Calanchinis on the Eastern Goldfields

Calanchinis on the Eastern Goldfields
Of Western Australia
by Chris Clark

Calanchini brothers  –  In the last decade of the nineteenth century three brothers with the very Italian-sounding surname of Calanchini but anglicised forenames (Peter, Michael James, and George Francis) arrived in Western Australia from the colony of Victoria. The three were sons of an Italian speaker named Guiseppe Calanchini, although his nationality was not actually Italian. He was born about 1841 at Cevio in Ticino,¹ one of the two Italian-speaking southern cantons (states) of the Swiss confederation.

Arriving in Melbourne in September 1855, at the height of Victoria’s gold rushes, Guiseppe (or Joseph as he also came to be known) went to the Daylesford-Hepburn area, between Ballarat and Castlemaine, and stayed there for the rest of his life apart from 18 months spent at Woods Point north-east of Melbourne.² It was apparently at Daylesford that he met and married his wife Alice in 1863.³ She was the daughter of Michael and Ellen Murphy who arrived from Limerick, Ireland, in 1860 when Alice was aged 14.⁴

Over the decade from 1864, Alice bore Guiseppe four sons and also four daughters  — two of whom died before the age of 2.⁵ The eldest son was Peter, born late in 1865,⁶ followed by Michael (born 8 September 1874),⁷ George (April 1881)⁸ and William (1884).⁹ Guiseppe tried making his fortune from mining and through other business ventures. He became a shareholder in the Anglo-Swiss Gold Mining Company formed in 1864¹⁰ and also opened a bakery in Vincent Street, Daylesford’s main thoroughfare.

Unfortunately, none of these ventures prospered, and in March 1866 Guiseppe was declared insolvent citing losses in business and mining speculation.¹¹ Trade at the bakery was probably not helped by one of his workers named Serafini Bosetti being arrested and charged over the murder of a local woman in January 1865.¹² He still continued mining for a living, however, and in 1875 he was mentioned as head of one of the co-operative parties of miners working the Hepburn field.¹³ By 1891 he had also turned to growing vines on a half-acre at Hepburn.¹⁴

Above – The present-day bakery in Vincent Street, Daylesford, appears to be located where the bakery established by Guiseppe Calanchini stood in 1865, next to Lavezzolo’s Hotel, which in 1904 was replaced by the red-brick verandahed Victoria Hotel visible at left. (Author photo, 2021)

By the mid-1890s it had nonetheless become clear that the Daylesford-Hepburn district did not offer sufficient prospects for all the Calanchini children. It may have been about this time that Guiseppe tried his luck on the Gippsland goldfields, before returning to Hepburn where he eventually died on 1 June 1910.¹⁵ Lack of opportunities may have been what also motivated second son Michael to go to Western Australia, then experiencing a gold rush of its own—although personally engaging in mining does not seem to be what he had in mind.

Soon after arriving in Perth, Michael used references gained from six years spent in the Post and Telegraph Department at Melbourne to apply on 20 May 1895 for employment in the WA Mines Department.¹⁶ On 1 June that year, still three months short of his 21st birthday, he was appointed as clerk and accountant in the Warden’s Office at Kalgoorlie.¹⁷ Less than six months later he found himself temporarily filling the duties of Mining Registrar on a succession of other goldfields.¹⁸

It is not hard to imagine that, within a few short years, Michael’s successful transfer to the West served as a powerful drawcard for his brothers back in Victoria. By early 1896 Peter Calanchini, then aged 31, was working a remote mining lease at Jericho, between Walhalla and Matlock in Gippsland.¹⁹ It was hard and probably unrewarding labour. Sometime after November 1897, when 16-year-old third son George had become an apprentice with Victorian Railways,²⁰ the two of them decided to join brother Michael on the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. This left only William to carry on the Calanchini name in their home state.

While Peter and George quickly became residents of Kalgoorlie, Michael continued to move around the goldfields, variously serving from 1901 as Acting Warden (and Resident Magistrate) at Kalgoorlie, Mount Margaret, Menzies, and Broad Arrow.²¹ In March 1905, however, he transferred to Perth as Chief Clerk of the Mines Department.²² Within months he was called upon to act as departmental head,²³ the first of many occasions he performed this role—off and on—until 1919 when his tenure of the top job became permanent.

