Coolgardie – The rush that saved the west
By John Drain
Arthur Wellesley Bayley and William Ford are accredited with finding the first gold at Coolgardie on September 13th, 1892, however, controversy has existed over the years as to who were the rightful discoverers. The pair were granted the reward claim on 17th September.
Nothing I have ever read on the matter actually attempts to discredit the partners in the finding of the reef or their subsequent sale of it, but there is ample evidence to suggest they may not have been the first to find gold in the vicinity.
Probably the earliest reference to gold believed found in the general area of that part of the country, later to be known as Coolgardie, is reported in the journals of Charles C. Hunt, a surveyor employed by the Western Australian Government to search for and find pastoral country suitable for grazing stock. This work was carried out to the east of the town of York and spread into the goldfield, now known as Hampton Plain, between the years 1864 and 1866. Hunt’s commission also required him to establish watering points such as soaks and wells to enable those who might follow to be able to sustain themselves. For this purpose, he was supplied with several convicts who were to do the manual work, and several pensioner soldiers as guards.
William Ford, c.1900
When they were well into the eastern goldfields the convicts took it into their heads to grab some of the horses and food, and set off overland to make their escape to South Australia. Not being experienced bushmen and probably weakened by the hard work of digging wells, together with a poor staple diet, the convicts were soon overtaken by Hunt’s soldiers. On being returned to camp they were found to be in possession of a small quantity of gold. It seems their wanderings were such and their navigation so poor they were not able to lead Hunt’s party to the spot where the gold was found. It’s likely of course, they may simply have been playing dumb as many do about the whereabouts of gold.
Bayley and Ford first met in Croydon, Queensland, when each was prospecting there. After the Croydon gold ran out, they separated, with Bayley moving to Southern Cross where gold had been discovered in 1888 and which, at the time, was the most eastern field being worked in Western Australia.
One night while Bayley was resting from his work with a mining syndicate, Gilles McPherson, a well-known prospector in the Yilgarn district, staggered into Bayley’s tent having suffered a terrible perish due to the shortage of water. McPherson, a hardy Scotsman, was in a bad way and it took several days nursing on the part of Bayley before he recovered sufficiently to make much sense. He showed Bayley some gold he had found to the east and south that seemed to fit in with the direction from which McPherson had come from Lake Lefroy. McPherson went to great lengths to impress on Bayley the fact that there was some gold out there but also emphasised the terrible shortage of water. Perhaps fired by McPherson’s enthusiasm for prospecting, or simply disenchanted with working for wages, Bayley threw up the job and set off to Nullagine some 1,200 kilometres to the northwest in the Pilbara Goldfield.
Bayley and Ford photographed after being granted the reward claim.
Nullagine produced a lot of alluvial gold between the township and as far east as Mosquito Creek. Bayley found some gold but after a time shifted 200 kilometres south to Top Camp on the Ashburton field. Here he joined with noted prospector Tom Kegney as sharing mates and during their time together they had the good fortune to find a handsome amount of gold, including one 68-ounce nugget. Never short of a solution to a problem, Bayley promptly chopped the nugget in half so each might have his share.
Hearing of rich gold at Nickol River to the north, Bayley decided to try his luck there. The field was along the tidal sea- shore and could only be worked while the tide was out – a difficulty unlike any other on Western Australian goldfields. Bayley did find some gold but it seems he wasn’t particularly impressed with this area because he returned to Perth. From here he travelled back to Southern Cross where he once more became acquainted with William Ford.
Ford had been working in the mines for nearly a year when Bayley arrived but he was able to relate some adventures of his own to his friend that amounted to almost certain confirmation of the claims made by McPherson earlier.
Arthur Bayley
Ford, together with prospectors George Withers and Luigi Jacoletti, had found gold at a place known as Natives Grave between Southern Cross and Parkers Range to the southeast. The prospectors had sold their claim for £300 and Ford and Jacoletti had taken the job of looking after the show for the new owner. Meanwhile, George Withers had obtained horses and supplies, and travelled eastward from Southern Cross on yet another prospecting trip. Three weeks later he returned to the Cross, a spear wound in his shoulder and a chamois of gold in his pocket.
