Golden
Destiny: The Centenary History of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and the Eastern
Goldfields of Western Australia by Martyn Webb and Audrey Webb.
Hardcover book published by City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder 1993, 1070
pages with black and white photographs and some black and white
illustrations and maps.
“Focusing
on the twin mining towns of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, this book draws upon
Western Australia’s experience of the search for and exploitation
of gold over almost 140 years, with special reference to the
discovery and development of the Eastern Goldfields and the famed
Golden Mile. Their story is rich in detail. It describes how gold
helped transform Western Australia, with its 1 million square miles
of territory, from a land of ‘despondency and despair’ with less
than 50,000 inhabitants in 1890 to its present population of more
than 1.5 million (1993). Their story also covers the transformation
of the Western Australian gold industry from its use of the most
primitive methods to advanced modern technologies as it moved from
free-lance alluvial mining, to labour- intensive heavily-capitalised
company-operated deep mining, to the current reworking of 100 year
old gold centres by large-scale open-cut mining operations. The book
shows how isolation and aridity on the Eastern Goldfields gave a new
twist to that peculiar age-old relationship between gold and people —
and thereby helped to create one of Australia’s most distinctive
ways of life. Commissioned by the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder as its
contribution to the centenary of the discovery of gold at Kalgoorlie
in 1893 by Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan Shea, Golden Destiny is
profusely illustrated by contemporary photographs, maps and diagrams,
well supported with documentary evidence, and fleshed out with the
real life stories of past and present goldfielders from all walks of
life.”
Local
histories. I don't know if it's the same all over the world, but
people here in Australia do like to read about where they live (...or
have lived... or where their ancestors have lived), no matter how big
or small a place it is. During my book finding expeditions I'm often
stumped by the amount of places with a history written about them,
that i've never heard of. I think this could have something to do
with growing up and living most of my life in one big city. It was
only when I moved away from the throbbing metropolis of Melbourne all those years ago, that I
realised how Melbournecentric my life had been up to that point.
Don't get me wrong, I think I did have a fairly good geographical
knowledge of this country and yes I did know where most of the bigger
places are. It's when you find a book about Mundaring, Dixie or
Yankalilla that things start to get a bit more interesting... and I
start to get a bit bamboozled. Fortunately we now have google to
help us figure out the difficult and embarrassing questions about
where things are and I can confidently list a book on line as being a
local history book about somewhere which I now have a fair idea where
it is.
Kalgoorlie
and Boulder (Western Australia, bottom half, inland from Perth) are
places that I am aware of. Over the years i've sold numerous books
looking at the history of this area and what a rich history it is.
So rich that the authors of this book decided to fill over 1,000
pages with it's history, producing this large brick of a book. It's
a statement, it's the sort of thing that could do you serious damage
if not handled properly. Listing stuff on line, means that I have to
handle any book I list more than a few times; carrying it home,
shelving it, photographing it, writing it up and shelving it again.
This is a two hand book, meaning that you need both hands to handle
it. I can feel my biceps growing (or groaning) each time I pick it
up. Books like this are the reason why kindles were invented... (not
really).
