Charles Cooke HuntPrint Page

A Kurrajong tree and obelisk erected in 1965 by the Royal Western Australia Historical Society commemorates surveyor and explorer Charles Hunt who explored the area in the period 1864 to 1866. The obelisk is near the site of Hunt`s marked tree. In 1865 Hunt blazed a tree at a place later named White Hope where gold was discovered in 1919.

Hunt saw the pastoral potential but realised the importance of water. He called the area Hampton Plains after John Stephen Hampton, Governor of Western Australia from 1862 to 1868. Hunt made five journeys through the area. Of the five journeys the first was exploratory (1864), the second established a track which moved from waterhole to waterhole (1865) and the third built a series of wells and dams. The result was a road which later became known as the York to Goldfields road and, until the arrival of the railway, was the only link between the coast and the gold towns of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie.

Pyrite Outcrop at White Hope In 1865 Charles Hunt went out again with instructions to cut a track to Hampton Plains, enlarge native rock holes and soaks, and where these were too far apart to sink wells, and to survey blocks of pastoral country for the syndicate. In that year on block 48, he blazed a currajong tree C.C.H. 1865, by the side of an outcrop. Pyrite was showing on the surface of the outcrop and Hunt apparently took it to be copper pyrite, as at that time copper was being mined with lead ore at Northampton. Some 54 years later, James P. Hallahan, manager of the White Hope opened up this ore body.
Excerpt from article Kalgoorlie Miner, 14 September 1950.
 

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