More than ever this latest event seemed to substantiate Gilles McPherson’s claims, which Bayley and Ford had discussed at some length. They decided on plans to follow up the other’s discovery but realised that in so doing, their party would need to be well founded to survive.
At this time a message arrived from McPherson for Bayley stating that he was on good gold and that Bayley should join him at Nannine, a new field on Annean Station about 500 kilometres northeast of Geraldton. Bayley made his way there as quickly as possible and together with his two mates of the time, found gold, although the results weren’t outstanding. Bayley found gold on an island in Lake Annean, later named Bayley’s Island, and it became one of the richest fields in the district.
It is not clear what Ford was doing while Bayley was at Nannine, but perhaps he and his mate were still caretaking the mine.
Throughout the history of the gold discovery at Coolgardie, Ford has always seemed to be in the background, not that he actually played any lesser part in the proceedings but rather that he was a quiet, retiring type who did not readily respond to publicity. The irony is that Ford was actually the one to discover the gold!
By the time Bayley returned and joined Ford at Southern Cross, he had managed to accumulate some £1,000 for the purchase of horses and equipment. He had also learned a little more about McPherson’s adventures and the type of country he and Ford might have to traverse on their trip. McPherson was emphatic that safe travel eastward from Southern Cross was only possible directly after rain when gnamma holes and wells would be full. Both partners were experienced enough prospectors to heed the good advice.
Bayley and Ford were fully equipped and ready to go however the rains held off, delaying their departure. A prospector named Speakman found gold at Ularring in 1891 to the northeast of town, to which they responded. Although they found a little gold, the find was not startling and in a short while the tremendous shortage of water forced them to fall back on Southern Cross.
In June 1892 rain fell in the Yilgarn District so Bayley and Ford, with 10 packhorses and eight weeks’ supply of food, set off eastwards. The country they travelled over was, and is, a heavy sandplain sparsely timbered with a short scrub gradually turning to eucalypt forest the further eastward you go. The rain ensured an abundance of feed for the horses and in the first weeks, water was fairly readily available especially in the vicinity of the numerous granite outcrops that occurred throughout the plain.
Picking up George Withers’s tracks, they followed these until they came upon a native well at the place later to be known as Coolgardie. There was a spot where Withers had dug a hole and dryblown the wash but whether this was the spot where he had obtained his gold before being speared, they couldn’t tell, though subsequent events led them to think so.
While taking his horse to drink at the native well, Ford specked a half-ounce nugget in the area later to be known as Fly Flat. That set the couple to serious specking and on that same day a total of 80 ounces was found, the largest nugget being about five ounces. This patch was about a kilometre from George Withers’s pothole. They also saw ground that had been pegged in 1888 according to a notice on it but could find no gold there themselves.
Coolgardie today
Bayley and Ford had been there about a month when a party of three white men accompanied by a black arrived and set up camp nearby. Two of these men, Jack Reidy and German Charlie, were known to Ford. The partners by this time had between them close to 300 ounces of gold and had to play it cool for the whole period the visitors remained. One can imagine the relief when the party eventually packed up and moved on. Later, where their horses had been tethered, Ford found several nuggets. Some 10 days later, having lost flour to the wet weather and about 20 pounds of bacon to the dingoes, Bayley and Ford set off to Southern Cross to replenish their supplies.
The partners wasted little time in Southern Cross and set off eastwards as soon as their provisions were ready. They joked to people that they knew, “Yes, we’ve found a little gold, and are going back to see what Jack Reidy is up to!” However, their tale was not swallowed by three young miners just out from England, and obtaining a native guide, Tommy Talbot, Baker and Dick Fosser set out to follow the pair.
The young miners had no trouble following the partners as far as Gnarlbine Rock, a large granite outcrop where there was a good soak of permanent water. While arguing the point about which track to take from the rock, Jack Reidy and his party arrived. They were able to settle the dispute and put the miners on the right trail.
