1887 saw the arrival in the area of prospecting parties searching for gold, following the discovery of a small piece of this precious metal on Charles Glass’s property at Mujakine near Trayning. Soon syndicates were formed to send prospectors out into these parts. One such group based in Northam and Newcastle, and including C. E. Dempster and B. D. Clarkson commissioned a prospector Bernard Colreavy to take a party of four—himself, Charles Glass Junior and two others—to seek the precious metal. W. G. Leeder carted out food and equipment, ‘heavy supplies’ to Wilgoyne, which was to be the base for their search according to The Inquirer of 24 and 31 August of 1887. Meeting with no success Colreavy decided to return to Northam, and on the way met a second party, Greaves, Payne and Anstey, at Mangowine and tried to dissuade them from continuing, claiming there was no gold to be found.

A second syndicate, organised by William Lawrence and including George Lukin, Doctor Scott, MLC the Mayor of Perth, J. W. Wright MLC, R. B. Burnside, a solicitor (later Mr Justice Burnside), Mr Charles Patterson, Mr Walter Lawrence and Mr Julian Harper, had obtained the services of Dick Greaves, Ted Payne and Harry Anstey to prospect on their behalf out from Yarragin, and to this end they left Perth on 5 July 1887.

Greaves, Payne and Anstey had no maps to guide them—only the compass, which they used ‘steering east all the time’, and taking fourteen weeks to reach Ennuin, for much of their time was spent looking for water and grass country where they could pasture their horses. They stayed at the homesteads on the way, among them Mudgekine (sic), Glass’s out from Trainin (sic) then on to Mr Arnold Butterly’s Yarrogon (sic), about a hundred miles from Newcastle. Here a good water soak was found at the foot of the rock, then on to Charles Adams’ Mangowine, then to George Lukin’s at Wilgoyne.

Greaves described the thick timber between Mangowine and Wilgoyne as ‘almost impassable’ and the country as they progressed ‘getting rougher all the time’.

At Lukin’s out station Enuin (sic) they found gold in the area traversed by the Gregorys in 1846, and Clarkson, Harper and L. Lukin in 1864, and Anstey returned to Perth with the news. Later Greaves and Payne had a second find, the Cordelia, some twelve to fourteen miles south of Ennuin.

…

Following Greaves’, Payne’s and Anstey’s discovery of gold many prospecting parties journeyed past Mangowine, Barbalin and Wilgoyne en route to the fields and Colreavy returned again to try his luck.

His reports of the area, sent back to The Inquirer, and published therein on 23 November 1887 were mainly of a geological nature but one dated 4 September 1887 sent from Lukin’s Wilgoyne, told of an event which the District’s farmers would welcome every September:

‘from Mudgekine to Barblan granite rock formation well formed quartz reefs plentiful; only between Yaragin and C. Adams the quartz show the rusty brown and honeycombed appearance so familiar in auriferous quartz. The red soil with feldspar, quartz and other favourable indications of auriferous appearance are visible about Wilgram. The journey was rather unpleasant as it rained seven days out of the eleven, at times incessantly heavy and cold. At Adams’ there was a sleet and hail the flat covered with water and watercourses running.

The settlers say it is the wettest season for ten years (. . .) We had to unload twice and carry the goods 100 yards through a soft bog and for a quarter of a mile we had to dig away and lever the wheels every yard, the water running like a creek over the flat. At three and a half miles past Barblan the horses and ourselves were quite done up, and we had to camp with the dray bogged till next morning when we got it out road to Lukin’s. Today (Sunday) it rained heavily and is very cold (. . .) I expect water and grass plentiful.’

A letter from him in the same issue dated 14 September 1887 spoke of the rain of the 4th as the ‘finishing up shower’, and the rain had not extended to the east making water very scarce and only found in the shallow holes on the scattered flat granite rocks.

Colreavy’s subsequent ‘find’ which he named ‘Golden Valley’, and for which he claimed the Government reward as its discoverer, was claimed by Greaves to be the find he had christened the Cordelia, and of which he had given Colreavy the details.

With the finding of gold in the Yilgarn and the proclamation of the Yilgarn field in October 1888, many people passed through the Mukinbudin area and some recorded their impressions of it. C. E. & W. S. Dempster left Northam on 14 July 1888, and travelled to the Golden Valley via Mangowine, Wattoning, Wilgoyne (a route opened by C. F. Adams).

They described the terrain as ‘cable gum* country, rich red loamy clay soil’ and advised that it would pay to ring bark, fence and open out large tracts, in which case the stock-carrying capacity would be high. Water was, of course, the problem, and they suggested spending twenty thousand pounds, even thirty thousand pounds on obtaining large supplies of fresh water. They could see the agricultural potential of thirty to forty bushels of wheat to the acre—a very over-optimistic forecast. As pastoral country they felt it was ‘simply splendid’.

Giving evidence at the Yilgarn Railway enquiry in 1891, as to whether the best route to the Yilgarn lay through York or Northam and where the best agricultural country was located, Mr C. Dempster felt the country Adams cultivated was ‘very nice’—he frequently got a good hay crop and vines grew well, but the rainfall ‘out there’ was too uncertain for agriculture which he felt ought to be confined to within thirty miles of Northam.

Henry Page Woodward, Government Geologist, went from Fremantle to Newcastle and eastward to the Yilgarn in 1888 and commented on the scarcity of water. He noted the country between Mangowine and Yilgarn as ‘open’, with large alluvial sandy plains in which ‘huge masses of intrusive granite stand out in great bold hills.’

 

[* Cable gum or gimlet. A gimlet is a boring tool with a spiral shaped end and the gimlet’s trunk is often twisted in a similar shape.]

Excerpt Page 9-11, On the Line by Jocelyn Maddock