In Search of Mordaunt Reid:

More than one-third of the 62,000 Anzacs who died in WW1 are still listed as missing with no known graves. This is the story of one woman who never stopped looking for her soldier. Lieutenant Mordaunt Reid was paid the ultimate accolade by war historian and correspondent, Charles Bean, on the morning of the Gallipoli […]

Cuddingwarra – ghost town

CUDDINGWARRA  also known as Dead Finish Latitude 27° 22′ S Longitude 117° 47′ E Cuddingwarra is a townsite in the Murchison goldfields Western Australia near Cue. When gold was first discovered in the area in 1888 this place was known as “Dead Finish”, but when the government gazetted a townsite in 1895, Cuddingwarra was the […]

The Murchison – on dust storms and barmaids

Murchison Times and Day Dawn Gazette – 25 September 1897, page 4 The Murchison Author unknown (From the London Financial Times) The Murchison was the earliest explored field in West Australia, not the first goldfield—that was Yilgarn, discovered by my friend Anstey—but the first upon which development work was undertaken. It went with a boom […]

Paddington’s Old Cemetery – a verse

In Kalgoorlie’s north, away out in the scrub Where nobody’s shoulders you’re likely to rub On an old winding track, one scarcely could see Well hidden by bush is an old cemetery. And those lonely old graves with headstones of white Would appear to be ghosts should you pass by at night. Here graves are […]

The Fight for the Ida H:

With thanks to Gary Cowans: Truth 16 February 1930, page 6 THE FIGHT FOR IDA H Who discovered the Ida H gold mine, twenty miles from Mount Margaret, in the State of West Australia? Who got the half-million sterling extracted from it? Whence was its name derived? Ask those questions of old Dick (Richard) Heaphy […]