Talbot and party came upon the Coolgardie rockhole and camped nearby. Next morning several horses came to the well to drink and by backtracking them, the miners found Bayley working some alluvial on the area known as Fly Flat. As a result, the flies were not the only thing to distract Bayley and although he was cordial enough to them, the newcomers were not convinced of the truth.
This occurrence is the chapter in the story of the discovery of gold at Coolgardie that has proved to be the most controversial. All those writing of it in the past seem to have been uncertain of just what did happen, and all that can be recorded with any certainty is that there was controversy at the time.
The most popular belief seems to be that after a time, the young miners, having found some gold in the vicinity of a large quartz outcrop, showed their find to Bayley and Ford. It turned out that this was the same ground the partners had previously pegged but which was not yet registered. After some argument with the newcomers, Bayley and Ford helped the trio peg ground adjacent to their own.
The upshot was it was no longer practical to keep the find under wraps. The claim needed to be registered, a reward claim made and protection sought to ensure the safety of the prospectors.
The first shaft at Bayley’s Reward gold mine
On arrival in Southern Cross, Bayley showed 554 ounces of gold to Warden Finnerty before lodging the same in the Commercial Bank, a small iron shanty with a hessian partition separating the office from the living room. In spite of his good intentions, after being lectured by Ford not to do so, Bayley went to Cameron’s Hotel for a drink. The drink loosened his mouth and he couldn’t help himself so told the story. We’ve no way of knowing whether he embellished the yarn which, after all, would well and truly have stood on its own merits, but someone among the crowd is thought to have spiked his drink putting him out of action for some time. He awakened to find his horses gone and some one hundred diggers were already on the track to Coolgardie.
Considerable good did come out of Bayley’s announcement although he would not have appreciated it at the time. For several years the country had been in a depression due to its reliance on the Mother Country and the fact that Britain itself was in a bad way financially. The Bank of England was no longer making loans, many Australian banks were failing and business generally was on the brink of collapse.
Strangely, at the time Bayley’s story broke, in spite of the high employment throughout Western Australia, Southern Cross was in the grip of a miner’s strike. Well, that was the end of the strike but the mine proprietors were no better off because practically every able-bodied man who had a wagon, horse, wheelbarrow or a good pair of legs, was on his way eastward towards Coolgardie.
It was several days before Bayley obtain a horse and then only because his old acquaintance, McPherson, turned up to sell him one. Now mounted, he set off posthaste to guide Warden Finnerty to the new find.
Meanwhile, Ford had his own problems at Coolgardie. Not only did he continually chase off the three young miners from the lease but when the first of those in the rush arrived, he had to stand guard with a gun in each hand to ensure they kept their distance – an all but impossible task for a man on his own. No doubt he was glad to see Bayley and the Warden when they finally arrived. In spite of his guard duty, Ford had not been idle. In one pothole alone he had found nuggets weighing 200, 150 and 50 ounces only three yards from the reef! Such was the richness of the find.
The outcrop was described as being 36 feet in length, six feet wide, and 12 feet in height and was not so much rock containing gold but gold holding together rock! Ford’s own words are probably worth quoting: “...and I started to break into that reef. I had a gad and hammered it in, but when ItriedtogetitoutIcouldnotasI had driven it into solid gold.”
In March 1893, Bayley and Ford sold their claim to a company for £6,000 and a sixth interest in the mine, and Bayley, having returned to Victoria, took up land near Avenel and lived, for a very short while, in prosperous circumstances. Though
an outwardly strong, athletic man, he fell into ill health, possibly on account of the privations he had suffered while a prospector, and died at Avenel, of hepatitis and haematemesis, on 29th October, 1896. He was 31 years old and left a widow but no children. His estate was valued at more than £28,000.
Ford moved to Sydney and in 1904 built a handsome sandstone Federation house called ‘Wyckliffe’ in the suburb of Chatswood. Ford and his wife had a baby girl in 1906; a son followed not long after. Ford lived quietly at ‘Wyckliffe’ until his death, in 1932, at the age of 80.
Public meeting in Bayley Street, Coolgardie, in 1894. By this time both Bayley and Ford had sold up and moved back east