75 Years: George VI Coronation Medal found in Carnamah

George V, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, died in 1936 leaving the throne to his eldest son Edward VIII. After being King for less than a year Edward abdicated as the woman he wished to marry had been married before and was about to be divorced for a second time. Rather than cause a constitutional crisis he gave up the throne and married the woman of his choice.

The throne then passed to his brother George VI (father of Elizabeth II), whose coronation took place on 12 May 1937. This occasion was celebrated throughout the British Empire, with Carnamah being no exception. Children's sports took place throughout the afternoon at Centenary Park and at their conclusion the children gathered under the Union Jack and the Australian National Emblem. Each child was presented with a Coronation Medal, which were donated by the Carnamah District Road Board - better known today as the Shire of Carnamah.

75 years after the medals were presented to local children one was discovered during weeding in a garden bed at 15 Caron Street in Carnamah, the home of Roxy East (one of our virtual volunteers) and Len Brown. Below is the front and back of the medal, which has probably fared quite well considering its time spent outdoors.

Road Board chairman James K. Forrester talked to the children and his speech (below) captures the spirit and pride felt at the time...

"Boys and girls, it is my privilege on this, the Coronation day of King George and Queen Elizabeth, to address you briefly. This gathering is one of many thousands being held throughout the British Empire today, celebrating the Coronation of our King and Queen. I would like your little minds to travel with me into the jungles of Central Africa, where the chiefs and tribesmen are gathered; into the mountainous regions of northern India; into the Arctic Circle of northern Canada and in many other places where like gatherings, some larger, some smaller than ours are being held to celebrate the occasion.

Coronation means that on this day in London a ceremony is taking place; it finishes, or has its climax, at Westminster Abbey, where the King and Queen take an oath to serve the British Empire as rulers. I am sure very few of you girls and boys have not in recent weeks seen photographs of the little princesses in the daily press nor have you felt something in you, something born within you that makes you feel proud when you look at these photographs. Little princess Elizabeth may some day be Queen of the British Empire.

This takes me back many years to a similar gathering as today. I was a little boy [in Scotland] standing in a line, my mind more on how many races I was going to win than on our head master's address, although the little message he conveyed to us has always stuck to me. He used as his text the word 'Loyalty.' He said then as I am saying to you today:- 'It is the Loyalty of the boys and girls of today that will make the Loyal men and women of tomorrow. It is this loyalty that binds together this wonderful Empire of ours.'"



From The North Midland Times newspaper, Friday 7 May 1937

After receiving their medals the children of the district were entertained with afternoon tea and then presented with bags of fruit and lollies. The adults got their turn in the evening when a very large number of people attended the Coronation Ball at the Carnamah Hall. The ball was a massive success with visitors in attendance from as far away as Marchagee, Arrino and districts on the Wongan Hills railway line.

Rabbits in the North Midlands

We hope everyone had a very Happy Easter. While we all love the egg-giving Easter Bunny there are some other rabbits who haven't been so welcome. This is part of their story, which isn't quite as pleasant.

Rabbit Invasion

Rabbits were said to have been discovered between Carnamah and Three Springs in about 1908. A government trapper was sent up from Perth and caught a few and then couldn't find traces of any more. Reports resurfaced in 1911 that the rabbits were back. The plan at that time was for landholders to destroy rabbits on their properties until the rabbits were completely gone. The flaw in this plan was that in 1911 there was a lot of unoccupied land!

There were already rabbits in Latham when William A. McAlpine arrived in 1909. They weren't initially a problem but in 1916 McAlpine advised a Royal Commission that their numbers were suddenly increasing and would soon be a menace. Hesford Bros gave a similar report from their farm in Perenjori.

In 1936 the local MLA for Greenough, William Patrick, campaigned that the government should cheaply sell off sandplain country as it was in grave danger of being taken over by the rabbits.

Rabbits for Food

The Rooke family arrived in Carnamah from Wales in 1915 to take up one of the Midland Railway Company's Ready-Made Farms. In the early years rabbits formed a part of their regular diet in addition to cockatoo and wild turkey.

