Mrs Walshaw of Comet Vale
Story and photos by Bernie Morris
First Published in ‘The Westland’ 2005
For a few months in the year 1895, the terminus of the new railway thrusting east from Southern Cross to the twin Eldorado’s of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie stood at Boorabbin with strings of half-piled wagons, sullen afghans cruising among the stubborn camels, the loafers and workers all jumbled together in the white heat of the scorching sun one traveller called it-
a sarcasm of a town.
When time ran out for Boorabbin in mid-December it seemed that only the keeper of the wayside inn remained to lament the overnight decampment to the new railhead 15 miles further east at Woolgangie. If anything, Woolgangie would prove a worse place. A typhoid-stricken maelstrom of men, animals, coaches, waggons and dust, punctuative and activated by the whistle of arriving trains. It was also soon to be in the deadly grip of water famine!
Gilmore’s Club Hotel – Woolgangie
An estimated 700 people and 1000 horses made this place its headquarters. Dining rooms and boarding houses did a roaring trade, as did Gilmore’s Club Hotel and Mill’s Cool Drink shop. Besides the usual storekeepers, there were barbers, blacksmiths and numerous forwarding agents, as well as the Post and Telegraph office. Yet in this chaotic existence, no provision had been made for those who were injured or fell sick – your mates did what they could for you, but many a hopeful never made it to Coolgardie. Thus, it was a grateful and relieved Woolgangie that welcomed Sister Gertrude (Alice Sly) of the order of the Sisters of the People in mid-January 1896.
The men in the camp had knocked up a rough tent and bough shed hospital, but without assistance, the loan Sister simply couldn’t cope. Thankfully her burden was relived two weeks later when Sister Mildred (Fairclough) arrived by train from the coast. Both would still find themselves taxed to the limit, but by alternating the night shifts they were afforded some little relief from their arduous tasks.
The Coolgardie to Woolgangie Coach – Photo SLWA
Sister Mildred had not been at Woolgangie long when one Sunday evening, she was told that a young woman was seriously ill down at the camp. On attending, she found the woman in the advanced stages of labour. The Sister took charge and by the early hours of the next day, a baby girl was delivered. By 3am the relieved and tired Sister returned to the hospital.
In time, the mother, Florence Baker, and baby were well enough to move on, presumably to join her husband further out on the fields. As unusual as it may seem, in those tumultuous times, it was reasonably safe for a woman to travel alone. Reading from the sketchy records available, the mother next spent time in Coolgardie where the baby was nursed at the St John of God Convent and was named after Sister Mildred, who delivered her at Woolgangie. Although there is no mention at the time of the child’s father it was later revealed to be Daniel Baker, who is said to have discovered the first gold at Comet Vale, 60 miles north of Kalgoorlie, and to have given the place its delightful name. Perhaps he did, as Comet Vale is only 8 miles from Goongarrie where Baker was operating a condenser. Perhaps in his spare time, he specked a few colours there and passed on the information (for a consideration of course), because history records Frank Moss as the founder of the Cooniga and Lady Margaret Mines at Comet Vale and later having a hand in opening up the Sand Queen for which the town is best remembered.
The Sand Queen GM, Comet Vale – Photo SLWA
In any case, Baker later moved to Comet Vale, and it was there that Mildred (or Billie as she liked to be called) lived as a little girl. She once recalled that her father was the manager of the Golden Vale mine in its best days. There were lots of horses and dashing men and champagne. She said, “we would all go to Kalgoorlie and stop in the best hotels and there would be Mick’s and adventurers and wasters and Scotchmen and bad men and Ohhh it was marvelous!!”
Comet Vale, like most towns in the Eastern and Northern Goldfields, declined after WW1, many never recovered. Mildred is next heard of in Kalgoorlie running a frock shop and attending the School of Mines two nights a week. She married about this time,1923, and became Mrs Mildred Mary Walshaw. With her husband Cecil, she drifted back to Comet Vale where they ‘minded a little mining lease’. She was widowed not long after but stayed on, using the know-how passed on to her by her father combined with technical knowledge learned in night school. Surviving in this tough game isn’t easy but she made a living of sorts.
