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everywhere, old singlets and trousers were the order of their dress. The hopeless look of
everything would have discouraged the stoutest heart. However, we got hold of a carpenter to
put up frames for our tents, and after a week of difficulty, we began our work.'
It was known as the Government Hospital, and for a time it was the only hospital in an area
caring for some 20,000 men. For a time it was a place where men were taken to die instead of
to be cured.
The railway construction camps were also riddled with fever. Three nurses came from the
Methodist Mission in Perth to the railway camp at Woolgangie early in 1896; there was no
doctor. Sister Gertrude wrote: 'My first tent-hospital patient was a wee laddie... I found the boy
lying on a few old rugs and chaff bags under the counter of a lemon-squash shop. There was no
ventilation and
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the boy was delirious. His temperature was 103.6 degrees. I gave him medicine and made him
as comfortable as possible.' She nursed him in a bed in her own tent, and he survived.
Another arrival at this time was the daughter of a brewery worker, who, quoted in Nothing to
Spare by Jan Carter, recalled her life as a child living at Boulder, where she was taken from
Adelaide, via Esperance, in 1897 when she was four.
'When we went to the gold fields, there was no water. We used to have to buy water,
condensed water, 2s6d a kerosene tin. And when you bought it, it was hot. We always had
water to drink, but I don't remember too many baths. The tub was put in the bedroom and we
were all given a bath out of the same water. At school, there was a bucket of water for us to
have a drink out of. In the winter time, the rains filled great tanks in the back yard, and mother
had a beautiful vegetable garden. My sister and I had to go into the bush to get water from a
soak of some kind, and we'd bring the water home in tubs... When I was 14 [in 1907], my
sister Ida and Mum left the gold fields and came to Perth. Mum wanted to get away from the
mines, so that my brothers didn't go to work in the mines. She was fearful of that - men were
getting killed like flies down the mines. Oh, it was crude! All at once there'd be a whistle blown
and you'd know there was an accident. A lot of men were killed in the mines, and besides that
they were getting miners' silicosis... I got a job in a boarding-house in Boulder as a kitchen
maid... I used to wash up the dishes, peel the potatoes, scrub the floor. I was busy - not too
busy - but I enjoyed it there. There were boarding-houses all over the place, all sorts of women
running them."
The railway line had reached Coolgardie in March 1896 and came to Kalgoorlie in September.
Over 3,000 people attended the official opening ceremony in Kalgoorlie, which was performed
by the Governor, Sir Gerard Smith, and followed by a banquet (for an elite 260) in the Miners'
Institute. Other amenities were installed thereafter: a sanitary system, the hospital and a fire
brigade. The latter was much needed, as major fires were a feature of those days: most of
Kalgoorlie was burnt down and rebuilt before the Great War.
The railway line was extended to Kanowna in 1898 and north to Leonora in 1903. A loop line
was constructed around Boulder in 1902. The Gold Rush County tourist brochure says: 'Before
the railway arrived everything was expensive: cake was 2s a Ib, milk (if available) 1s a pint,
eggs 5d each, beer 3s a bottle, whisky 12/6, champagne 25s, water 6d - 4/6 a gallon... But
gold was plentiful. Through all the gold-rush years the price of gold was about £4 an ounce, and
most finds were giving the prospectors at least one ounce a day.'
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