Greetings fellow Foxies
​I was recently given permission to photograph this lovely old house just west of Williams. Situated on fertile soil by the Williams River, it is on one of the earliest farms that was initially allocated to J. McDermott in 1866.
Judging by the interior and brickwork, I think that this house was built in the 1920’s as a 2 room place with an extra brick room added later. No doubt as the family enlarged or became more prosperous, an asbestos addition containing bathroom, toilet, and extra bedroom was added. Unfortunately after it became vacant, thieves stripped a lot of the interior, but enough remains to give an insight of life in those times. Like many vacant dwellings, it is surrounded by fascinating vehicles and pieces of machinery from the early days. Worksafe would have had a coronary if it was in existence then.
It is on private land and is not available to the public.
If you see someone wandering around the house, it is probably me searching for car keys that I lost in knee deep pasture in October.
 
See the images on this Google Photo album
​photos.app.goo.gl/g5P9dRfEocMjNtYR7

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
                                    
‘Minabbie’ was the name of the farm occupied by William Lefevre Graham and his descendants. William was a noted local farmer whose farming fortunes waxed and waned. His original block adjacent to Geeralying reserve contained the Geeralying School. According to his grandson Stuart, the Narrogin-Collie railway line was built through the orchard next to the house prompting William to rebuild further south.
The image below shows William’s permanent Noongar farm worker Ben and his diminutive wife (about 4 ft 6 inches tall) at the first Minabbie with William and Stanyford Cowcher in the background. At this time and earlier, Noongar workers were highly valued by settlers.

 Extensive public activities took a toll on Williams’s farm income and he shifted homes three more times in the Geeralying area (including Rocky Crossing). His extensive farm holdings were so heavily mortgaged that they were sold after his death. His son Leo purchased a part of the farm that is the present ‘Minabbie’.
This edition shows two ruined Graham houses on the Narrogin property.
A standing clapboard and iron house built in 1927 was closer to the road, before being shifted to its present location and refurbished for Noongar shearers before becoming vacant. The first shearers were Ugles, then Eric Krakouer.
The interior is a living history of graffiti that I hope is preserved. No doubt some locals would recognise their work.
In 1945 Leo Graham had a house transported from Bullfinch and reassembled on its present site. Bullfinch is a deserted spot North West of Southern Cross that was once a thriving town associated with a gold mine. When the mine closed, Bullfinch houses were relocated to many areas in the agricultural area.
I also found the cow shed. Apparently, Leo was putting the cow in the shed when he was nearly struck by lightning. He eventually found his way back home dazed and glowing, and took several days to recover.
 
The Google Photo album shows the remains of both houses.
See the images on
https://photos.app.goo.gl/pcfeBTGKJLHiMt9F9
​

Greetings fellow Foxies,
 I was amazed to learn that from 1850 until World War I, German settlers and their descendants comprised the largest non-British or Irish group of Europeans in Australia. Locally this is evident in family names like Blythe, Braunholz, Fisher, Gath, Modra, Muller, Pustkuchen, and Wiese. Many arrived from South Australia and Victoria in the early twentieth century.
 Why Germans, and why here? A Google search revealed the following (over) simplified sequence of events that attracted these people to our district.

• Most German families came from the nation-state of Prussia with groups migrating to South Australia and Victoria beginning in 1838. Reasons include economic dislocation following the Napoleonic War, religious persecution, pressure to enlist in the Prussian army, and a British cash bounty to attract vineyard workers to Australia.
• A world depression in 1894, and a series of dry seasons called the Millennium Drought caused local financial hardship in eastern Australia.
• Paddy Hannan discovered gold at Kalgoorlie in 1894, and 15 years later the WA government created an agricultural bank to provide loans in order to attract colonists that would clear and farm large tracts of land that were opened up by railway lines.

 
Many of these people thrived and became good and popular citizens until The First World War.
Did you know that the Narrogin district had the highest army enlistment rate in the entire British Empire? (“Memorial 1 Narrogin and world War 1” by Maurie White. Editorial comment: this should be required reading, hopefully to avoid politicians repeatedly sending our youth to fight other countries’ wars!). The resulting lack of manpower to work the land, marry local girls, and the suffering of the survivors and there families set this district back for a generation. 
during the war, men were hounded to enlist. Virulent anti-German sentiment was fostered by war fever, terrible Australian casualties and propaganda.
Thankfully this declined after the war.