Similarly the Underwood family in Coorow had some tough times during the early years on their farm and for a while they lived off rabbits and boiled wheat. James Underwood had been a saddler in Latham before purchasing a farm in Coorow in 1923.

From The North Midland Times newspaper, Friday 4 October 1935

Rabbits for Sport 

In 1914 regular cricket matches organised by Don Macpherson were played between Carnamah and Three Springs. It was claimed by Three Springs that the Carnamah team endeavoured to hit the ball into rabbit burrows when the matches were held in Carnamah!

Arthur Jackson was the teacher of the Billeroo State School in East Winchester. He often went rabbit shooting at night but on the night of 13 November 1933 he never returned home. During his expedition his gun had exploded and a bullet entered the side of his body and pierced his lung. After being found he was rushed to the Carnmaah Private Hospital, and recovering in Perth he resumed his teaching duties at Billeroo.

Waddy Forest farmers Stan Folland, Price Hunt and Will Morcombe would go rabbit shooting and often shoot up to 100 in one day. When Price died in 1947 among his plant and machinery was a Buzzacott rabbit fumigator and rabbit poisoning cart.

From The North Midland Times newspaper, Friday 8 March 1935

Rabbits for Extermination

Some farmers had rabbit poisoning carts. The horse-drawn carts would have an attachment on the back that would dob out baits, which were often a mixture of poison, bran and pollard. On one occasion the workmen of Anster Tucker in Carnamah failed to clean the cart afterwards and a couple of cows licked the back. The vet came out and it was initially though it was his feed that caused the cows to ail so the cows were killed and his haystack burnt!

In 1928 rabbits were abundant and were expected to wreak havoc on crops. A Carnamah resident wrote to The West Australian newspaper suggesting unemployed men should be put into gangs of rabbit trappers to help combat the problem.

Carnamah local Norm Watson designed and patented his very own rabbit exterminator known as the "Watson" which entered the market in 1935. 

Unfortunately exploits in mass rabbit destruction were quite newsworthy. Mrs Hilda M. Cole placed strychnine in two freshwater soaks on her farm in Carnamah in January 1936 - which killed 1,190 rabbits. Another effort that made local headlines was Three Springs farmer Jim Hunt killing 240 rabbits over a few nights in 1934 with cyanide poisoning.

The Carnamah District Road Board imposed periods where all landowners and occupiers had to poison rabbits. In later years myxomatosis and the calicivirus reduced numbers, but rabbits most certainly still and will likely always remain.

What’s valuable?

In museum collections it can be taxing to assess the significance and value of objects. When it comes to information it seems to get even harder. When documenting information on an object or person how do you decipher which bits of information are worthy and which are merely incidental?

Simple answer – I don't think you can! From compiling databases of past residents for our region I’ve discovered that you can’t actually value information very easily. It is sometimes the most trivial incidental facts that carry the most worth for people.

Initially I overlooked certain details I deemed weren’t worth the time it took to type them. On one occasion I wasn’t sure whether to include something or not. It was a 2nd prize for broad beans at an agricultural show. It was something I’d normally leave out but I entered it in the man’s entry supposing it added something a bit different. A few months later I was excited to be put in touch with the man’s daughter. We had amassed a lot of information on him and much of it was unknown to her – but it was the 2nd prize for broad beans that she was ecstatic about.

So that changed things for us. Any rules about what to include or leave out were thrown aside, and we moved more towards recording “anything and everything” on people. It’s resulted in a massive change to our information. A lot of the trivial bits of information add context and depth to the larger picture.

I recently looked through an old Road Board Ledger. It was mostly lists of figures but towards the back there were a few pages of payments made to locals who’d killed foxes, dingoes or eagles. It’s the perfect example of how a random little piece of information can add that something else. To the database entry of all of those listed on those pages I was able to add a line along the lines of:

“Paid a 10/- Vermin Bonus by the Carnamah District Road Board in February 1934 for helping to control vermin by killing a fox.”

This does so many things. It reveals a completely different fact about the person, an alternative way they made a bit of money, gives an insight into one of the ways in which vermin was being controlled, and that the Road Board tried to control vermin. One trivial line but lots of value.