Send-off given to A. W. Canning on 10 May 1906 by chief officers of the Lands and Mines Department, on Canning’s departure to survey the 1800-km North West Stock Route from Wiluna to the Kimberley region. M. J. Calanchini is the mustachioed figure in light-colored clothing with boater hat seated front row, third from right.  (State Library, WA)

Although not a lot is known about Peter Calanchini’s life at Kalgoorlie, it is well documented that younger brother George gave his occupation as ‘Tributer (miner)’ at the Hannan’s Reward Gold Mine when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force for war service in March 1916. After training with No 6 Tunnelling Company, he embarked and sailed from Fremantle as Lance Corporal on 1 June that year and by September joined the 3rd Tunnelling Company in France as a reinforcement. By July 1919 he returned to Australia having reached the rank of Second Corporal.²⁴ While resuming employment as a tributer at the Hannan’s Reward, he also went into partnership with others in applying for separate gold mining leases into the mid-1930s.²⁵

Peter Calanchini died on 18 January 1922, aged 58, and was buried in the Boulder cemetery.²⁶ George died on 10 August 1946, aged 65, and was also buried at Boulder.²⁷ Both brothers were unmarried. After serving as the Secretary for Mines (no longer ‘Acting’) in 1919-20,²⁸ Michael was the permanent Under Secretary for Mines from 1921 until 1937.²⁹ Following retirement, he continued to hold directorships in mining companies with gold and other mineral interests across the State.³⁰ He died in Perth on 10 May 1955, aged 80 and also unmarried, and was buried at Perth’s Karrakatta cemetery.³¹

Twenty-seven years as the top public servant in the WA Mines Department would doubtless have left Michael Calanchini with his own list of career highlights. Perhaps one of these might have been having a low range of hills (only 540 meters above sea level) east of the southern end of Lake Carnegie, 240 kilometers south of Laverton, named for him. These days, however, he is mostly remembered as the shrewd government adviser who helped steer his ministers in 1929-30—first Selby Munsie, and then James Scaddan—away from involvement in a crackpot scheme promoted by the Sydney-based Central Australian Gold Exploration (CAGE) Company. This sought to inveigle the WA Government into part-funding the search for a non-existent gold reef in Central Australia fabricated by serial fantasist and conman, Lewis Hubert (also known as Lewis Harold Bell) Lasseter.³²

Michael Calanchini, acting in conjunction with the State Mining Engineer, Alexander Howe, played a crucial role in warning the government about the Lasseter hoax and even took the time and trouble to check out a vital aspect of Harry Lasseter’s fake story involving a mystery WA government surveyor named Harding. The part that Calanchini contributed to shaping the state’s response to the Lasseter’s Reef saga has since been comprehensively documented in a recent electronic publication focused on the life and career of one of Australia’s most dubious folk heroes.³³

One remarkable aspect about the Calanchini tale was the discovery that the family was part of a recognisable pattern of Swiss migration to the Victorian gold rushes—significant enough to earn Guiseppe Calanchini brief mentions in scholarly research³⁴ and historical publications.³⁵ The literature on the contribution of Italian-speaking migrants to the development of modern Australia emphasises how even more remarkable was Michael Calanchini’s story. To have made his mark in Western Australia within a single generation of his father’s arrival from the fairly restricted and closed society that was Switzerland in the nineteenth century is testimony not just to his personal ability, but to other elements of the migrant experience which Australians today tend to overlook or take for granted.

If you would like to get in touch with Chris, follow this link – Chris Clark

References

1. National Archives of Australia (NAA): A1, 1906/8079 Guiseppe Calanchini – Naturalization. 
2. NAA: A1, 1906/8079. 
3. Victoria Births Deaths & Marriages (BDM), marriage reg. no. 443/1863, with Guiseppe’s surname, spelled ‘Colanchini’.

4. NAA: A1, 1906/6629 Alice Calanchini – Naturalization. 
5. The daughters were Lucrezia Veronica (1864), Josephine (1872), Catherine (1876) and Mary Julia (1879); Josephine died later in 1872 and Catherine in 1878.  

6. Victoria BDM, birth reg. no. 14865/1865. 
7. Victoria BDM, birth reg. no. 15226/1874. Strangely, there is a death recorded earlier in 1874 for Michael James Calanchini (see reg. no. 1075/1874), son of Guiseppe and Alice. This suggests that there may have been another child, born in 1873 but not registered, who died while Alice was again expecting.

