The people of the Goldfields

The Goldfields of Western Australia was and still is made up of many people, from poets to politicians, from saints and sinners and everything in between. I hope to tell you the stories of some of these people either famous or infamous or just the ordinary folks. Sometime the most ordinary people do the most extraordinry things

Dastardly and Diabolical Deed at Day Dawn

Evening Mail – Fremantle 23 March 1908, page 1 No one will deny that Harry Goninon Smith, who at 8 o’clock this morning paid, on the scaffold at the Fremantle Prison, the last penalty for the supreme crime in the criminal calendar, was the murderer of the man, William John Clinton at Day Dawn. No […]

Dorothea Ruby Olive Wraight -grave tales

Young Dorothea ‘Dorothy’ Ruby Olive Wraight, was born in Coolgardie WA on the 30th November 1902. She was the daughter of George Thompson Wraight and Ira Elizabeth nee Risden. George was from Aberdeen in Scotland and Ira was from Stawell in Victoria. George and Ira married in Jul of 1902 in Kunanalling (near Coolgardie) WA. […]

Ode to the Nurses by Smiler Hales

Coolgardie Miner – 9 June 1898, page 4 The wretched typhoid microbe Is feasting in my chest; I’m doomed beyond redemption, By the cursed goldfields pest. It’s ‘elp me, nurse, ‘nd soothe me, nurse, Put ice upon me ‘ead; Take a message to me mother, nurse, As soon as I am dead. I’ve broke me […]

The Box Soak Creek Rush

Where is Box Creek you may ask? As I did myself back in 2000, (I can’t believe it was so long ago), when I received a letter from a lady in Queensland about a distant relative of hers called Ronald Donald McMillen who was supposed to be buried in the Box Soak Cemetery. I had […]

Bridget Delia Oates – grave tales

The following photograph is of the headstone and grave of Bridget Delia Oates, who was the beloved wife of Richard Knight Oates, born in County Clare Ireland on 28 Jan 1873. She died at Kalgoorlie on the 17th Sep 1909 aged 37 years. This photograph was taken just after the headstone, ledger, and grave fencing […]