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Record #5535
Name :
: Harold BOUCHER (1915 - 2008)


Father
:
Mother
:
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
: 23 Oct 1915   Notes : Source: Fairbridge Kids; WWII record

Marriage (1)
:
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
: 16 Aug 2008   Notes : Source: MCB WA
Abode (1) : Place of BirthEngland, Staffordshire, Wolverhampton
Abode (2) : Place of Death / BurialAustralia, Western Australia, Kalgoorlie-Boulder

Died of pneumonia
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: Mar 1928
Country
: Australia

Ship
: Benalla

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
:

Agency
: Fairbridge Homes
NotesA birth registration was found for Harold Boucher: Year of Registration: 1915; Quarter of Registration: Oct-Nov-Dec; Mother's Maiden Name: Pearce; District: Wolverhampton; County: Shropshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands; Volume: 6b; Page: 919. Parents: Rueben Boucher and May Pearce, married 1908, Dudley, Staffordshire, England.

Harry Boucher told his story on the Coolgardie Gem & Mineral Club website ({website}myweb.westnet.com.au/ausgold1/harry_boucher.htm and reproduced in part):

"My only memory of my mother was of her being loaded into an ambulance and nobody knows what happened to her after that ? none of my living relatives seem to know!

My father married an Irish woman and I went to live with my aunt and was later put into an immigration centre in Birmingham. The boys and girls were separated. One day the matron came and asked which of us would like to go to Canada ? I thought it was too cold so I didn?t put my hand up! Then she asked which of us would like to go to Australia? I had an uncle in the Northern Territory on Jindare Station and my aunty had told me stories about him so I was first to put my hand up! A party of 28 boys from different orphanages were all kitted out with new clothes, suites, overcoats and hats with peaks and a bit of pocket money ready to go. My father and aunty came to see me off and we first went to London where we all stayed at the YMCA for 3 days. The boat for Australia ? The SS Benally [sic], left from Tilbury Docks in London and it took 6 weeks to reach Australia. We left London in 1928 in January and arrived in Fremantle on March 3. I was 12 years old and it was the biggest adventure in my life. The boat called in to different tropical islands on the way and islanders would row out to our ship selling all sorts of tropical fruit we had never seen before. Some of the boys stole books from the Masters cabin and sent them down on ropes to the small boats in exchange for fruit which was then hauled back up in baskets.

At Cape Town we stopped for three days while the ship loaded up with coal as it was a steamer and used the coal for fuel. The Africans carried the coal up in baskets on their heads in a continuous stream for 3 days! We went sightseeing in Cape Town and went up Table Mountain. Wherever we went we had Africans waiting on us and anything we asked for. We were treated like royalty.

After leaving Cape Town the seas became rough and the waves often towered above the ship but it was really exciting. One day we were having races on the deck and my hat blew off and that was the last I saw of it! The crew were good to us and the cook often brought out a big tray of plum pudding for us boys.

Our first glimpse of the Australian coast was disappointing; it looked so dry and desolate. After landing we stayed in the WMCA in Perth for a few days before catching a train to Pinjarra. All 28 of us were sent to the Fairbridge farm. I stayed in the Henry Hudson cottage but left school there at age 14 and started domestic work around the farm. They taught me a lot though.

First I worked in the kitchen with its huge stoves and coppers. The kitchen had to be swept and mopped out every day. Then I went to work in the huge bakehouse and learnt to bake bread. One day I was chopping wood for the oven and eating a crust of bread and the warden slapped me for eating the bread which I was entitled to have because I was working in the bakehouse at the time. I was so upset by this that I ran away and camped in the bush for three days. I actually enjoyed camping in the bush on my own and thought it was a great adventure but when I eventually returned I had to report to the colonel and he made me drop my strides and gave me a good caning. He then gave us all a lecture about going out in the bush and getting lost and how dangerous it was.

I was then sent to work in the piggery, then the market garden and then the orchard. In the dairy I learnt how to milk a cow and in the butchers I learnt how to butcher sheep, pigs and bullocks and how to dress them. We made our own bacon by smoking it in a huge fireplace Then I went to work with the teamster doing ploughing and harvesting. I got a good grounding in every aspect of farming at Fairbridge. They were paying me then 10 shillings to work on the farm but 5 shillings went back to Fairbridge. This 5 shillings was later returned to us as a lump sum when we turned 21 but without any interest!

At age 15 Fairbridge sent me to work on a sheep and wheat farm at Dalwallinu called Petworth Park and it was here that I got my first sniff of gold. The station was owned by Phil Gaucher (who painted the curtain in the Boulder Town Hall). Phil would come to the farm and one day he brought up Charlie Newman a signwriter with him and he pointed out the low bare hills which had been cleared and which looked just like the ones near Kalgoorlie.

Charlie walked up to those hills and came back with a quartz rock with gold in it. I spent a lot of time looking for more gold specimens there but with no luck but at the time I didn?t know anything about dollying for gold.

A neighbouring farmer came along and offered me 15 shillings a week to work for him ? I was rich! It was the most money I had seen in my life but Fairbridge wanted me back and I had to go back but got my first ride then in a motorcar.

Fairbridge then hired me out to other farms but all I got was 5 shillings again.

