Grand Hotel

Statement of Significance

The town site is a reminder of a way of life now departed. For a relativelyshort time, about 20 years, dating around the turn of the century, it was a thriving gold mining town supported by five gold mines and numerous shows. The mines were the Cosmopolitan, Cumberland, Altona, Champion and the Brittania.
The town is now a collection of ruins surrounding the Grand Hotel which is still in use. The town site is a memorial to those remote settlements which thrived in a harsh environment and all but disappeared when the gold mines closed down.

Physical Description

The business district consisted of three streets running east/ west and three streets running at right angles to these. There were seven hotels/ a club, a Draper store, three grocery and hardware stores, two chemist shops/ two cordial factories/ a butcher shop, a brewery, two blacksmith shops and two banks. There was also the Catholic and Anglican Churches plus a hand bal1 court. Later in the life of the town, the railway line was extended from Menzies to Kookynie and later still extended to Laverton. The owner of the chaff and grain store also owned the well at the fringe of the town. He had pipes connected to most of the hotels and charged them 2/6 per gallon. Households paid 4/~ per gallon. The water was delivered in a 200 gal galvanised tank mounted on wheels. The business district boasted a number of substantial buildings of brick with corrugated iron roofs. Of these only the Grand Hotel still operates. There are a number of other buildings still standing in varying states of decay. The typical housing was of timber framed structures roofed with corrugated iron with walls clad on the outside with canvas and on the inside with hessian. These claddings were white washed with a mixture of slack lime and butchers salt. Most houses had a bough house constructed in the back yard. These bough houses were the only means by which shift workers could find a place cool enough to sleep during the day. Because of the transitory nature of the construction little remains of the town's housing.

History

Assessment 1989

Uses

Historic Themes

Creation Date

Publish place record online (inHerit):

Last Update

Disclaimer

This information is provided voluntarily as a public service. The information provided is made available in good faith and is derived from sources believed to be reliable and accurate. However, the information is provided solely on the basis that readers will be responsible for making their own assessment of the matters discussed herein and are advised to verify all relevant representations, statements and information.