The Gold That Started Kalgoorlie

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Samso, a cream labradoodle in an Akubra and a red checkered flannel shirt, crouches in a dry red gully panning for gold, with a canvas tent, a rolled swag and a water bag behind him. Caption: Samso panning for gold at the prospector's camp. Samso illustration

Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan Shea at Mount Charlotte, June 1893

On 17 June 1898 the Kalgoorlie Miner marked the town's fifth birthday with an interview with Paddy Hannan. The paper said he was "not disposed to be very communicative" about himself. But when he was asked how the find had happened, he told it plainly, and the paper printed his words.

"My mate, Thomas Flannigan, and myself left Coolgardie on June 7, 1893."

Most people who have been to Kalgoorlie know Hannan's name. It is on the main street and on a statue. Fewer know the name of the man he called his mate, or of the third man who shared the claim. Hannan named them both in that interview.

Paddy Hannan's handwritten miner's right for the Yilgarn Goldfield, issued to Patrick Hannan on 11 August 1893. Caption: Paddy Hannan's miner's right for the Yilgarn Goldfield, issued on 11 August 1893. The photograph of it, taken in 1893, is held by the State Library of Western Australia. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

COOLGARDIE, JUNE 1893

Following a rumour

A sepia photograph of the Golden Mile at Kalgoorlie around 1928, with mine headframes, chimney stacks, a railway line and a large conical dump. Caption: The Golden Mile at Kalgoorlie, around 1928. These lode gold mines kept the town going after the alluvial gold ran out. Photograph by William Edward Fretwell. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Paddy Hannan was baptised at Quin in County Clare, Ireland, in April 1840, according to Geoffrey Blainey's entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. He came to Victoria in 1862, worked underground at Ballarat, and then followed gold rushes through New Zealand, New South Wales and South Australia. He reached Western Australia in March 1889.

By mid-1893 Coolgardie was, in Hannan's words, "getting very dull." Bayley's claim was the only one still working, and the easy alluvial gold had run out. In our geological jargon, alluvial gold is gold that has weathered out of its original rock and been moved and concentrated by water or wind. It lies loose in the soil and gravel, so a man with a pick, a shovel and a dish can win it without any machinery.

Then word came of rich gold at Mount Youle, further east. Hannan called it "Mount Ewel" in 1898. Most of the prospecting parties set off with the teams. Hannan and his mate Tom Flanagan could not get horses at first. They had already decided to travel as a separate party rather than with the teams. "We could also, if we chose, prospect any country during the journey."

The Mount Youle report, Hannan said, "turned out to have been altogether without foundation." The other parties had gone straight there, only to find the report was false.

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MOUNT CHARLOTTE, 10 TO 17 JUNE 1893

Two colours, then a claim

On 10 June the two men reached the north end of Maritana Hill. Near Mount Charlotte they stopped. "My mate and I decided to stop and prospect the country round about, as we had found two colors of gold." A colour, in prospectors' language, is a single visible speck of gold in the bottom of the dish. Two colours is not much. It is enough to make an experienced man stay and look harder.

On 14 June they shifted camp to the place where, Hannan said, Miss Snell planted a tree in August 1897. They got gold, he said, "more or less from the north end of Mount Charlotte to down south of Maritana Hill." He also said, "There was another man, by the way, Dan O'Shea was his name, to whom we gave an equal share in our prospecting claim."

On 17 June Hannan set out for Coolgardie to apply for the claim. Rain fell while he was on the road, and he said later that they had only two quarts of water left. "But for the rain I don't know what we would have done."

The next day was a Sunday. The news got out, and people began to leave Coolgardie for the new field. Hannan remembered "1400 or 1500 men here in about a week." The State Library of Western Australia gives a figure of about 1,000 by the end of June.

In our geological jargon

A reward claim was a larger than usual claim granted by the government to the people who found a new goldfield, as a reward for the discovery. It encouraged prospectors to report a find openly instead of keeping it quiet. Hannan rode to the Warden's office in Coolgardie, to the west, to apply. The Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame profile puts the decision this way, "we were getting excellent gold we decided to apply for a reward claim." In the 1898 interview he called it a prospecting claim.

THE THREE ACCOUNTS

Who found the first gold

The accounts agree on the three names and on 17 June as the day Hannan rode to Coolgardie. They differ on the detail, and the spelling of the names changes from one source to the next.

Hannan, in 1898, puts the first colours on 10 June. Blainey's ADB entry also gives 10 June. According to another version, traced to a 1934 newspaper article, the find was made on the night of 14 June. The State Library and Blainey both say Hannan rode in with about 100 ounces of gold, roughly three kilograms. The Hall of Fame profile adds that Flanagan and Shea picked up another 100 ounces while he was away.

