Early Town Life

Woman outside her house which is made of corrugated iron ca early 1900s. Courtesy Outback Family History.

Woman and family outside her house made of corrugated iron, ca early 1900s, courtesy of Outback Family History.

The newly gazetted goldfields towns exploded into life as lively, cosmopolitan places to live. May Vivienne, 'a lady explorer' who visited the fields in 1899, described Kalgoorlie's busy main street.

I sat on the Palace Hotel balcony in Hannan Street one afternoon and watched the crowd passing up and down; I was surprised to see the women so richly dressed … In a very short time electric tramways will be running, and extensive swimming baths are now being built. There are many good churches … Goldfields places are usually looked on as somewhat lawless. I can assure my readers, however, that those in Western Australia are an exception. [1]

Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Coolgardie by the turn of the century met people's expectations of settled urban life although, until the completion of the Goldfields Water Supply in 1903, water's scarcity was a major impediment to health and enjoyment. And dust storms quickly became a grim part of life as mine furnaces consumed the surrounding gimlet (Eucalyptus salubris) and salmon gum (Eucalyptus salmonophloia) forests, and wind erosion took hold.

The goldfields' elite ladies shopped, managed the servants, paid social visits and entertained were indeed well dressed. Some of them, such as the wife the Great Boulder's manager, Mrs Kate Hamilton, became leaders of church and welfare activism. Maude Wordsworth James made beautiful 'Coo-ee' jewellery. Others simply enjoyed a leisurely life. For wives with little or no money, however, life was a day-by-day struggle and their dresses were certainly not 'rich'. And not all women found the new environment pleasant or even tolerable. Departures from the fields, depression, even suicides, were also part of goldfields' women's lives.

In 1903, the year of peak gold production during the first gold boom, Kalgoorlie-Boulder townships together had a settler population of 12,453, of whom 44% were women. Many more people lived in the great number of mining settlements in near proximity to the Golden Mile. Most of these settlers had come from the eastern colonies, especially Victoria and South Australia, to escape the economic depression and in hope of better luck. Many came from mining communities and knew what to expect although very few had experienced anything like the eastern goldfields' summer heat and dust storms. Wives from wealthy families escaped to the coast but most women had no choice but to stay and make the best of it.

Most women worked hard. They maintained homes in often 'rudimentary' conditions. Many miners' wives took in laundry, assuring themselves that it was just 'till we got on our feet again'. [2] Some provided meals as well. Women's work sustained the operation of the towns' many hotels and boarding houses. May Vivienne reported that in 1899 'the majority of the men camp and cook for themselves, but some of them merely sleep in their tents and take their meals at the … [boarding] houses, usually looked after by two or three women, who do the mending and washing required'. [3] Those women who lost husbands re-married quickly out of economic necessity.

Women, both married and single, also worked in shops of all kinds, offered hairdressing and dressmaking services and staffed tearooms; at the turn of the century they began to be employed in offices. Churches and welfare organisations ran on women's voluntary work.

All this women's work sustained Kalgoorlie-Boulder as surely as the labour of men.

Women's Stories

Read more about women from Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the Australian Women's Register.

Images

Title
Coo-ee brooch by Maude Wordsworth James
Type
Image
Source
Dorothy Erickson

Details

Title
Crowds at the races, Kalgoorlie
Type
Image
Date
c. 1925 - c. 1930
Control
283115PD
Source
State Library of Western Australia

Details

Title
Family photograph
Type
Image
Source
Criena Fitzgerald

Details

Title
Nancy Manners with her children Ron and Frances
Type
Image
Date
1940
Source
Ron Manners

Details

Title
Woman and family outside a house made of corrugated iron, ca early 1900s
Type
Image
Source
Outback Family History

Details

Title
Woman on a camel
Type
Image
Source
Outback Family History

Details

Title
Women and girls at the Coolgardie Baths
Type
Image
Date
1906
Control
006793d
Source
State Library of Western Australia

Details

Notes

    1. May Vivienne, Travels in Western Australia, first published 1901, Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, pp. 121-22. Return to text
    2. Jocelyn Treasure, 'Document: Deborah Watt's Narrative', 1897-1914', Studies in Western Australian History, vol. 7, 1983, p. 98. Return to text
    3. Vivienne, Travels in Western Australia, p. 127. Return to text