The history of the Braunholtz family is recorded in “Other Fortunate Lives” Editors Hazel Green and Elizabeth Heffernan 2008. Page 39.
I was shown the ruins of the homestead, adjacent to Wickepin Springs. The Braunholz family farmed in conjunction with the Irgens family (Norwegian). Malcolm Gath remembers Carl Braunholz as being very handy with machinery, which is evident in the wide array of machine parts present.
The Google Photo album shows the remains of both houses (I think) and associated sheds and bits and pieces.
See the images on
photos.app.goo.gl/egQaRiTH8kyk395v5

​Trecarne Farm was initiated by Charles Henry Hoffman who was born in Bonn Germany in1863. In 1904 he purchased a 500 acre bush block from the family of his wife (Anne May Oliver) at 2/6 an acre. As Charles had been a greengrocer in Germany, the family started to grow vegetables while the land was being cleared. The market garden remained their chief livelihood, and son, Bill was well known in Narrogin for his fine quality fresh vegetables. The farm remained in the Hoffman family until the 1990’s.
The house is built in 1906 from mud bricks with bush timber poles in the roof. Many later additions and repairs followed and it was intact when listed in the Municipal Heritage Inventory in 1995.
Further information can be found in ‘Wolwolling’ Reflections by Gwen Warren and ‘The Way Through’ by Ossie Pustkuchen.
 
For a photo tour of this site see Google Photo images on https://photos.app.goo.gl/KgNsZZP5NAnUhc8k9
Click first image to open and then go forward/backward 

  Hello fellow Foxies,Aldinga is a historic farm that is located in the intersection of the Cuballing, Pingelly, and Wickepin shires. Due to the location, information about the farm and its owners is fragmented.
The property was named by John and Margaret McBurney who travelled across from Aldinga South Australia in 1902. They leased land from a Mr (John?) Snow that may have been Aldinga. Assuming that this property is the present Aldinga farm, they established a house and for a while, a little retail store on the farm and supplied canned food, tobacco and tools of trade to sandalwood cutters, teamsters, roo hunters, surveying teams and Noongars.
In 1905 the Aldinga school was established on a reserve over the road. In 1928 the named was changed to Stratherne school that operated until 1936. Today all that remains is a plaque and a mound with a few jonquilsThe original house has been flattened and a fine new one built that is now also empty. Keith McBurney told me that the present car port covers the old Stratherne telephone exchange that even had a cellar.
The house and shed area has a crumbling splendour with a particularly fine granite stone shed.
For a photo tour of this site see Google Photo images on https://photos.app.goo.gl/qev2q4RMKLiBRgbP6

 John’s son Amos built a separate fine house further east at the base of Woodebulling Hill. An exceptionally good spring in the hill provided an abundant water supply that is evident by the numerous water tanks around the house.
The hill is impressive with some interesting geology for people like me. The granite is fractured and intruded by veins and a huge east-west dolerite dyke that has weathered to a line of fertile red brown loam soil that has been cleared to make a “long” paddock. Springs frequently occur from water flowing through fractured granite being brought to the surface by impervious dolerite.  The house was relatively intact until relatively recently, but termites and the wind have reduced it to a shell. Nearby is another picturesque ruin of a shed complex, that indicates that this is was once the site of an earlier farm.
John Forest walked through this area. The survey team would place a survey peg at the camp site at the end of each day. Amos found one and it is being held today by Bill Butler.
 
For a photo tour of this site see Google Photo images on https://photos.app.goo.gl/kupPuzDZvEWBGVLN6

Greetings fellow Foxies,
This picturesque ruin can be seen from the road on private property upslope of the creek containing Boondyne Spring (one of the earliest known springs east of Narrogin). In Ossie Pustkuchen’s book “The Way Through’, Michael Brown (“the father of Narrogin”) purchased a 4,000 acre (1600 ha) property Boondyne around 1890 to add to his extensive land empire. The 1894 lithograph shows it as Boundyne spring, and the Boundain railway siding was apparently named after the spring/farm.
I’m not sure who built the house. There is an intriguing mention of a shepherd Thos. Pennyfather at the spring in 1885, which predates the house, and may account for a quaint one-room building at the back. Neither Michael Brown nor his son Jack (who farmed the property) lived there. I suspect it was built for the next owners, the Leyden brothers.
The main house is a beautiful three-bedroom granite and brick place that would have been a fine house in its heyday. Wooden floors have mainly rotted away, but most walls are still intact and retain traces of attractive pastel kalsomine colours. The soil under the floorboards had an interesting layer of fossilised rat poo

On one side is a large rock-lined well, and downslope are ancient survivors of an extensive orchard.
At the rear is a quaint, low, partially-collapsed, one- room, granite block structure. The carefully built windows lead me to think that it was a cottage, but the end that may have contained a fireplace has collapsed.
About 200 metres away is the remains of a very early shearing/ machinery shed built from forked wandoo log uprights  supporting long log rafters that are wired on without nails.

