Bolton, Samantha (Archaeology, University of Western Australia)

The region west of colonial settlement of the Swan River in Western Australia was ‘opened up’ for Europeans from the 1860s, with the discovery of Aboriginal wells by explorers such as Hunt. In the 1890s, the gold rush brought thousands of people to the area in search of their fortune. Newly established towns, such as Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, suffered from a lack of water. As a response to this, the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, a water pipeline, was built along the 560km from Mundaring Weir, just east of Perth, to Kalgoorlie. Settlement sites grew along this corridor as various components of infrastructure, such as the Hunt’s Wells (1864-66), a telegraph line (1891), a railway line (1894), and the pipeline (1897-1903) were built. The National Trust of Australia (WA) is currently undertaking a major heritage project of the pipeline, including interpretation and conservation of sites. What evidence is there for the different groups living and working along the corridor between Mundaring and Kalgoorlie, and what does this evidence tell us about life along the corridor? Much of the archaeological evidence is on the surface, therefore using methods developed to record post-European surface artefacts, the preliminary results of the archaeological study of the area are presented, including a spatial analysis of the sites and the development of a typology of cans that were used in the area. This PhD project is funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, in conjunction with the National Trust (WA).

file size: 1.84 mb

pdf file size: 1.24 mb