Towns and places

The Eastern Goldfields is made up of hundred towns both big and small. Outback Family History would like to bring you a collection of stories about some of these abandoned towns which you may never have heard of. Some may only have been there for a few years and now very little remains of the small thriving communities.

Widgiemooltha Cemetery – Forget us not, for eternity here we reside

Widgemooltha Cemetery Off Coolgardie Esperance Highway Long -31.478272  Lat 121.583090 ‘We loved and were loved before we died, Forget us not for eternity here we reside.’ 16 Burials –  1 Mine Death – 8 children – 1 female – 1 suicide. BROWN Raymond Jeffrey – d 25 May 1935, 32yrs, Born: Melbourne VIC, In WA […]

The Niagara Football Club – a verse

Kookynie Advocate and Northern Goldfields News 31 October 1903, page 2 The Niagara Football Club. (With apologies to “Banjo” Patterson.) On Saturday 17th October 1903, after Niagara became football premiers, there was a grand wind-up at the Niagara Hotel where over fifty people sat down to a great feast. To mark this event the following […]

Red Hill Cemetery (Kambalda)

Kambalda (Red Hill)  Pioneer Cemetery Beresford Rd, Kambalda L 31.204984 – L 121.650983 5 burials – 1 suicide 1 woman EUPELI George — d 13th June 1904, at the Butterfly Mine, Red Hill, Occ: Miner, 43 Years, Cause: Cardiac Failure, Valvular Disease, a post mortem examination was conducted (not very common on the Goldfields at […]

Kambalda – in the beginning

The following article was written by Billie Ingham in 1997 for the Centenary of the town of Kambalda. The townsite of Kambalda (Red Hill) was declared under the Land Act on the 10th of December 1897. There were 81 lots and streets were named variously for leaseholders and progress committee members. According to Gil Ralph, […]

Coolgardie Leidertafel & the Durston family

The following family story and photographs were kindly supplied and reproduced with permission of the late Mrs Bernice Peters of Wembley, WA with thanks. Robert Groves Durston is the father of Bernice Peters. He was born in 1863 in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England and sailed for New Zealand as a two year old with his parents, […]