Another building further along is a mystery. A granite central room that still has its roof has no windows and a door normally found on a barn. Wood and corrugated iron extensions are intriguing.
On the north side a cement floored area contain signs of more recent occupation by a rather versatile person. Some innovations include a bicycle wheel TV antenna and a shower inside a corrugated iron water tank.
The western annexe has a raised area used as a sheep pen that led to a hole in the wall to an open cement floored area facing south. Traces of a long bench make me think that it may have been used for butchering.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
This unassuming two room mud and granite cottage has a fascinating but sad history. The present owners call it “Lovers Cottage” after a couple who never occupied it together.
 
Alfie Knowles was born in Southampton England in 1895. He bought Location 5420 from farmer John Nowke. Alfie was a fine figure of a man (5 foot 4 inches tall just like me!).  He enlisted in the Australian army in 1916, and was awarded the Military Medal, and Medaille D’Honneur in France in 1918. Here is an extract from his army records in the National Archives of Australia.
29th Battalion AIF
8391 Pte William Robinson
4465 Pte A. Knowles
During the attack East of Villiers Brettonneux near Amiens, on the morning of 8th August 1918, an enemy strongpoint was encountered, and the advance was held up. These two men on their own initiative, rushed forward with their Lewis Gun, opened fire and inflicted heavy casualties, causing the garrison of 20 to surrender. Their action enabled the advance to continue.

Alfie was hospitalised in England with Trench Foot and met a lady who became his fiancé. He was discharged on 4th November 1919, returned to the farm and built the cottage. Tragically he was kicked by a horse on 7th April 1921, and died from a ruptured spleen. His fiancé was on a ship from England to Australia, at this time and did not learn of his death until she arrived at Cuballing. The poor woman stayed in Cuballing for some months before returning home.
 The government eventually sent Alfie’s medals to his mother in the Isle of Wight in 1924. Many years later a letter was sent to the Postmaster: Cuballing Western Australia by a person who found his military medal on an Isle of Wight beach.
Rabbi trapper Danny Townsend lived in the cottage during the Second World War, but apart from that it remained as a memento of a remarkable story. It is on private land and is not available for viewing.
To their credit, the existing owners have reroofed the cottage so that it will still be standing for another 100 years.
For a visual exploration of the cottage ctrl+ click  https://photos.app.goo.gl/FkFWS49upWTKX2Zg2

Greetings fellow Foxies,
 The name refers to the evocative ruin on the hill to the left of the Great Southern Highway just before the Chuggamunning Road turnoff, but there are a range of names relating to the property. The earliest lithograph I could find shows a Jugominning Spring, and Ossie Pustkuchen refers to Shuggamony Spring, and the infamous hill that tested locomotives is Chuggamunning Hill.
Elijah Quartermaine junior sailed out from England with his family in 1838, and received title to a plot of land containing Chuggamunning spring. His house (Chuggamunny) was built on the hill about 200 metres upslope from the spring, and the family shepherded sheep on surrounding land. In 1866, two escaped convicts surprised them one night and stole a double barrelled gun, a revolver, ammunition and rations, and left them unharmed.
In 1868, the house and property was sold to William Farrah Lukin, a remarkable district pioneer. William had extensive sheep leases with JH Monger and William Shaddick around Narrogin out to Toolibin. A restless and ambitious man, he took up a pastoral lease east of Derby that ended disastrously when a flood killed all 14,000 of his sheep. He then went to the Klondyke Goldfields in the Yukon in hope of regaining his fortune and disappeared from history (possibly killed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake).
A neighbour James Doust leased the property and moved into the house in the 1880’s.
James and wife Elizabeth built a mud-batt building to the north of their house that Elizabeth ran as a boarding house for railway workers, farm hands and teachers from the Cuballing School. Only a few foundation walls remain, which indicate that the 5 bedrooms were tiny. The house looks much larger in the historic images supplied by the Narrogin Library, so I suspect that other rooms had a dirt floor.
There are rumours of much rum drinking and wild gambling at the boarding house. Elizabeth was a kindly soul and also the local midwife. I wonder how the Doust household coped with rowdy dissolute behaviour less than 20 metres away from their house.
There are even rumours of a ghost but hooooo knows
The Google Photo album of old and new images shows the stone house’s deterioration. The ancient York gum by the house has a huge split in its trunk with one half threatening to complete the destruction.

See the images on https://photos.app.goo.gl/UqDi87SutkeDFuHa6
References
'The Way Through: The Story of Narrogin' O.E Pustkuchen
'Numbat Country: The Story of the shire of Cuballing from Earliest Times until 1997' E. Roots.