Coolgardie Gold Digger

Did you know that Jeanetta and George Menzies had 2 daughters followed by 5 sons and then two more daughters. Their second son and fourth child, George, was born in 1872. Late In 1895 when he was 23 he decided to try his hand at making his fortune on the new goldfield at Coolgardie in Western Australia.

He took a ship from Newcastle to Sydney and then to Adelaide and another to Albany in Western Australia where he arrived on New Years Day 1896. He then had to ‘hump his swag for 650kms through the heat of mid summer with temperatures reaching perhaps 40 or even 45 degrees.

The Victorian Cultural Collaboration say that:

By 1893, gold rushes at Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie were in full swing, and thousands of prospectors from all corners of the globe were flocking to the fields to claim their fortune. Living conditions at the gold fields were appalling. Miners were forced to live in hessian huts, or in rudimentary structures that offered them only scant protection from the searing heat.

On top of this, diseases like scurvy, dysentery and typhoid were a constant menace. The biggest problem, however, was water, a rare commodity that was becoming increasingly more precious than gold. Water was transported 500km each day by rail, a system which was slow, expensive and unreliable. Hundreds of desperate prospectors had lost their lives drinking stagnant water from the Coolgardie Gorge during periods of drought.

Unfortunately John was one of them. He arrived in the midst of an epidemic of typhoid fever the result of inadequate water, close living and poor hygiene. Within 2 months he was dead. All his poor parents had to grieve over was a brief telegram expressing regret.

Just a few months after John's death, a pipeline to take water from Perth to Coolgardie & Kalgoorlie was commissioned by Parliament, an incredible feat of engineering known as the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme.