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This website is dedicated to the memory of my two dear friends Sandy Duncan and Shyama Peebles who both passed away in 2012.
Miscellaneous > But there is nothing there now
But there is nothing there now....
It is so disappointing when you travel out to where there used to be a Goldrush Town and
there is nothing left
no sign of the vibrant old town
perhaps a small pile of
old bricks or the odd hole in the ground that would have been the pub cellar
But
nothing now!!
In the early days townships sprung up wherever a reasonable quantity of gold was found, if
a mine was started it wasnt long before a hotel and houses where built.
Most houses were built of a bush timber frame with canvas wall. Proper windows and doors
were fitted and with white limewashed canvas, from a distance or in a photo they look like
substantial structures. The whitewash on the canvas made the canvas rigid and went some
way to stop the winds, hot and cold, blowing through the fabric. On the inside people
pasted newspapers or paper pictures and later as old linoleum was found that was tacked on
the inside. The roof, if you could find some, was recycled corrugated iron and the floor
was just dirt. Woman would keep sprinkling it with water to compact it or if they could
they would get termite mounds, crush them up then sprinkle water and pound them down so a
flat surface could be achieved.
All building materials had to be transported a great distance by camel
or wagon so they were very expensive. When the gold cut out or the mine closed every scrap
was dismantled and moved to the next show and re-erected. When Mt Margaret townsite
started to go down the owner of the hotel dismantled his 2 storey brick hotel, brick by
brick, and moved the whole lot to the Mt Morgans townsite, and rebuilt it - the whole
process was completed in 5 months, which was no mean feat. That hotel was eventually
pulled down in the 1950s.
Even today when renovating an old house in Kalgoorlie or Boulder, stripping the wall linings back you can still find old lino and original bits of old canvas. Another cheap wall lining material was cyanide drums - cut and flattened out they made good walls and fences.
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