Prospectors and men in search of gold were plentiful in the second half of the 19th century.

Men had dug ground searching for the glittering metal in the Klondyke, the Rand and Victoria, Australia before the search took them to the western part of Australia.

Gold was first discovered in the north-west of Western Australia but Southern Cross began recording good enough finds to lure prospectors in that direction in the early 1890s. The completion of a rail line to Northam helped create the population to support a small township at Southern Cross, but the prospectors were still 225km away from what was to become the Golden Mile.

Southern Cross was feeling the effects of a miner’s strike in 1892 when Arthur Bayley returned from The Gnarlbine (the name Bayley and his partner, William Ford, had called what was to become Coolgardie) with 554oz of rich specimen stone.

The two had left Southern Cross in March 1892, following a track named after surveyor C.C. Hunt and confident that good inland rains would fill the soaks and waterholes along the route. At Fly Flat, about 120km east of Southern Cross, Ford was leading a horse when he found a piece of gold weighing about half an ounce and within a few hours he and Bayley had specked more than 100oz.

Bayley returned to Southern Cross for provisions in August, telling no one of their find. When he rejoined Ford, he found a reef near the Big Blow, which would eventually become the famous Bayley’s Reward Mine.

A month later, Bayley posted his reward claim on behalf of himself and Ford and news of their find went around the world. WA’s gold rush had begun.

Within a month, 400 diggers took 3000oz of alluvial gold from the Gnarlbine, eventually called Coolgardie.

Bayley and Ford’s find ranked with the great gold discoveries of the century and one of the men lured to the area was Paddy Hannan, whose search for gold had taken him to New Zealand, Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania, before trying his luck in Western Australia.

Hannan and another native of County Clare, Ireland – Tom Flanagan – were both over 50 years old when they searched in Southern Cross and then Coolgardie before word of a find at Mt Youle (about 80km east) lured them further afield.

In June 1893, the two were about half way to Mt Youle when one of their horses cast a shoe. Hannan and Flanagan found several good colours and prospected further. Others moved through to Mt Youle, and the two convinced another Irishman, Dan Shea, to stay put.

This group found about 100oz west of Mt Charlotte and Hannan, the youngest of the three, headed to Coolgardie to post the reward claim at what was called Hannan’s Find or the Thirty Mile. It was June 17, 1893.

Another rush ensued but this region wasn’t like Coolgardie with its plentiful alluvial gold and shallow rocks producing the valuable ore. Kalgoorlie, as Hannan’s Find came to be known, had its riches in mysterious lode formations and hard-to-treat telluride ores that would only be revealed in more sophisticated times of geologists, chemists and metallurgists.

The richest square mile on earth lay just 5km away to the south of Hannan’s Find, but these low ridges and flats were largely ignored at the time. However, in 1893, Sam Pearce, working with partner Will Brookman, pegged the ground that was to become the Great Boulder and the Ivanhoe.

Pearce followed a track south of Hannan’s Find to a spot called Red Lake, before branching off it slightly to the east where he found an ironstone outcrop. This became the Great Boulder.

Hannan was awarded a Government pension and retired to live with his sister in Victoria, before dying in 1925. His name is synonymous with the city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and references to his name, including the city’s main street, are constant reminders of his discovery of gold in the area.