In 1947, three years after her husband’s death, she took on the lease for seven years on a stone cottage, one of three in the south end of the Comet Vale Station yard, later purchasing the property. But life on the fringe, isolated in abandoned Comet Vale, must have been difficult for her at times. No railway staff had lived there for many years, there were no shops – not that she missed them, and even the pub had closed up in 1950. Occasionally one of the empty houses would be leased by a prospector but by 1960 only Mildred and her faithful dog Cuddles remained to enjoy the plentiful peace and quiet and the glorious solitude that is known only by bush people.
Mrs Walshaw and Cuddles – Photo SLWA
“The Mulga”, as the north country train was known by one and all, became Mildred’s lifeline. She met every train with regularity that would have arriving train crews concerned for her well-being had she not been sitting in the station’s little waiting room with her beloved dog Cuddles. The northbound train, No 191, Tuesdays and Thursdays, due at Comet Vale about midday, always delivered her mailbag, then next day she would be waiting to hand it back to the guard of No 192 due at Comet Vale at about 3pm Wednesday and Fridays. She would wait on the platform until each train had gone, and when the rumble of the departing X Class loco had faded, a hush once more descended on Comet Vale. Once more Mildred would retreat to her home to await her next social outing – the next train with the next mailbag.
The Mulga –
Unusually, with her isolated lifestyle, she was to engage a Perth solicitor to issue a writ against Charles Burrows for a breach of ‘promise to marry’. It’s not known how she came to meet Burrows or what happened to the action. Perhaps he was one of the prospectors who rented one of the other railway cottages!
Daily News – Perth – Monday 26 June 1950, page 2
Only rarely did the train bring her any other form of ‘roadside’ and certainly very little came in the way of groceries. It was a mystery how she managed for stores but, perhaps, like Daisy Bates at Ooldea – of whom she reminded some people – she found she could live off a biscuit and a sunset. It was indeed tempting to compare her with Daisy Bates, but the only similarities were in the privations they endured – Daisy would have given an arm and a leg for Mildred’s rain tanks – and the self-imposed isolation.
Mildred’s Railway House 1968 – Photo SLWA
Mildred was sometimes the subject of cruel and undeserved derision from without. Some scoffed at her claim she worked underground in her mine, the Cooniga, and while it did seem a larger-than-life boast to many people she would, as if in way of proof, occasionally hand the guard of No 192 a calico bag of sample stone to deliver to Harold Muldoon at Goongarrie, “Tell Mr Muldoon I fired (dynamited), these on the such and such level” would be her courteous instruction.
The exact day of her departure from Comet Vale is not known or whether she agreed to go when the trains began to ignore her halt or if she hung on until the line was closed in 1973. What is known is that when the standard gauge trains commenced running 14 months later, the beautiful Comet Vale station and Mildred’s house were gone. There was an earlier public outcry at the destruction of heritage railway buildings which had fallen on deaf ears during the closure period.
Comet Vale Main Street – Photo SLWA
The train crews knew she had taken up residence in an old corrugated iron humpy a few meters from the former spur line to the Lady Shenton mine on the opposite side of the railway from where the loco depot once stood on the southern outskirts of Menzies. She now watched the trains come and go and always waved to the crews, but she was never to be seen at the platform – there was no point, for the train no longer brought her mailbag and no longer carried passengers whom she might chat for a few minutes to as she had done in the old days. These were sad times.
Comet Vale Railway Station – Photo SLWA
Summer can be murderously hot on the northern goldfields – no air-con for Mildred – and she must have missed her old home with its thick stone walls and cool interior. It was a paradise compared to the tin shack she now called home. She eventually moved in with Aubrey Lynch and his family in Leonora. Aubrey was an Aboriginal elder who had worked on the railway line and had become a good friend to Billie.
She died in the Leonora Hospital aged 84 in 1979 and is buried in the Anglican Section of the Leonora Cemetery. She had no headstone.
Moya Sharp
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