Category: Project

Post relating to our project and the progress we are making

Mr Stanley’s Opera Troupe

Cossack in 1886 was a frontier town in one of the most isolated colonies in the world.  It was a centre for pearling and pearl shell fishing and the entry point for pastoralists who established extensive stations.  By 1886 Cossack had a stone wharf and several other stone buildings such as the Post and Telegraph Office and a Mercantile Store, but not a lot of other substantial buildings. How did it attract an operatic performance by the most popular Opera Troupe of the decade?    

Perth loved Mr Stanley’s Opera Troupe. It played to huge audiences and received mostly glowing reviews.  The Railway employees took up a collection so they could present Mr and Mrs Stanley a gold ring and earrings as a token of their esteem and appreciation1. A Fremantle harbour official stole flowers, roses, and bouquets to bestow upon sundry members of Stanley’s Opera Troupe before they left Perth2. An ode of farewell to the players was written and published in the Perth news in October 18853.

Mr Stanley’s Opera Troupe and other itinerant theatre groups used the coastal steamers to travel around Australia4.  In early 1886, Mr Stanley was taking his Opera Troupe to Singapore and to get there travelled on a coastal steamer that called in at Champion Bay, Gascoyne, and Cossack before leaving Australia.  

Ever the entrepreneur, Mr Stanley used his time in port in Cossack to his advantage and had his Opera Troupe perform two shows at Roebourne before performing their last show in Cossack.   The Cossack show was a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance and took place on Saturday 13 March 18865.

I have been unable to find a review of the Cossack performance of this opera, but when it was performed in Perth the previous October it received a review that said –

 The acting was very spirited, the costumes pretty, the children acquitted themselves admirably in their dancing, but the actors said their words very quickly, and some songs were ‘absolutely gabbled’.6

Image generated by DALL-E

Who was Mr Stanley and how did he get into show business? The only biography I can find of Harry Stanley was supplied by him to a Perth newspaper in 18857. His life had so many self-reported highlights and makes me wonder if he embellished his life story.  

Stanley was born in England but after a childhood supposedly touring Europe he joined the Royal Navy and served in the Crimean War. He came to Australia in the mid-1850s, worked on a steamship out of Melbourne before heading for the goldfields, where he was stuck up by the notorious bushranger Black Johnston. After failing to find his fortune, Stanley joined a Theatrical Troupe where he found success playing the character of Rob Roy. He moved from Troupe to Troupe, in various roles before forming his company and managing the Lyceum Theatre and Hotel in Sandhurst.

Stanley travelled to South Africa in 1870 with the American War Panorama Troupe but was unfortunately shipwrecked on the way. Luckily he saved the Panorama and just so happened to be on the diamond fields of Kimberley when they raised the British flag. Stanley was received by African presidents and kings during that trip. He spent time as a guest of the Nizam at Hyderabad and was asked to lecture on war to the Sikh regiments. Stanley then went to Burma, where he was presented with a medal from the King and subsequently travelled to Siam, where he stayed at the palaces of the kings.

Perhaps colourful renditions of life stories come with show business. After leaving Cossack it was reported that Mr Stanley was struck insensible by lightning for three hours while on deck of the SS Natal8. Fortunately, Stanley had recovered by the time he reached Singapore.

Stanley and his Opera Troupe seem to have spent the next few years performing in the East, visiting “the colonial port cities with large European populations where there was a high demand for the sort of shows he staged9.

Stanley returned to Australia to settle some business in 1896, but while in Newcastle his heart condition suddenly worsened, and he died (without a will). Stanley was nearly 60 years old10.   The Freemasons in Calcutta raised money for his wife and daughters to return to Australia.  Entertainments such as Mr Stanley’s Opera Troupe were facing competition from newer forms of entertainment such as roller skating.  The story of Harry Stanley and his Opera Troupe is a colourful one.  What other larger than life people’s stories are awaiting discovery in Western Australia’s Ghost Towns?

Sources
  1. Presentation to Mr and Mrs Stanley. The Inquirer and Commercial News, February 1886, p. 5. ↩︎
  2. Perth Local Court. Western Mail, 2 January 1886, p. 10. ↩︎
  3. Farewell to Stanley’s Opera Troupe. The Daily News, 6 November 1885, p. 3. ↩︎
  4. YU Elysia, 2020. Australian Itinerant Theatres as Colonial Cultural Assimilation https://www.tca.hku.hk/post/australian-itinerant-theatres-as-colonial-cultural-assimilation
    Accessed 20 March 2024. ↩︎
  5. Roebourne Letter. Western Mail, 13 March 1886, p. 16. ↩︎
  6. The Pirates of Penzance. The West Australian, 12 October 1885, p. 3. ↩︎
  7. Biography of Mr. Harry Stanley (1885, September 26). The Herald (Fremantle, WA : 1867 – 1886), p. 3. Retrieved April 13, 2024, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article110070728 ↩︎
  8. Local. The West Australian 13 April 1886, p. 3 ↩︎
  9. YU Elysia, 2020. Australian Itinerant Theatres as Colonial Cultural Assimilation https://www.tca.hku.hk/post/australian-itinerant-theatres-as-colonial-cultural-assimilation. ↩︎
  10. Newcastle News. The Maitland Weekly Mercury, 2 May 1896, p. 5. ↩︎

Ghostly Scrabble

One of the most frequent questions that is asked is how do we decide what communities are included on our list of Ghost Towns. Other frequently asked questions are – how do you choose what towns to work on? and when will my favourite town be included? So I thought I might run through the process from start to finish to help everyone to understand what is going on in the background.

So we started at least eight months ago now, with a preliminary list of Ghost Towns that numbered about 250. It was only ever a starting point, but it was a great way to kick everything off. We created a master list that included, not only the name of the town, but any/all alternative names. Some of the towns only ever had one name (as far as we know) but others have, over time, been known by two, three, four or even five different names. The main name for a community is known as Primary, while all the rest are known as Secondary.

A couple of great examples of this are included in our Pilot. Cossack was originally known as Tien Tsin, and by the traditional name of Bajinhurrba. In some records it is recorded as Tien Tsin Harbour or Butcher’s Inlet. And other records talk about the Lazarette (the Cossack Leprosarium). Goongarrie was originally called 90 Mile or Ninety Mile, as well as Roaring Gimlet and sometimes called Canegrass or Canegrass Swamp. When we are researching Cossack and Goongarrie, we have to also research all of the alternative names to make certain we don’t miss anyone. So the original list of 250 grew very quickly to 500 or more. Once we launched the Facebook group and started to get media coverage we received lots more leads, so that, by the time the Pilot started to actually collect data the list was nearing 700.

We chose the first four communities that are part of the Pilot early on. They were chosen because they represent a cross section of the types of community that will be found in the full list. But the question now arose – How do we decide the order in which we will proceed through the list? We needed to come up with a process that spread the workload evenly and was not influenced by any indivduals personal preference for any of the towns.

Step 1 – estimating how much work might be involved in processing any particular town on the list.

For this we turned to the State Records Office of Western Australia. SRO’s archives contain records of much of the life and history of our State, including our Ghost Towns. So we did a search on their site to determine how many records would be involved in researching each of the communities on our Master List. Of course, this won’t be the only place where we will be researching, but it gave us an idea of how big or small the task might be.

The tasks were ranked as High – more than 200 records, Medium – between 76 and 199 records, Low – between 26 and 75 records, and Small – less than 25 records. To spread the workload, we made the decision that each phase of the project would include:

  • High – 1 communities
  • Medium – 2 communities
  • Low – 4 to 6 communities
  • Small – 6 or more communities
Step 2 – Determining the order in which the communities will be processed

And now the fun starts. How do you choose the communities for each phase without fear or favour. We considered pulling names out of a hat, but then we came up with a fun game that made a very long, potentially tedious, task become fun – Scrabble tiles (just 26 tiles, no duplicates).

Starting with the list of High Primaries, we drew the first tile. G. And just like that we had the first town for Phase 2 – Gwalia. Putting the G back into the bag, we filtered the list so that we had Medium Primaries. Then we drew two tiles – B and E. And so it went all the way through the list until every community was prioritised. It took several days, but by the end we had a prioritised list.

New communities being added to the list

Since that was done nearly 100 more communities have been suggested to be added to the project. These will be considered by the Project Board and, if suitable, will be added to the prioritised list. Of course, the pressure is off as they will, of course, be added to the latest phases of the project.

Right now, we are working on the Pilot and it is going very well.

And, let me be the first to thank our wonderful Volunteers. You guys rock!

How many ghost towns can there be?

When we started this project we had a list of about 250 Ghost Towns. It didn’t take very long before the list began to grow. As at today’s update, we have 628 (with a couple that we are holding in reserve pending confirmation of their ghostly status).

All three lists have been updated (alphabetical listing, by Region, by LGA) and the changes have been marked in the Alpha and LGA lists. There have been lots added with this update, so check it out! If you want to see what is new in your area, I suggest checking the LGA list out first, as this will tell you how many communities have been identified around you, and particularly will highlight where new entries have been added. Just remember when looking at the number of communities this includes a line entry for any known alternative names of a particular community, so that could mean that the same community is listed twice, three times or even more depending upon how many times it has changed its name over time.

A lot of new towns came to light following the broadcasts on ABC Radio and we are really grateful to everyone for their interest, enthusiasm and participation. But every day we are getting new leads, so keep checking back to see the updates and subscribe to this blog to be notified when there’s a new post.

If you want to add a ghost town or abandoned community to the list, please contact us.

What’s a State Battery?

As I have been researching ghost towns, I have often come across the phrase “state battery”. Without actually taking the time out to discover what this was, ideas that flittered through my mind included some sort of power generation facility or a method of providing fresh eggs and chickens in the outback.

Today is the day. I have found out what a state battery is, and I’m going to share it here because there could be others like me who have no clue!! And please, if I have made any incorrect assumptions or conclusions, tell me!!

Photo is from the Eastern Goldfields Historical Society’s digitized collection of 60,000 negatives1.

In Western Australia a state battery was a government owned and operated crushing facility that crushed the ore found by prospectors and dug from small mines in the area. The Western Australian Department of Mines were the government agency responsible for their operation. Some of the batteries were only operating for one or two years, while others were in place for 5o or more years. Western Australia was the only state in Australia to provide this type of facility.

A battery (aka stamp battery, stamp mill or stamping mill) crushes ore by pounding rather than grinding. Each stamp head consists of a set of heavy steel stamps in a vertical frame. The stamp slides up and down crushing the rock.
Batteries were gauged by the number of heads, hence a 10-head battery has 10 stamp heads crushing ore.

The first public battery (as they were originally known) was opened at Norsemam in 18982. Prior to this privately owned and operated batteries were the norm. In considering the legislation to establish public batteries, some last minute adjustments to the wording gave the administrators discretion to “assist” private batteries in certain cases3.

I haven’t been able to find out how many state batteries were established, but by the 1930s the total number of batteies (public and private) was close to 100, dropping to less than 50 by 1958. By 1982 a government review of state battery operations resulted in closure of all by 19874. In 1996 the battery at Ora Banda was rebuilt and reopened. Unfortunately, it never crushed any ore and in 2000 it was badly damaged by bombing and has not been rebuilt5.

As at April 2012, Wikipedia published a list of known state batteries in Western Australia (see below) but this list is believed to be incomplete. Do you know of any more? If you do please let us know at ghostswa@fhwa.org.au. While our focus, as always, is on the ghost towns, for completeness this list includes those state batteries that were located at all known sites, ghostly or otherwise!

List of State Batteries known to have existed in Western Australia
BambooLavertonNannineSouth Greenbushes
Black RangeLeonoraNiagaraSouthern Cross
BulongLindenNorsemanTuckabianna
CarlamindaMarble BarOra BandaTuckanurra
CoolgardieMarvel LochPaddingtonWarriedar
CueMeekatharraPaynes FindWidgiemooltha
DarlotMessengers PatchPaynesvilleWiluna
DesdemonaMenziesPig wellYalgoo
DevonMt EgertonPinjinYarri
DonnybrookMt IdaQuinnsYerilla
DuketonMt KeithRandallsYouanmi
Dumpling GullyMt Sir SamuelRavelstone – Peak HillYundamindera
KalgoorlieMullineRavensthorpe* Mt Jackson
KalpiniMulwarrieSandstone* Siberia
From Wikipedia article – State Batteries in Western Australia, 2012
* Updated 26 Nov 2023 with additional locations from Gone West by Geoffrey Higham.
Closer view of the head frame at a State Battery6

Sources
  1. Eastern Goldfields Historical Society, 2023. The Excelsior Battery at Bardoc. Digitized photograph EG-N-001-005. Accessed online 26 Nov 2023 at https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=662634742545097&set=a.456121176529789. ↩︎
  2. The Western Australian Goldfields Courier, Coolgardie, WA : 1894-1898. Norseman Public Battery. 10 Sep 1898, p.23. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article251211132 on 26 Nov 2023  ↩︎
  3. The Golden Age, Coolgardie, WA : 1894-2898. The Public Batteries. 11 Dec 1897, p.3. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article256754516 on 26 Nov 2023 ↩︎
  4. Wikipedia, 2023. State Batteries in Western Australia. Retrieved 26 Nov 2023 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Batteries_in_Western_Australia ↩︎
  5. Eastern Goldfields Historical Society, 2017. State Batteries in Western Australia. Video and notes accessed online 26 Nov 2023 https://www.facebook.com/kalgoorliehistory/videos/1489501291104966 ↩︎
  6. F.A.Sharr, 1983. Image Details – State Battery closer view of headframe. Digitized photograph from Heritage Council. Accessed online 26 Nov 2023 at https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/Public/inventory/Image/5ad57a39-0d86-413f-be02-75b1657bc925 ↩︎

