Steve, the duffer rush was to a place called Mt Youle, which today is near Balagundi. Balagundi has, in later years, produced a lot of supergene gold from shallow workings but not one decent orebody has been found there yet. It was a duffer in those mad early days because all they were chasing was quartz reefs like "Bayleys" at Coolgardie, and Mt Youle/Balagundi is an ironstone area.

"White Feather",further north,was first found by an Aboriginal hunting water for Jerry McCaullife about 3 months after the Mt Youle rush. It became Kanowna and was never considered a duffer because "McCaullifes Reward" claim led to the immense White Feather Main Reef, then later the famous Kanowna Deep Leads were found. In its heyday, Kanowna was considered to be the hub of the Eastern Goldfiels, while "Hannans Find" languished.

Hannans find remained as a good alluvial area until Sam Pierce convinced the Brookman syndicate to peg out big ironstone outcrops 5 miles SE of Hannans. It was called the "Brookmans Sheep Run" at the time because once again the main bunch of prospectors could only relate to gold in quartz reefs like Bayleys reef. Most people thought Sam Pierce was crazy for pegging the ironstone duffer country to the south of Hannans. How comprehensively wrong they were !!. Brookmans Sheep Run became the Boulder Golden Mile, the richest mile of gold bearing ground on Earth.

Hannans find eventually led to the Mt Charlotte mine, so it wasn't "played out soon". It has been one of the longest term producing mines on these Goldfields, but is sadly due to close at the end of this year.

That's His Story,

Chris Hake.