Dick Greaves and the dawn of the Eastern Goldfields

Adapted from Truth (Perth), 6th of May, 1916

Some early memories of the late Dick Greaves, the pioneer prospector who blazed the track to the Eastern Goldfields, and who recently died at his residence in Roe Street, Perth, will make interesting reading for goldfields people. The memoirs are compiled from documents and letters in the possession of the writer, added to which memory plays a part. Dick Greaves’s father, who was a miner, arrived in South Australia in 1846, and Dick was born in 1850 on the banks of the Yarra, near Flinders Street, Melbourne, two years before gold was found in that State, and his father was on the first rushes at Clunes, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Bendigo, Eaglehawk, etc. At the latter place the family made their home, where a second daughter was born.

For 17 years or more Dick’s parents travelled from rush to rush and as soon as Dick was old enough and strong enough to make himself useful, he followed his parents in the quest for the golden god, and saw much of the auriferous fields, including Eaglehawk, from whence they journeyed to Whipstick, Wild Duck, McIvor Creek, Rushworth, and Spring Creek.

Dick’s dad did well on the last-named field, and the lucky digger made up his mind to give up the hard life and settle down in comfort. There was now a family of seven – five girls and two boys – each of whom was born in a tent, and the family went to Williamstown, with the ultimate intention of travelling to Warwick, England, which was the father’s home originally, and where Dick’s grandfather resided. This, however, was not to be, for the head of the family made his mind to go to the Hokitiki rush in New Zealand, in company with the late Dicky Seddon, by the S.S. Gottinberg, in 1866. In that same year the miner contracted a cold in the loins and went back to Williamstown, Victoria, where he died at the early age of 39, his wife, with a broken heart, following him to the last resting place nine months later, at which time she, also, was 39 years of age.

Dick Greaves, on the death of his father, was taken in hand by a Welshman named Hopkins. Dick, who was then 17 years of age, was a big, strong lad, and the contractor gave him a job as hod-carrier, but he afterwards took to the plastering trade and, being always used to hard work, got on well till the building business slumped in Victoria in the early seventies.

In 1874 Greaves was induced to join the Victorian police force in which position he remained only 14 months, during which time he received the only education he ever had, there being few schools in those days, the nearest one from Dick’s home being at Bendigo, a distance of 80 miles.

After resigning from the police, Dick went to Sydney, and again took to plastering, and then blossomed as a contractor, though always imbued with the glorious glamour of the quest of the golden god, and he could not resist two calls from the New South Wales goldfields, wending his way to a rush at Mullin’s Creek, outside Orange, and also making to the Temora rush and around Blayney.

In 1877 Greaves married, and in the same year joined the volunteer artillery, and was promoted to sergeant. For several years he was the crack shot of the regiment, but in 1885 he got word from a man named Inskip that plasterers were in demand for work at the banks in Perth and Geraldton.

Acting on this information, Greaves sold his house and went to Melbourne to catch a boat for Western Australia. The time, Dick said, was the year before Kimberley was found by Hall and Slattery.

He made up his mind to see if gold did exist in this part of Australia, and the first man he met who could give him any information on the subject was the late William Lawrence, a boat-builder, who, on the first day of Greaves’s arrival in WA, took the latter to his home in Mile Street, where the gold-seeker was considerably surprised by the sight of a number of mineral specimens, including mica in all sorts of forms, galena, asbestos, talc, pyrites, lead, ironstone, and much quartz of varied colours. One piece of ironstone, about the size of a brick, particularly caught Dick’s attention, as he detected coarse gold in the specimen, though the boat-builder said it was copper, and that Dick was quite welcome to it if it was of any use to him.

This was the foundation stone of rich gold discoveries, and the gift eventually led to the dawn of the Eastern Goldfields. Further inquiries led Lawrence to state that the stone was brought into Perth by a shepherd named Beare, and was left in a Mr Habgood’s office, where it was kicked about as a door-weight until it was secured by the boat-builder as a specimen of iron and copper ore.