Billy Frost

The following article was published on page 1 of The Sun newspaper on Sunday, 21 November 1909. I first stumbled across the name of Billy Frost while researching Siberia where he, along with Bob Bonner, discovered gold in 1893.

That well-known prospector, Billy Frost, the discoverer of Goongarrie, Siberia and Burtville, and the pegger out of the Premier at Kunanalling, the third lease applied for on the Coolgardie goldficlds, is again amongst us after prospecting in pretty nearly every goldfield in the world. After a long experience and many hairbreadth escapes, in which his death has been duly chronicled many times, Frost has returned, and is of opinion that Australia is “God’s own country”. Anyhow he is going to have one more try. A syndicate is being formed of 40 shares of £25 each to fix up matters. Frost gets nothing, either in cash or wages, but takes 10 fully paid up shares, which are a pure gamble. Ten further shares are held in reserve for contingencies, while 20 contributing shares, £12 10/ to be called up, are being issued. Of the latter half have been placed in Perth, and goldfielders have now an opportunity to apply for the balance, five of which have already been placed. The Government is backing the venture with camels, and all that Frost requires is tucker for a six to twelve mouths’ trip, which, in the early days he could have got in the twinkling of a star. Frost is staying with Jerry McAuliffe, prospector of the White Feather, Yerilla and other shows, but is rather diffident of being interviewed by members of the fourth, or any other, estate. He starts outback almost immediately.

BILLY FROST. (1909 November 21). The Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA : 1898 – 1929), p.1.1

It seems like Billy was a bit of a lad, and here I may be reading too much into it, but the tone of the article suggests that investing your hard earned in his new venture might be a little risky?

In 1926, in Mackinlay, Queensland, Billy was shot by Mick Ford during an argument. He is buried at Cloncurry2.

Sources
  1. Trove. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article211133656 Accessed 16 Nov 2023 ↩︎
  2. Moya Sharp, 2023. Billy Frost – the seeker of shadows. Outback Family History https://www.outbackfamilyhistoryblog.com/billy-frost-the-seeker-of-shadows/. Access 16 Nov 2023 ↩︎

Our project hits the waves.

This morning I spoke to Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Perth about our project. About 2 hours and 8 minutes into the show. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/perth-mornings/mornings/103084638

And this afternoon, I spoke to Andrew Collins on ABC Great Southern on the same topic. And this time it is only 7 mins and 9 secs into the program! https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/wa-drive/statewide-drive/103084654

The response has been amazing!! Thank you everyone!

Finding Ghosts

In a state that is larger than many countries around the world, you could expect to find some extraordinary stories.  Stories of hardship and courage; stories of extreme wealth and extreme poverty; stories of cultural diversity and of bonds formed in adversity; stories of the building of a national identity but also stories of environmental vandalism.  It is all there written in the earth.  And sometimes the earth is all that is left to mark the passing of the communities that have made up the history of the state.  There’s one thing that brings all these stories together – the people who lived them.

2029 will mark two significant Western Australian milestones.  The first milestone is the Bicentenary of European settlement.  The second is FamilyHistoryWA’s 50th Anniversary.  To mark these events, the Society (FHWA) has launched a project to gather together everything we can find about the people who lived in the ghost towns of Western Australia.  The project timeframe is six years.  The project will be launched in 2029 to coincide with the joint celebrations.  

At present the list of identified ghost towns sits at more than 500.  Of these perhaps the mining towns are the best known.  In the 1901 census the largest towns in Western Australia included the mining towns of Day Dawn, Kanowna, Mount Morgan, and Nannine, all of which are ghost towns today.  But there were many other non-mining gazetted towns that reflect Western Australia’s history of building railway lines, a long pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie, timber towns (which supplied the railway sleepers), the government-initiated Soldier Settlement and Group Settlement schemes and towns that were created to service spread out farming communities.

Please join us on our journey of discovery.