass’ station—where a small speck of gold, probably carried by an emu, had been found on top of a granite outcrop. They were so anxious to find out where Beare’s stone came from that they did not care where the quest led them, though here again there was little or no luck. After Greaves and Payne found the Yilgarn, in 1887, they returned to Perth for a few days, where they equipped in good style, having six well-laden pack horses, and two for riding, they made it through Wongan Hills to the Hampton Plains, Lawrence having arranged every detail for an eight months trip.

Unfortunately, Greaves was taken with a serious illness, referring to which he said in a recent letter to a goldfields friend— As you know, I took ill at the Wongan, and was bedridden for two years, and, after arriving in Perth with £589, came out of the Melbourne Hospital £40 in debt. After many operations, my muscles were so weak that I had to be held together for three years with tightly laced and specially made stays and could not work. I have still great faith that there are tons and tons of gold in W.A. which may be revealed if well-equipped parties get out into the mulga during a wet winter season. The writer of these reminiscences had the pleasure of drinking a cup of tea in company with Greaves a few days before he departed forever from this troublous world on his last prospecting trip to the Golden City of Peace and Plenty, and during that all too brief visit, Dick soliloquised on times gone by. “It was a thousand pities,” he mused, “that I was taken ill at the very moment when success seemed so near. I got ‘hydatids’ (tapeworm parasite), and I know where I got them, it was at Ennuin (Yilgarn), where the claypan from which we got our water was full of dead kangaroos. We had suffered terribly from thirst, and when we came to the water we were so parched that we drank the filth without even waiting to strain it through a cloth — madness, of course, but there is no worse or more severe temporary insanity than that occasioned by want of water. Of course, we cleared the filth out, later on, there being two or three tons of all sorts of unwholesome stuff. There was another claypan seven miles south of the one I just mentioned, and when we camped at that spot we had to empty an over-ripe emu out of the hole.

That same evening we had a visit from Brook Evans, who heralded a great thunderstorm, which filled to overflowing all the rock holes and clay pans for miles around, and was, no doubt, welcomed when the rush set in after Harry Anstey blabbed the news of the gold find to the people and press of Perth. The people who got the reward had the gold found for them, and I (Dick Greaves) and my mate (Ted Payne), the pioneers of the Eastern fields, never got enough out of the find to buy a suit of clothes. Greaves was in a reminiscent mood and referred to the fact that Harry Gregory, during his early term of office at Minister for Mines—when a commission or committee was appointed to inquire into the old prospector’s claim for a Government reward for ‘FINDING THE YILGARN FIELD’ —had mentioned that he (Dick) was getting 30s a week with the prospecting party. “That is true enough,” remarked Dick, but the Minister forgot to mention, or did not know, that I threw up a job worth 30s a day when I went in search and found the field which ultimately led to Tom Riseley’s discovery of Southern Cross, and which pioneered the rush to Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, and other fields too numerous to mention.”

Dick Greaves

Before Greaves and Payne found the Yilgarn there was little beyond sandalwood and kangaroo skins in commercial circles, and there is not the slightest doubt that the two pioneers did all the hard work and suffered privations for the alleged leader of the party, Harry Anstey. He always made for civilisation when there was an indication of the water becoming soup-like. Greaves and Payne were the only prospectors east of Northam till their find was rushed—only two men, and how many are there today During the search for the place from whence Beare’s stone came. Greaves went over the country from Toodyay to Victoria Plains, Northam, York, Beverly, Yalgoo, Mullewa, White Hills, and a between 1895-96, including the foreging, he visited the country from Southern Cross to White Feather and Menzies. Greaves must have been a man of Wonderful vitality and iron constitution for he underwent no less than 21 serious surgical operations, which were rendered necessary chiefly to hydatids on the liver. When Dick Greaves passed away peacefully in his sleep we lost one of the most remarkable men of this State, and his memory should live in history whenever the gold discoveries of Australia are mentioned, we mourn for him as for a brother, as when shall we see the like of him again?

Good old Dick, splendid old Dick! generous almost to a fault

Dick Greaves Obituary – Sunday Times 19 March 1916, page 3