Greaves dollied the stone and the gold content realised six pounds and eight shillings though for obvious reasons Dick did not deem it advisable to divulge that result. Beare, the shepherd, had informed people that there were tons and tons of the same class of stone scattered over a wide area where he found the specimen.

Greaves, in quest of the El Dorado, made his way to Wongong (now known as Armadale), and prospected along the Darling Ranges, but could find no stone resembling that which he was seeking, though the search was continued with indefatigable zeal, and every place where the shepherd had been, Greaves visited in turn.

Then a man nicknamed Moondyne Joe, otherwise John Johns, induced the gold-seeker to prospect a creek near Bailup, on the way to Newcastle, though there, also, it proved a fruitless search. Other localities were equally disappointing, and in November, 1885, Greaves went to Geraldton to plaster the Union Bank.

Later Lawrence and Greaves met a Mr Watson, who had been associated with Edmund Hammond Hargraves, the former (Watson) giving the information that Hargraves, so far as gold deposits were concerned, had condemned WA up hill and down dale. However, Watson volunteered the statement that the shepherd Beare was out at Gollaway some years previously, and this led to Greaves visiting and prospecting the back flats of the Chapman River and Gollaway country, though he was no more successful there than he had been at other places, not a trace of gold being revealed.

Returning to Perth in 1886, and backed up with the advice of Lawrence and information received by the boatbuilder, Greaves prospected about Bindoon, Gingin, Cardup and then on to the Bannester River, Williams River, and Arthur River, which were all places where Beare had shepherded his flocks. During these many wild golden goose chases, Dick made the acquaintance of numerous farmers and sandalwood cutters, a few of whom knew something about gold, while others who volunteered information, knew little or nothing of the vagaries of gold deposits. Consequently, Greaves visited many places in vain.

Late one night Lawrence went to the house where Greaves, who had returned to Perth, was living, and informed Dick that at last he had supposedly learned the exact location where the golden “doorweight” specimen had been found by the shepherd and he wanted the prospector to set off straight away on another search for the elusive ore; but at this time Greaves had a plastering contract at the Governor Broome Hotel, which had to be completed by a certain date, and he could not go at once, so he persuaded a man named Robert Kirkman (also Kirkham), in company with Ted Payne (Dick’s old mate), to go out on the hunt for gold.

They went in the direction of Mishon, Victoria Plains district, and in about a fortnight’s time returned with quartz showing free gold, which they found on Glover’s run.

Greaves, when shown the specimens, was working outside the Governor Broome Hotel on the cement columns, and the sight of the precious metal gave him another severe attack of gold fever, the “metalitis” affliction being so strong that he dropped his tools and declared there was no more plastering for him, as he was going to make a name for himself as well as for Western Australia. This pronouncement was hailed with keen delight by old-man Lawrence, who had great faith in Dick’s ability as a prospector.

The party was equipped and went out to where Payne had found the specimen and prospected the locality for several days, though not another colour could be found. They then chummed in with the Well brothers and found them right good fellows, too, as they showed them all the likely-looking places they knew of. By what they thought was the best of luck, they met a shepherd named Burns, or Bunes, who had known Beare very well, and they were put on to the run where the latter had shepherded his sheep for years.

Bindoon and Gingin were again prospected, including intervening country, but the party returned to Perth with barren results. Here Lawrence had continued inquiries, and he informed the party that there was another place for them to go to – Charlie Glass’s station – where a small speck of gold, probably carried by an emu, had been found on top of a granite outcrop. They were so anxious to find out where Beare’s stone came from that they did not care where the quest led them, though here again there was little or no luck.

After Greaves and Payne found the Yilgarn in 1887, they returned to Perth for a few days, where they equipped in good style, having six well-laden pack horses, and two for riding, and they made through Wongan Hills to the Hampton Plains, Lawrence having arranged every detail for an eight months trip. Unfortunately, Greaves was taken with a serious illness, referring to which he said in a recent letter to a goldfields friend: “As you know, I took ill at the Wongan, and was bedridden for two years; and, after arriving in Perth with £589, came out of the Melbourne Hospital £40 in debt. After many operations my muscles were so weak that I had to be held together for three years with tightlylaced and specially-made stays and could not work. I have still great faith that there are tons and tons of gold in WA which may be revealed if well-equipped parties get out into the mulga during a wet winter season.”

