The discovery of gold at Coolgardie swelled the colony’s population from forty thousand to eight hundred thousand and attracted a lot of investment.
At federation, the goldfields wanted to be their own state.
Coolgardie’s population was at sixteen thousand at one stage, but ten years later it was four hundred as the golden mile at Boulder was attracting the workers away.
The mines used a lot of wood. The “wood lines” were 100’s of miles of rail lines throughout the bush used to bring the wood to the mining centres. The native slow growing timber was excellent for using to shore up inside the mine shafts. The third grade timber was used to fire the boilers used to run the mining equipment such as crushers and the winders.
We visited Warden Finerty’s Residence. He was the preeminent representive of the colonial government for many years, and acted as mining registrar and magistrate.
At the Coolgardie cemetery we heard many interesting stories of early goldfields life and saw the grave of Earnest Giles - the explorer.