THE SEEKER – THE LATE BILLY FROST
Prospector and Explorer
By John Meiklejohn.

Round the campfires of the various diggings during the 1890s, no name was more prominent than that of the late Billy Frost. He never had the fortune to make any sensational gold discovery, but, through his unceasing activity in making journeys into unknown country, he blazed the way for thousands of others to follow. In the opening up of several outside fields, he was perhaps more instrumental than any other individual after Bayley’s time.

Billy Frost – Sunday Times 9 May 1926, page 3

Frost was just an ordinary untutored bushman, inspired by curiosity to search uncharted country in the hope that golden treasure would be his reward. He did not seek glory in renown; he was simply the typical pioneer who found pleasure in the hard life he followed and the radiant ambitions he pursued.

Of Scottish parents, he was born about 1862 at sea on an immigrant sailing ship in the Bay of Biscay. He was christened William Taylor Frost. The family settled in Claremont, Queensland, where his early days were spent. His father was a stern disciplinarian, who dealt harshly with the boy, so much so that the youngster rebelled against parental authority and sought liberty and independence by deserting his home.

His first job was acting as an offsider for a Bullock Driver. Then he joined a man named Bidle, helping him to take the first cattle back to Burketown after that place had been deserted owing to a visitation of the Black Plague. It was a hard, tough school for a kiddie, but he had grit and pluck. This was proved on one occasion when, thrown from a horse, he smashed his left wrist bone. One of the party bound it up, but Billy still kept his turn in watching the cattle. For a few days, he suffered agony, with teeth set in grim silence, before he launched a complaint. The men of the party met this with jeering retorts, telling him he was too damned soft for that country. In desperation, he tore off the bandage and showed a much swollen, highly discoloured arm, alive, with a moving mass of maggots. The broken flesh had been blown by flies through the bandage. It was only then he received a little attention and recovered, but as a memento of this, he carried a slight bend in his left forearm for life.