Kalgoorlie Miner 7th September 1938
The First White Woman in Boulder City!
First School in Boulder – Photo SLWA
This photograph shows Mrs Edith Mar Elizabeth Wallis as a teacher at the first school in Boulder. Her daughter Maude (age 6) is on the far left in the front row and her son Alf (age 8) is fifth from the left in the front row. They had a third child in 1902, Arthur Edward Wallis born in Trafalgar
Among the pioneers who have returned to the Goldfields to meet old friends was Mrs Edith Wallis who with her husband, Alfred Henry Wallis, and her children came to the Goldfields from Bendigo in 1893. Mrs Wallis claims to have been the first white woman in Boulder City. She held the first school there in the Methodist Church on the Horseshoe Lease. The building was made of canvas and 42 children attended.
Kalgoorlie Miner 19 June 1897, page 7
Mrs Wallis was with her husband and brother when they pegged and named the Ivanhoe Venture. She recalls how the late “Smiler’ Hales from Coolgardie on one occasion gave her son Alf, then six years old, a brown and white spaniel who they named Smiler and became well known to travellers on the Kalgoorlie/Boulder railway.
Alfred Arthur Greenwood (Smiler) Hales – Photo SLWA
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