Lifting the lid on history
On 5 February 1867, an Albany correspondent for The Inquirer and Commercial News wrote a letter with information many people in Western Australia had been waiting to hear for some time.
Gold has been found by a man named Butcher, a short distance from the town. It is in dust, and the Resident Magistrate has prevented any digging near the spot.
Uninterested in the conversation inside their Grandfather’s house at Wembley, Don and Courtney decided to head outside to split some logs. Their Grandfather, John Dundas, directed them to an old hollow tree stump which he had removed some time ago. They got to work with their axe and wedges and while they did not chop it up completely, they did enough work to alter its shape.
The next morning, on Sunday, 13 July 1930, John went outside to stack the firewood. He looked over the old tree stump and noticed that there were some strange looking stones within it. He picked them up and was surprised by their weight. Clearly these were no ordinary stones. He then scraped off some of the dirt.
The gold glitter showed through. There was no doubt that they were solid gold.
A ten ton crushing is going through the little 3-head mill on the Lake Way lease from the Black Swan in a day or two. This parcel is bound to yield well, and I will leave further comment until the mill has had its say.
The mill had its say and the crushing yielded 97 ounces of smelted (heating the ore so that only the metal remained) gold. The partners of the mine, Ephraim Walsh and Jack Wallace, would have been pleased. From Lake Way (near Wiluna) Mr Charles Milton (a Commission Agent) brought the gold to Lawlers for transportation to Cue under Police escort.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following blog post may contain images and names of deceased persons.
On 26 November 1930 Hughie King departed Austin Downs Station (his place of employment) and headed southeast towards Lake Austin. Foxes were a nuisance in the area and, as part of his job, he went hunting to try and curb the pest.
It was the end of spring and the steady approach of summer was making itself known. The weather was hot. Lake Austin (a system of mostly water-less salt lakes) shimmered in the unforgiving sun. The grass was long in places and perhaps it was the heat which drew Hughie to a small gum tree at the southeast part of the lakes. Perhaps it was something else entirely; an indescribable intuitive feeling. He approached the tree and there, beneath the limited shade and partially covered by grass and sand, were the skeletal remains of two people. Understandably spooked by the grim vision before him, Hughie did not choose to hang around and immediately took off.
The Dusty Box 