The writer of these reminiscences had the pleasure of drinking a cup of tea in company with Greaves a few days before he departed from this troubled world on his last prospecting trip to the Golden City of Peace and Plenty, and during that all too brief visit, Dick soliloquised on times gone by.

“It was a thousand pities,” he mused, “that I was taken ill at the very moment when success seemed so near. I got hydatids, and I know where I got them; it was at Ennuin (Yilgarn), where the claypan from which we got our water was full of dead kangaroos. We had suffered terrible from thirst, and when we came to the water we were so parched that we drank the filth without even waiting to strain it through a cloth – madness of course, but there is no worse or severe temporary insanity than that occasioned by want of water.

“Of course, we cleared the filth out later on, there being two or three tons of all sorts of unwholesome stuff. There was another claypan seven miles south of the one I just mentioned, and when we camped at that spot, we had to empty an over-ripe emu out of the hole. That same evening we had a visit from Brook Evans, who heralded a great thunderstorm, which filled to overflowing all the rockholes and claypans for miles around, and was, no doubt, welcomed when the rush set in after Harry Anstey blabbed the news of the gold find to the people and press of Perth.

“The people who got the reward had the gold found for them, and I (Dick Greaves) and my mate (Ted Payne), the pioneers of the Eastern fields, never got enough out of the find to buy a suit of clothes.”

Greaves was in a reminiscent mood, and referred to the fact that Harry Gregory, during his early term of office at Minister for Mines, when a commission or committee was appointed to inquire into the old prospector’s claim for a Government reward for finding the Yilgarn, had mentioned that he (Dick) was getting 30 shillings a week with the prospecting party.

“That is true enough,” remarked Dick, “but the Minister forgot to mention, or did not know, that I threw up a job worth 30 shillings a day when I went in search and found the field which ultimately led to Tom Riseley’s discovery of Southern Cross, and which pioneered the rush to Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, and other fields too numerous to mention.”

Before Greaves and Payne found the Yilgarn there was little beyond sandalwood and kangaroo skins in commercial circles, and there is not the slightest doubt that these two pioneers did all the hard work and suffered privations for the alleged leader of the party, Harry Anstey, who always made for civilisation when there was an indication of the water becoming soup-like.

Greaves and Payne were the only prospectors east of Northam till their find was rushed – only two men, and how many are there today?

During the search for the place from whence Beare’s stone came. Greaves went over the country from Toodyay to Victoria Plains, Northam, York, Beverley, Mount Churchman, Lake Moore, Ningan, Yalgoo, Mullewa, Gullewa, Peterswongie, White Hills, and between 1885-96, including the foregoing, he visited country from Southern Cross to Lake Gulis, Menzies to the White Feather, and from Londonderry to the White Feather.

Greaves must have been a man of wonderful vitality and iron constitution, for he underwent no less than 21 serious surgical operations, which were rendered necessary chiefly to hydatids on the liver. When Dick Greaves passed away peacefully in his sleep, we lost one of the most remarkable men of this State, and his memory should live in history whenever the gold discoveries of Australia are mentioned. Good old Dick, splendid old Dick! Generous almost to fault, we mourn for him as for a brother, and when shall we meet his like again.

NOTE: Dick Greaves died on Friday the 17th of March, 1916. To say that he didn’t accumulate much of the precious metal during his lifetime is an understatement. Up until his death at the age of 66, he held the post of caretaker of Perth’s James Street School, where he was a great favourite with both the teachers and the children.

Edward (Ted) Payne fared no better. Ted died at the age of 49 in Geraldton Hospital on the 7th of April, 1912, and is buried in the old Geraldton Cemetery. He had little more than the shirt on his back when he died and his obituary simply described him as “one of the founders of Paynesville, on the Murchison.”