Tag: Bardoc

Bernard Leslie – Mayor of Kalgoorlie

Bernard Patrick Leslie, Mayor of Kalgoorlie 1917 – 1920 & 1927 – 19331

When Mr Bernard Patrick Leslie, a former mayor of Kalgoorlie, died in 1933 at the age of 692, it came as a shock to the inhabitants of the goldfields. Reading his obituary, this tall, imposing man seemed indestructible.

One of his many adventures in the outback was recounted. In the late 1800s, after walking from Northam to Hannans Find (later Kalgoorlie), he proceeded to White Feather (Kanowna) and then headed to Broad Arrow seeking gold. On this trip, he and a mate ran out of water and were found, days later, nude and delirious and ‘very near dead’. Apparently, his jet black hair had turned white, and his body was severely burned by the sun. However, Mr Leslie recovered, and invested in mining in the Bardoc area, and on further to Mertondale, where he did not do so well, then Mount Higgins (Mulwarrie) where he was the founder, and first president of the Pioneer Progress Committee.

Mr Leslie married twice and had two sons. He is memorialised with his first wife, Jean, in Kalgoorlie Cemetery.

Sources
  1. City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder History and Heritage, 15 Nov 2017. Facebook post retrieved 20 Aug 2024 from https://www.facebook.com/CKBHistoryandHeritage/posts/a-story-from-the-mayors-parlourbernard-patrick-lesliemayor-of-kalgoorlie-1917-19/1942082316052998/ ↩︎
  2. DEATH OF MR. B. LESLIE (1933, February 11). Kalgoorlie Miner (WA : 1895 – 1954), p. 5. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article95021902 ↩︎

Search Party

I just came across this article in the Sunday Chronicle of 12 Dec 18971. It struck my funny bone and so I wanted to share it with you!! Perhaps, given the sombre nature of the background to the article, that says something rather dark about my sense of humour?

Steps are being taken (says the Morning Herald’s Menzies correspondent) to organise another search party to look for the man M’Innes, who was lost 12 months ago while journeying from Menzies to Donkey Rocks. He is supposed to have perished between Menzies and Goongarrie Lake.

This reads very curiously to us. There were search parties organised about the time that the man was lost and they were unsuccessful. Have the Menzies people become so thoroughly embued with the West Australian spirit that after 12 months they must institute another search? What use would it be, anyhow? If M’Innes perished, which we sincerely hpe he did not, the part could only find his bleaching bones – what earthly use would that do them? Now if they put a record in the archives of Menzies that in the year 3000 a.d., the mayor and councillors of the town are requested to institute a search for a certain man named M’Innes, who was believed to have been lost in the year 1896, they would possibly be doing future generations a certain amount of good, for the suppositionary bleaching bones by that time might have become interesting fossils, that is unless Menzies has fallen neck and crop into the background of oblivion, which does not seem at all unlikely as the world wags.

At the time of the disappearance, The North Coolgardie Herald and Menzies Times reported that Constable Sampson of Bardoc and a black tracker were searching unsuccessfully for the publican John M’Innes2. Mr M’Innes had made the trek through trackless and waterless country successfully on a number of previous occasions, but no trace was found of him after he left for Donkey Rocks in late December.

  1. “THE WEEKLY WHIRL.” Sunday Chronicle (Perth, WA : 1897 – 1899) 12 December 1897: 3. Web. 17 Feb 2024 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article257697205>. ↩︎
  2. “LOST IN THE BUSH.” The North Coolgardie Herald and Menzies Times (WA : 1896 – 1898) 30 December 1896: 2. Web. 17 Feb 2024 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259770978>. ↩︎