8. Victoria BDM, birth reg. no. 8668/1881.
9. Victoria BDM, birth reg. no. 8767/1884.
10. Victorian Government Gazette, no. 81, 16 Aug 1864, p. 1793.
11. Argus (Melbourne), 23 Mar 1866, p. 6, 12 Apr 1866, p. 7; Age (Melbourne), 3 May 1866, p. 3.
12. Age (Melbourne), 9 Jan 1865, p. 4; Bendigo Advertiser, 11 Jan 1865, p. 2.
13. Reports of the Mining Surveyors and Registrars (Victoria), Quarter ended 30 Sep 1875, p. 32.
14. Handbook on Viticulture for Victoria, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1891, appendix C, p. 151.
15. Victoria BDM, death reg. no. 5664/1910; Age (Melbourne), 11 Jun 1910, p. 5. His wife died on 4 August 1915 and was buried in the Roman Catholic section of Melbourne General Cemetery at Carlton North.

16. State Records Office WA: Mines Department file Cons 964, 1895, item 2398, M. J. Calanchini  (personal file).

17. West Australian (Perth), 10 Jun 1895, p. 6.
18. State Records Office WA: Mines Department file Cons 964, 1895, item 2398, M. J. Calanchini.
19. Victorian Government Gazette, no. 19, 7 Feb 1896, p. 769.
20. Report of the Victorian Railway Commissioner for the Year ending 30th June 1898, p.(Appendix 20: Statement of Appointments of Employees, Quarter Ending 31 Dec 1897), see  https://www.victorianrailways.net/vr%20history/annual_reports/vrar1898.pdf.  

21. Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 20 Oct 1903, p. 11; Colonial Office List for 1904 (Waterlow & Sons, London), p. 67.

22. State Records Office WA: Mines Department file Cons 964, 1895, item 2398, M. J. Calanchini. 
23. Daily News (Perth), 9 Jul 1910, p. 5; Report of the Mines Department for 1913 was signed off by J. Calanchini as ‘Acting Under Secretary’ on 31 Mar 1914; WA Government Gazette, no. 4, 25 Jan 1918, p. 87.

24. AIF service file (National Archives Australia: B2455, Calanchini G F); also https://www.tunnellers.net/profiles__photos/calanchini_george_francis_4293.doc.

25. Kalgoorlie Miner, 2 Apr 1920, p. 1, 15 Feb 1935, p. 1. 
26. WA BDM, death reg. no. 15/1922; Boulder cemetery records; Argus (Melb), 28 Jan 1922, p. 11. 
27. WA BDM, death reg. no. 180/1946; Kalgoorlie Miner, 10 Aug 1946, p. 4; Boulder cemetery records.

28. Shown as ‘Secretary for Mines’ in WA Government Gazette, no. 64, 12 Dec 1919, p.2200, no. 321 May 1920, p. 988. 

29. WA Government Gazette, no. 53, 28 Oct 1921, p. 1937, no. 37, 28 Aug 1925, p. 1562. 
30. West Australian, 29 Oct 1937, p.10; The Golden West: Western Australia’s illustrated annual,1946-47, pp. 30-31.

31. WA BDM, death reg. no. 1060/1955; Karrakatta cemetery records. 
32. Gerald Walsh, “Lasseter, Lewis Hubert (Harold Bell) (1880-1931)”, Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography, revised edition, Darwin, NT: Charles Darwin University Press, 2008, p. 335.

33. Chris Clark, The truth about Lasseter: why his elusive gold reef never existed, West Geelong: Echo Books, 2019, pp. 169-70, 172-6, 189-90.

34. Bridget Rachel Carlson, Immigrant Placemaking in Colonial Australia: The Italian-SpeakingSettlers of Daylesford, Ph.D. thesis, Victoria University, 1997, p. 51.

35. Anna Davine, ‘Community life: Italian speakers on the Walhalla goldfield 1865-1915’, ItalianHistorical Society Journal, Jan.-Jun. 2008, p. 14.

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Moya Sharp

Owner at Outback Family History

My name is Moya Sharp, I live in Kalgoorlie Western Australia and have worked most of my adult life in the history/museum industry. I have been passionate about history for as long as I can remember and in particular the history of my adopted home the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Through my website I am committed to providing as many records and photographs free to any one who is interested in the family and local history of the region.

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