Curious features of the Bain brothers is that they were all lifelong bachelors, and all died at the age of 72.
I could find few references to them in local history books. Their estate (four blocks of land – about five million dollars was left to the Dumbleyung shire and the Dumbleyung Mens Shed. I guess there are plaques around Dumbleyung installed by grateful recipients.
 
For a visual exploration of the houses and shearing shed see this   Google Photo album
Click individual images for information

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
                                    
This fascinating glimpse into the past near Wedin siding was part of a 600 or 700 acre new land property belonging to Jens Peter Jensen who was born into a farming/fishing family in Vaby by Steze on the island of Moen, Denmark. Unfortunately he suffered from seasickness and immigrated to Western Australia for a new life in 1905.
In 1908, he took up a farm in Dorakin, married Dorothy Roberts in 1914 and they brought up six children.
After Dorothy’s death, Peter married Elsie May Richardson in 1947. They lived in the Toolibin school house and bought new land and they bought new land at Tincurrin and Wedin. They were real workers and Peter was ‘honest to a fault’.
According to my friend Don Thomson, they sold the block in about 1970 to Dick Fox. With his wife and two children Dick lived in the shack with adjoining caravan. I was lucky to get a shot of the caravan in 2011 as it has now gone. Dick was a very thrifty person and Don related a tale of how he had to lift and cart bags of superphosphate for old Dick from the siding each year (did Don good!).
The place became vacant when Dick sold out in the 1990’s.
 
The shearing shed is a fascinating mixture with railway sleeper sides, bush timber, and galvanised iron.
There is a great machinery graveyard of plant that would give Worksafe nightmares, including an engine head that has become embedded in the trunk of an ancient York gum.
 
Reference: Page 147 Harrismith Tincurrin by Bob and Mary Taylor (2000) ISBN 0646385305
 
For a visual exploration of the place see this Google Photo album

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

  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,
 
After exploring Wickepin Springs, I decided to have a squiz at Gillimanning, the next ‘town’ on the proposed East Cuballing railway route. It is a reserve on the Pingelly-Wickepin Road. Gillimanning was established in 1905 and never grew more than a school, hall, and race track although it had an active progress association. Now there is just a memorial rock in a parking bay. Apart from a closed gravel pit the reserve itself has interesting and good condition bush.
The Gillimanning well is on private property a few km to the north.
I was intrigued to see the name "Cliffordville" along side the townsite on the lithographs. This refers to the manual telephone exchange operated by .the Clifford family. It was initially on their farm north of Gillimanning, and then shifted to the farm on the east side of the townsite.. 
On the side of a slope along Gillimanning Road I found an interesting sight on the side of a steep slope. A cottage with a car-tree!
The tiny galvanised iron wall and roofed cottage was the home of George Riley, A Noongar farm worker. With no power or water it must have been freezing in winter and baking hot in summer.
George owned the (Dodge?) ute downslope, that rested there after an accident. The old rock she-oak growing out of the engine bay is a testament to the decades that it has been immobile.
For a visual exploration of the site on Google Photos click 
https://photos.app.goo.gl/YMRjoewU62UHmLFS7

Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
This edition is almost entirely based on word of mouth; I hope that it stimulates discussion that reveals more information.
 A colleague took me to a remarkable high point on his family farm between Yornaning and present Wickepin called Wickepin Springs. It is labelled Wickepin on the old lithographs and having permanent spring water, was apparently targeted as a town along a railway line from Cuballing to Kalgoorlie.
Sometime around the turn of the 20th century, there was a plan to construct a railway line to transport coal from Collie to Kalgoorlie. Cuballing was initially selected as the junction with the Northam-Albany line. Businesses and fine buildings sprung up, and farmers flocked to settle land east of Cuballing to have close access to a siding.
Neighbouring Narrogin was a serious rival (what’s new), despite a disadvantage of the steep section the existing railway at Chugamunning Hill between Narrogin and Cuballing where two locomotives were required to get up the slope ( if the junction was at Cuballing, Perth-bound freight from east and west could avoid the hill).
Narrogin representatives wined and dined the relevant minister, which started a petitioning war to government with rumours of false signatures. In 1906 Narrogin was declared the winner, ostensibly because a Collie-Narrogin line was in construction. However a Cuballing resident told me that the minister had bought land east of Narrogin. (Hmm!)
So instead of a line from Cuballing Wickepin Springs, Gillimanning Yealering, We have Narrogin, Wickepin, Yealering.

The Mungerungcutting race track named after the adjoining Mungerungcutting Soak, remained in use for many years after the present Wickepin townsite was established.
The name Wickepin may have originated from Woorkabing Hill, a large granite rock with the  tower on Gillimanning Road.
Wickepin Spring is at the base of a large rocky outcrop.
We found remnants of an old mud and granite general store and a loading ramp, and with another spring up near the top of the Wickepin Springs rock.
 
For a visual exploration of the site on Google Photos click  https://photos.app.goo.gl/VJPr7HwiefHCJBTd6