On who saw the gold first, the Hall of Fame profile says Flanagan found the first sizeable piece, a nugget of about five pennyweights, or around eight grams. The Wikipedia article on Hannan says a 1909 account by Fred Dugan also credited Flanagan with the first nuggets. On Shea's part, the Hall of Fame profile says he had already gone on towards Mount Youle and that Hannan and Flanagan planned to offer him a share if he came back. In 1908 Shea's brother challenged how the discovery story was being told. Hannan's 1898 account says they gave Shea an equal share. The sources agree that all three men shared the claim, and they differ on who did what in the first week.

Coffee with Samso, the long conversations.

Blainey wrote of Hannan, "An unassuming man, he did not claim that he was the sole discoverer." That fits the 1898 interview. Hannan names Flanagan early in his account and Shea a little later, and does not make himself the hero of it.

Paddy Hannan statue, Kalgoorlie. A bronze replica of a bearded prospector in a hat sits on a rock holding a water bag, beside a plaque. Caption: A replica of John McLeod's 1929 bronze statue of Paddy Hannan, outside the Kalgoorlie Town Hall. Like the original, it is also a fountain, a reminder of how short of water the prospectors were. Photograph by SurveyorMJF, 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

KALGOORLIE, 1893 TO 1925

What happened to the three men

The gold that made Kalgoorlie famous was not the alluvial gold the three men found. Blainey notes that Hannan did not at first see the value of the rock that would become the Golden Mile, a little to the south. In 1898 Hannan said the country "did not show surface indications of the existence of reefs." That is lode gold, locked inside hard rock in veins, and it needed companies, shafts and treatment plants to win. Hannan's find started the rush, and the Golden Mile is what kept the town going after the alluvial gold ran out.

Hannan left the field in January 1894 for a holiday. He told the Kalgoorlie Miner he had not seen the sea since 1889. He went back to prospecting for years afterwards, and by 1910 the Western Australian Government was paying him an allowance of £150 a year. He died at Brunswick in Melbourne on 4 November 1925.

Tom Flanagan went back to Bendigo. The Hall of Fame profile says he lost a leg in 1898 and died late in 1899. Dan Shea went on prospecting in the Murchison and the Pilbara, and the same profile says he died in Perth in 1908 in relative poverty.

Kalgoorlie stands on Aboriginal country. In December 2025 the Federal Court found that the Marlinyu Ghoorlie claim group, people who identify as Karlamaya, Kapurn or Karlaku, hold native title over an area that includes Kalgoorlie. The formal determination was still being settled in July 2026. Their story of that country goes back a great deal further than June 1893.

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LOOKING BACK

Three names on one claim

Ashok Parekh, who has lived in Kalgoorlie since 1984, talks about Paddy Hannan in his Coffee with Samso conversation. Hannan was the one who rode in with the gold, and his is the name the town remembers.

What I take from the 1898 interview is how ordinary the find was. By Hannan's account, two men who could not get horses in time travelled as their own party and looked at the ground as they went. They found two specks of gold, stopped, worked the country for a week and shared the claim with a third man. I think many gold rushes in Western Australia started with a few colours in a dish and someone patient enough to stay. In our industry many discoveries are made by teams, and often only one name is remembered.

Is there something with only your name on it that other people helped you find?

A note on the sources

Hannan's account is from the interview "Birthday of Kalgoorlie. Five Years Old To-day. Story of 'Paddy' Hannan", printed on page 2 of the Kalgoorlie Miner of 17 June 1898 and reprinted in the Kalgoorlie Western Argus of 23 June 1898, read in full on Trove. His quotations keep the paper's spelling of "Flannigan" and "O'Shea". His life is from Geoffrey Blainey, Hannan, Patrick (1840 to 1925), Australian Dictionary of Biography (1983). The details of Flanagan and Shea are from the Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame profile by Bob Sheppard and Patrick Bertola, as republished in 2008. The 1,000 figure is from the State Library of Western Australia. Native title is from Dimer on behalf of the Marlinyu Ghoorlie Claim Group v State of Western Australia (No 6) [2025] FCA 1641, as set out in (No 7) [2026] FCA 893. I was not able to read the original June 1893 newspaper reports.

The Words According To Samso is about sharing the experiences of decades in my journey. These are stories and news I have heard, brought back to life in 2026. Many of them have been told before, and The Words According To Samso is now bringing them back to readers, to share with those interested in 2026 and with future generations. No tickers, no research, no opinions on what anyone should own. samso.com.au