Revisiting some photos from last years holiday…Perth to Esperance to Kalgoorlie and back again.
Stopped by a little Ghost town Kunanalling….about 50kms from Kalgoorlie mostly on dirt roads. It’s amazing to think that once there were 7 shops, 3 pubs and nearly 500 men labouring in the hot sun digging out gold in the middle of nowhere. (You have to drive through the Australian outback to fully appreciate the scale of the place). The plaques on the wall reveal a hint of the lives, hopes and in the end lost dreams of this place…everything….all the bricks, mortar, plaster and paint had to be carted out here and assembled by builders/craftsmen. There was a Telegraph station, Post office, Police station, Court house, School, Baker, Butcher, Grocer, Blacksmith, Mechanic……Ice cream every Sunday when ice was brought by horse and cart from Kalgoorlie….fridges and freezers hadn’t been invented. A hard life.
Only this building remains…one of the old pubs that must have been quite grand in its day , its walls heard many stories. The ruins slowly being reclaimed by the scrubby bush plants and red dust, bullet holes puncture the tourist info plaque. Google map reference is -30.683171, 121.065954
Updated….I spelt Kalgoolie wrong!!!!
sketchbookblue 
The old hotel featured in the photo is the Premier Hotel ruins. My paternal grandmother, Ellen Silk (an Irish immigrant) ran the house for the hotel (aka 1909). She married Robert Mutzig and they had three children – Charles, 1911, Edward, 1914, Mary, 1917.
Robert was born in Stawell, Victoria, and came to W.A. sometime around 1909.
Their house was located just to the south of the Premier mine site and jinkered into Kalgoorlie in 1933. It was located at 257 Egan Street and as far as I know, is still there.
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Hi Brian, thank you for filling in details of your family history, it’s wonderful to hear about the human connection to the building. The Premier Hotel looks to have been quite a spectacular building once up on a time, especially given the remote location, lugging all the building materials and the craftsmen required to assemble it…so many people must have poured their hopes and dreams (and money) into creating this home/business in outback WA. If only the walls could talk!
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I just came upon your blog while researching my family history. My maternal great grandparents Salomo and Leah Friedlander ran the Twenty Five Mile Hotel in the late 1890s. The licence was taken over by their son David in 1900 and the ownership was transferred to him in 1903. I haven’t tracked down yet when he sold it. David also had a billiards room licence since 1897. The younger siblings – Charles, Phillip, Fanny, Ettie (Henrietta), Harry (Henry) and Edward – went to the school in Kunanalling in the late 1890s.
Thanks for posting the great pictures!
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Thanks for commenting, it’s wonderful to hear about the real people who lived in this geographically remote and long ago in time places. , What a great name for a pub… “Twenty Five Mile Hotel” (25 miles from Coolgardie I believe), really incredible to think of what they achieved with the equipment they had at the time.
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