The usual story about the discovery of the Norseman goldfield is that it was accidentally discovered by a horse named Norseman. For example, Rica Erickson said:
Station hands left work, sometimes without giving notice, to go prospecting, Larry Sinclair among them. By luck, in 1894 his horse Norseman turned a nugget out of the soil with his hoof. The new goldfield was named after the animal, and a new track was made to take advantage of the welcome discovery of a valuable waterhole, Gibson Soak. The proximity of the Norseman goldfield brought many more prospectors through Esperance.1
Like all good legends the tale has some truth to it, but it isn’t the whole story. Laurence, who is my wife Marlene’s great grandfather, indeed was involved with the discovery of the goldfield and he had a horse named Norseman with him at the time. But it seems that the discovery was not made by the horse kicking over a nugget, nor getting a gold-bearing rock lodged in its hoof, as some versions of the story go, but by Laurence himself, purposefully looking for gold and finding it at a site he had previously inspected. The horse was probably not even his – he had borrowed it from his brother and it may have been owned by his sister.
More of the discovery in a bit, but first, who was Laurence Sinclair?
Shetland Beginnings
Laurence was born in Dunrossness, Shetland, on the 2nd of January 1854. He was the eldest son of Thomas Sinclair and Mary Mainland, both of whom were descendants of a long line of Shetland crofters. For a number of reasons, things were tough on the islands and families began to emigrate to British colonies like Australia and New Zealand.
Laurence’s uncle, also named Laurence, was the first to make the move, emigrating to Western Australia in the 1950s where he worked in the Customs Department and later became a water policeman.2 He was followed by another uncle, John Sinclair, who arrived on the Dolphin in 1860, also working as a water policeman but later becoming the Harbour Master in Bunbury.3 We don’t have any of their letters, but it is possible these two brothers wrote back in favourable terms of the new colony and encouraged their elder brother to make the trip as well.
Thomas Sinclair decided to follow his brothers and left Dunrossness with his family to travel to Western Australia. There were five children altogether in the family, ranging from Jessie, the oldest at 11 years old, to James, the youngest at just two years old. They travelled together on the Tartar arriving in Fremantle in 1863.
Thomas got a job as a warder in the Convicts Department but died in 1868, leaving Mary and her children to make their own way in the colony. Although Mary was given a small gratuity by the Convicts Department the family had to find its own means of survival. Mary must have contemplated returning to Shetland but may have lacked the financial means to do so. Mary later moved to Albany, where she set up a boarding house, but in the meantime young Laurence set off on his own to earn a living.
Working For The Dempsters
Laurence found work with the Dempster family who owned a farm in Northam and also had a pastoral station in Esperance. According to Erickson, he was working for the Dempsters in 1879 and helped to establish their Esperance homestead.
Andrew [Dempster] returned to Esperance early in 1870 by the overland route… In addition there were several workmen, two of whom were to have a long association with Esperance. One was a shepherd, Larry Sinclair, a native of the Shetland Islands.4
Laurence was about 16 years old when he began work with the Dempsters and he stayed working for them off and on for the rest of his working life.
Marriage to Julia
Laurence met his future wife Julia Playle, at ‘Buckland’, the Dempster’s Northam property. She was 17 years old and working as a servant girl for the family. She was the daughter of John and Lucy Playle, both of whom came to Western Australia on the Simon Taylor in 1842.
While at ‘Buckland’, Julia began a relationship with William (‘Willie’) Dempster, one of the Dempsters’ sons and, when she was 20, she gave birth to his child. The Dempsters agreed to provide for her and the child, whom she named Selina, but did not consider her a suitable match for their son. They tried to solve the problem by sending Julia and her child to their Esperance property, and this is probably where she developed a friendship with with Laurence Sinclair.
After they got together Laurence and Julia moved to South Australia, where they married in 1879. The following year they had their first child, a girl, whom they named Jessie Mainland after Laurence’s sister. Laurence junior was born in 1880, Ernest (later to be known as ‘Sinky’) in 1884, Julia (Marlene’s grandmother) in 1886 and Bertie in 1888. After young Bertie died, Laurence and Julia moved back to Esperance where they had three more children Mary (1889), Cecilia (‘Ethel’) and Leslie.
Back in Esperance Laurence began working for the Dempsters again and it was now that he developed an interest in prospecting, joining his younger brother George to search for gold north of Esperance. His work with the Dempsters must have been a fairly loose arrangement because he seems to have had sufficient time for these other pursuits.
