Yellowdine Finder Tells His Romantic Story
A horse with teeth missing makes history and
a New Goldfield Rewards Years of Prospecting.

PALMERS GRAPHIC STORY – If it had not been that an old horse, to be exact 25 years old, was four teeth short and could not pick up his living, Yellowdine, which today has excited the mining markets of the British world and in share values is worth fabulous sums, would be still sleeping as it had slept since the early nineties when the prospectors rushed over it in the feverish quest for gold between Coolgardie and Hannans. Mr A. C. Palmer, the discoverer of the field, was interviewed in Perth today, and his story, as follows, has to be added to the already rich volume of romances of our gold.

PALMER – the discoverer of Yellowdine, is a young-looking man, having the appearance of being on the right side of fifty. He is of medium stature and dresses in the fashion of the prospectors in our far-flung fields with whom we are familiar — a quiet blue suit, a blue shirt, with a matching tie, a felt hat of the common or garden ‘Western’ type and a pair of black Bulcher boots, for an appearance that sums him up. In a manner, he is retiring and, like most prospectors, resents any obtrusion of his personality and deeds into the light of publicity. A representative of  ‘The Daily News’ found Mr Palmer in Hay-street today, and, after some persuasion, got him to tell his story. He is an Irishman who came out 22 years ago and, after some experience in the Eastern States, has been located in the West. For 20 years he has been devoted to prospecting, with spells to earn wages in the Wheatbelt. The money he earned there was devoted to prospecting enterprises. In these, he passed along the course of years up and down the goldfields areas of the State from Cue to Southern Cross.

Mr Augustus Charles ‘Charlie’ Palmer

Interspersed were excursions into the furthest east of the then-known gold belt. The tale of his earlier adventures will keep till later, while we come down to the crux of his career, which ended in the finding of the now famous goldfield at Yellowdine. He was the pioneer! Others who came after have placed the find on the stock markets of London and Australia, and today Mr Palmer finds himself the centre of a historic development of the Western Australian goldfields. A district that has been asleep, and into which he had to cut his way through thick but stunted timber, is now, with the influence of capital, showing possibilities of wealth in millions and is already a favoured market on the Stock Exchanges from Perth, through the East, to London.

YELLOWDINE’S BIRTH – The story of the finding of Yellowdine is much too prosaic for its climax. Palmer found himself in Southern Cross “broke to the wide’ with his prospecting ventures. Jack Whinfield, a water supply official, with a wide knowledge of the surrounding country, advised him to go up northeast of Southern Cross, where 60 miles away, he knew there was good prospecting country. Palmer was so hard up for cash that, wanting a tank to hold the very necessary water, he could not finance it. Whinfield gave him a tar barrel, and Palmer promised to put him in on anything he found. Here comes the kernel of the story. Palmer was going to take the advice of Whinfield, but his old friend, a horse, which had been on the track with him for 17 years, was four teeth short in the jaw and could not pick up his own living off the country and had to be fed with fodder carried on the journey.

Palmer had no money for horse feed, so in his own words ‘I picked up two blokes, who agreed to fund me for horse feed for the trip, provided I let them in 50 per cent, on anything I found.’ There came the historic switch, and Palmer describes it this way,  ‘An old bloke, somewhere about 70, named Heaney, a pensioner, told me of the country south from Yellowdine, which had not been prospected, but had only been rushed over by myriads of men flocking to Hannans. So, because my horse was a bit shy of teeth, and I had to go shy myself on the horse-feed bill, I decided to take Heaney’s tip in preference to Whinfield’s. I left Yellowdine and went south on the Parker’s Range road for 10 miles. A bloke named Tom Egan had told me in Southern Cross that thereabouts there was a soak. I found it, left the horse there, and on a Sunday morning went through dense scrub, looking for a lake and an old road, of which Heaney had told me.

Yellowdine Townsite 1936 – Image SLWA