This Day in History: 1897-03-05

1897 March: T.B. Cumpston said Charles Hennessy Jnr. and William Chitty pegged the first lease, called the Toodyay Wonder, at the Blackboy Hill Goldfield. The first speck of gold was found by a New Norcia Noongar man known as Mission Fred, a shepherd working near Yulgem, who showed William Chitty and others, of north Toodyay, where he found it.

Sources:
West Australian, 25 Nov. 1897, p.6; 21 July 1898, p.7.
Rica Erickson. The Victoria Plains. Lamb Paterson, 1971, pp. 76-77.