The Gold Discovery
We have Laurence’s own words for how the Norseman find was discovered in an interview he gave to the Australian Advertiser. He told a straightforward story without any of the embellishments that later commentators would introduce.
Laurence said that he had started off from Esperance with his younger brother George and another man named John Allsop to do some work north of the coast. He had agreed to sink a tank north of the Dundas Hills and it was this task that brought him to the area where he later discovered gold. He told the newspaper that he had been in the same area twenty six years ago when he was first working for the Dempsters but did not look for gold because it was thought that there was no gold in the colony. When he was first in the Dundas area, however, he had made a note of some promising reefs and decided on the subsequent trip to examine them more closely. This is how he described what happened:
The first stone I napped was lying loose on the surface and it showed a lot of gold. On turning to look at the solid reef behind me I saw gold sticking out wherever I liked to look. The reef was outcropping about a foot and was about 4ft. wide. This happened on the 11th of August and on the 13th I went to the Warden’s office to apply for the reward claim and to report the find.5
Laurence did not claim that his horse discovered the gold. He was actually looking for gold and found it. I suspect that the story about the horse came later.
The interview with Laurence does not give the impression that he was claiming to be the sole discoverer of the Norseman field either. He was well aware that others were prospecting in the area, including his brother George and John Allsop, and that there had been earlier finds at Dundas. As well as Laurence’s group, prospectors named Ramsay, Talbot and Goodliffe had also found gold and applied for their claim on the same day as Laurence. The historian Compton Spencer stated that there were in fact ‘Five Founders’ of Norseman, Laurence Sinclair, Allsop, Ramsay, Talbot and Goodliffe.6
Compton omitted a sixth founder – Laurence’s brother George Sinclair.
The story about the horse has unfortunately overshadowed historical reality. Several people discovered the Norseman field at the same time. Laurence Sinclair was one of them.
The horse ‘Norseman’ may not have even belonged to Laurence. His sister Jessie and brother James both raced the horse at the Esperance races.7 On the trip of discovery, it was George who had taken the horse with him and Laurence later borrowed it.
In some accounts the horse is called ‘Hardy Norseman’, but I’m not sure where that name comes from. It was simply named ‘Norseman’ when it ran at the Esperance races.
Later Life
Acting on his belief that a boom was coming Laurence made land investments in Esperance, but the boom never materialised. Laurie’s daughter Ethel later remarked that after having a house built in Esperance her father lost the money he had made from Norseman.
Laurence Sinclair after finding gold at Norseman, returned to Esperance to live and had a house built by a Mr Norman of Albany, a 3 bedroomed home further back from where Wesfarmers in Dempster Street now stands, and he then later added on to the front of the house adding an adjoining passageway. After the gold find Mr Sinclair, a very good hearted man, found many new found friends and finance from the gold find was soon depleted.8
We can wonder whether Laurence’s ‘new found friends’ stayed around once the funds were depleted. As for Laurence, Ethel said that after the Norseman money ran out he returned to work for the Dempsters, where he had begun. He did some shearing work for them and also worked at Noondoonia for his sister Margaret.
Over time, the horse legend has dominated the story. The town of Norseman has even gone so far as to erect a statue of the horse. Laurence is probably looking down at all this with a twinkle in his Shetland eyes.
The Painting
The painting at the start of this post is by Western Australian artist A.E. Baesjou and was commissioned by the Dundas Shire. It is now part of the art collection of the Western Australian Parliament.
- Rica Erickson, The Dempsters, UWA Press, Nedlands, 1978, p 258. ↩︎
- Rica Erickson, The Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australians, UWA Press, Nedlands, 1987, p 2826. ↩︎
- Erickson, Bicentennial Dictionary, p 2825. ↩︎
- Erickson, The Dempsters, p 121. ↩︎
- Australian Advertiser, 29 October 1894, p 3. ↩︎
- Spencer Compton, ‘Early History of Dundas and Norseman’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 14 August 1954, p 6. ↩︎
- ‘Esperance Bay Notes’, Australian Advertiser, 8 January 1894, p 3 ↩︎
- Ethel Jones’, ‘Story of Laurence Sinclair as told by his daughter Mrs Ethel Cecilia Jones (nee Sinclair)’, Unpublished manuscript, 1974, Esperance Museum, Esperance. ↩︎
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