Story by Lyn Beard
In a beautiful location overlooking the salt bed of Lake Lefroy, the remains of at least 17 people lie in the Widgiemooltha Cemetery. There are only a few headstones, the largest of which commemorates five members of the Doyle family. Widgemooltha
From the obituary of James Doyle printed in the Fremantle Advocate, 11 January 1934
John James (known as James or Jim) Doyle was born in Dublin, Ireland, in the early 1860s. At some stage, he spent 3 years in NSW, and by the early 1890s, he was in Melbourne, where he took part in a tug-of-war competition for the victorious Irish team against teams from all over the world at the Melbourne Exhibition of 1892. Soon after the collapse of the banking system in early 1893 and in the early years of the depression, he came to WA, attracted by the finding of gold at Coolgardie. For several years, he prospected around Coolgardie, Mt Ragged, and Broad Arrow before arriving in Widgiemooltha. He must have been one of the first prospectors in the area because an early name for the location was Doyle’s Gully. In 1896, he decided to stay there,
and that is where he remained until just a few months before he died in 1933.
He quickly saw the need to service a coach track from Esperance to Coolgardie and established a water condenser and stables to provide for the travelling prospectors. Soon, Warden Finnerty, a fellow Irishman, suggested he sell something “more exhilarating than water”, and Doyle obtained a licence for a hotel from that same Warden. The hotel was established in 1896.
Doyle’s Hotel, 1930 (from Wikipedia)
After the railway arrived in 1908, the hotel and the rest of the townsite were moved to the siding a mile or so southeast of its original location. In 1909, the town consisted of two hotels, a post office, an empty baker’s shop, and several surveyed but unoccupied residential lots. The sign on the hotel retained what Doyle believed to be the Aboriginal pronunciation of the name given to the town – Wijimoola – although the railways called the siding Widgemooltha, with authorities inserting an “i” in 1944. The name is derived from a nearby hill and waterhole and is thought to refer to the beak of an emu. The hotel also had the name IRENE in letters four feet high, but the origin of this is unclear. The hotel was widely advertised as the ‘Irene Hotel’ in 1909 and was still known by that name in 1915. As mining activity grew, George Sweeney established the Lefroy Hotel, but when a decline set in, James Doyle bought the hotel and amalgamated the two. Over the years, James maintained an interest in various mines, including the Flinders mine.
In 1896, he married Mary Elizabeth HAYES in Coolgardie. She was born in Victoria in 1864 and was reputed to be the first white woman to live in Widgiemooltha. It is thought they met when she worked at Doyle’s Hotel. She had at least two sisters in WA – Catherine, who ran a hotel near Coolgardie and was later postmistress at Higginsville, and Frances, married Richard Kuhlken, a police officer at Norseman.
On the Doyle headstone, there are the names of three of their children who died as infants. Francis Joseph died aged only 6 days on 15 August 1897, Gerald John died on 16 November 1898 aged 2 months, and James Nicholas died at 10 months of age on 9 August 1900. There do not appear to be any official records of the death of these three children; there is only a birth registration for James Nicholas. His death and his mother’s accompanying illness were reported in the Coolgardie Herald.
Herald (Coolgardie) 28 August 1900
Also on the headstone is Frances Amy Kuhlken, who died aged 7 months on 17 November 1902. She was the daughter of Mary Doyle’s sister, Francis and Richard Kuhlken.
James and Mary continued as popular and civic-minded hosts of the hotel for over thirty years. They led many fund-raising efforts for charities, particularly the Red Cross, during the War. Mary nursed many a “perisher”, travelling prospectors who were close to death from thirst, and passers-by who were down on their luck, never left the hotel without being given a few tins of food. A report in the Sunday Times (26 March 1933) of the death of James stated that “there is scarcely an old hand, whether he be a prospector, dryblower, fossicker, or general goldfields toiler, who has not, in some way, come in pleasant contact with
Mr. and Mrs. Jim Doyle, their friends being legion, their enemies non-existent, and their popularity unbounded.”
One photo was published in the Sunday Times on 16th August 1925 of Mr and Mrs J. Doyle of Widgiemooltha Station. The caption shows them as pastoralists. No record of Widgiemooltha Station as a pastoral lease can be found. Perhaps the original reference was to them as residents near the railway station.
James became ill, and eventually they had to sell the hotel in 1932 and moved to Kalgoorlie, where he died at St John of God Hospital on 18 March 1933. His funeral service was held in Kalgoorlie, and it was reported that the number of people attending was a state record. The cortege then travelled down the highway to Widgiemooltha where he was buried “in the little God’s Acre by the salt lake” with another large crowd.
Mary continued to spend time at Widgiemooltha but moved to Kalgoorlie about 1940. She died in the hospital there on 13 July 1945. She was buried alongside her husband and three little babies, the spot now marked by one of the few headstones in the cemetery.
Moya Sharp
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I have a link to the Kuhlkens. My great Grandmother is the sister of Richard Kuhlken.