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, who worked with John Oliver in the early days of the second Kambalda, you could still see where the streets had been, and some of the blocks were still shown as privately owned. Some necessarily by deceased estates. They had to be re-vested to the Crown before the new town could be built.
Red Hill Town Kalgoorlie Western Argus 2 May 1905, page 25
The first town as a community had been dead for half a century, except for hardy prospectors who inhabited it at various times in their ceaseless search for gold. Bryan Weston told me about his life here as a boy with his family in the 1930s, living in Well Gully. Tom Grace and his father lived further over near the lake and were believed to be using an old mine building on the Butterfly claim. There was a third prospector, an old man, living nearby but Brian can’t remember his name. Of course, we know that George Cowsill, and probably dozens like him were in and out of this country all the time. The fever never goes away!
But this brings us to the present and its centenary of the past we are celebrating.
By the 1860’s the colony was over 30 years old and exploration for its own sake and for the discovery of good farm and grazing land was in full swing. Gold would have been a real bonus. The Colonial Government bought Edward Hargraves to WA to search for gold in 1860. He only got as far as present day Narambeen and declared that there was no gold bearing country. John Forrest, CC Hunt on H M Lefroy were also through this country in the 60s. Hunt did three trips, establishing a line of wells and dams. The road, rail and water pipeline of necessity followed each other along the same line. Hunt’s water supplies, not totally reliable as we can imagine, made it possible for all others to come after, and come they did.
We will never know who they were, but probably the greatest prospector of them all, Gillies McPherson, was in the region in 1888 on 1889. We have named a park after him in Kambalda West. Bailey and Ford arrived and the name Coolgardie became a household word around the world via the magic of the telegraph. The population of WA trebled in a little over 10 years. Within four years of the Coolgardie find, the outer limits of the auriferous country had been set by prospectors on camels, on bicycles and on foot, pushing barrels by whatever means at their disposal.
In December 1896, Pierce ‘Percy’ Larkin of Kanowna fame, prospecting in gullies running from Red Hill down to Lake Lefroy, found payable dirt. He took 106 ounces of gold to Coolgardie in January of 1897, and the Red Hill rush, sometimes called the Lake Lefroy Rush, was on. James Balzano, the diariast to whom we owe a great debt, arrived at Lake Lefroy on March the 10th, 1897. He reportes buying water at 4d a gallon and 1 lb of onions and the Pioneer Newspaper on March the 12th. So commerce was still alive and well.
L C Dalton’s General Store and Post Office – 1905 – Photo SLWA
Mrs George Taylor, with her three children, arrived on March the 11th, so a community was in the making. On Saint Patrick’s Day, a sports meeting was held on the lake opposite Tiger Bay. Does anyone know where that was? and in the evening, a concert was held in front of Egan’s tent. They were 300 men there. A week later on March the 22nd, a roll up called the men to a meeting in front of McPhee’s store and over 100 men attended to form a progress committee. There were 140 names on the membership form. Balzano, in his diary entry dated April the 14th, 1897, said
“I will always regret not to have gone to see the pegging out of the township.”
The surveying of this town to become Kambalda, an aboriginal word of unknown meaning, and also of Widgimoola, the original town spelling, took several months. Widjimooltha, the spelling was changed in 1944, was gazetted on December 3rd, 1897, just a week before Kambalda. Widgemooltha has always been a settlement, but Kambalda died about 1907 to rise up again in 1966 to 1967 for its new future with nickel and gold.
Moya Sharp
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