After being sent to a very primitive dairy farm at Capel I decided to jump a goods train to Pinjarra and that is where I struck another bloke and we both jumped trains to Merredin and then Kulin. My mate told me to chuck my gear away and just make a swag with a blanket. So we went ?on tramp? like swagmen getting odd jobs in return for food and camping in creek beds. I ended up jumping a train to Coolgardie and I was about 16 then. At the time blokes ?on tramp? camped in the loco room at Coolgardie because it was warm and there was always a fire going. I got a few odd jobs around town and got a job as a woodchopper at the Convent for 2s. 6d. plus tucker. They couldn?t believe how quickly I got through all their mallee wood pile and I soon ran out of work with them. I then jumped the train to Kalgoorlie and ended up digging septic drains for a realestate agent. I had to shovel out the rubbish and rocks, deepen the trench and cover them over. There were 15 to do and I was paid two pound a day. I considered myself a rich man and booked into a boarding house. By then Fairbridge had tracked me down again and a policeman came to see me. I was put on another farm and then on a sheep station in Carnarvon, which was a real rough squatters farm and the work, was long and hard. I was then about 20 and decided to write to my uncle in Pine Creek telling him I would work my way up to the Northern Territory when I left there. At age 21 Fairbridge let me go and sent me the 90 pound they owed me.

I always felt like an outsider when I worked for Fairbridge as there was a bit of a stigma attached to being a ?Fairbridge Boy?.

I then got some odd jobs in Carnarvon but a policeman came looking for me to tell me that my uncle in Pine Creek had just died from lockjaw after cutting his hand. So I changed my mind about catching a boat going north and took a boat to Perth instead and made my way back to the Goldfields. I suppose my life was set out for me from that point onwards as I then went to work in the gold mines.

I got my first job in a gold mine at Paynes Find as a machine offsider and here they taught me how to use a jackhammer but my main job was to shovel the dirt. I was still only 19 or 20. I then got another job at another mine near-by. The work was dirty and dusty as the owner wouldn?t allow us any water to keep the dust down. I persuaded the other guys to go on strike as I told them the quartz dust would kill us but the other blokes ended up going back to work but I decided to leave. I got a lift to Mount Magnet but there was no work there. I met a bloke who told me I should go to Big Bell near Cue as there was work there. As soon as I got there I stood outside the office every morning with a mob of others looking for work. There they took your name and waited for them to call you up. At the time they preferred the young fellas with no experience as they could teach them up the way they wanted. So I got a job straight away. They were desperate for men at that time and needed 400. This was the most modern mine in Australia at the time.

My first job in Kalgoorlie was as an undeground ?trucker? at the Great Boulder shovelling dirt into a truck for two bob a truckload. You had to push the truck out to the shaft and pick up an empty one take it back, fill it up and do that all day. There was always plenty of work for a trucker. Then I was offsider to a machine miner and I learnt how to drill and fire and sink shafts, man-ways and stoping, I worked on every shaft in the mine ? six in all. One day I picked up a very heavy rock from a rich stope and dropped it down the man-way to the level down below without looking and it fell right at the feet of the shift boss. That rock was nearly all solid gold and the shift boss said thank-you and took it away!

We would take the rubber out of the fracture box and make crib bags out of it. Some blokes used their crib bag to take rich specimen rock out of the mine and later they used their thermos flasks. There was often a gold buyer in the Boulder Block Hotel who would be waiting to buy the gold from the miners . If you were found with telluride though you would be in real trouble as the gold squad would know exactly where it came from as there were only two places in the world where it is found ? an island in the Pacific and underground at the Golden Mile.

When war broke out in 39 I enlisted in the army as all the young blokes thought it would be a great adventure and I had the idea I would be sent back to England. A whole trainload of us left Kalgoorlie and camped at the Claremont Show Ground and were later transferred to Northam. The food there was terrible though and the meat was full of maggots. I got crook during training with suspected ulcers and ended up in a hospital but they couldn?t find what was wrong with me and I was discharged. I went back to the Great Boulder where they were pleased to have me back because so many miners had left for the war. I got crook again and doctor Webster told me to go to Esperance where I ended up staying for 5 years. I would go fishing in the summer and back prospecting in the winter. I made a rough boat with a sail made from a chaff bag and went fishing. Everyone thought I would drown in that boat. I eventually went to a different doctor and was diagnosed with a diseased gall bladder. They operated on me and took it out including my appendix and I haven?t been crook since.

In 1954 I found gold in quartz at Kumarl which is 19km north of Salmon Gums but it wasn?t really payable at that time. Then in Esperance when I was cutting fence posts I met Harold Eldridge and he had a show at the Beete Mine and I pegged a claim next to him. I did a bit of prospecting there but Harold was always talking about Ryans Find and that?s where I ended up prospecting for three years. When I was broke I would go back to the Great Boulder on wages. One of my best finds was by my Blue Heeler dog - I had been taking soil samples all day up and down gullies with no luck and decided to go back to my car. I would say to my dog ?Blue Take Me Home!? and he would take a straight line back to my car. This time though he chased a rabbit and as the ground looked good I took a loam sample while I was waiting for Blue to come back. There was good colour in the dish and it turned out to be my best find. ...

My patch near Ryans was going an ounce to the ton and my first crushing was 4 tons and the next one was 15 tons. All the dirt was taken to the battery in Coolgardie. I would make holes with a bit and hammer and it would take me all day to make one hole for blasting one foot deep because the ground was so hard. Then a bloke brought out a petrol driven jackhammer to lend me and that was much easier. The only problem was that it was all dry boring but I made a canopy to keep the dust off me. I shifted 45 tons for an ounce to the ton but gold was only worth 15 pound an ounce then so when I was offered 500 pound for the lease I decided to quit and sell it and bought a ticket back to England. I would go back to England many times during my life whenever I sold a lease or made a good crushing. I was trying to trace my family roots and found my father, sister and elder brother but my younger brother was killed in a coalmine.

When I came back I camped near Coolgardie and prospected the Hampton Plains ground and picked up a show not far from Sam Cash?s. After crushing 75 tons for 76 ounces over a period of time I sold it for $5000. Sam Cash wrote the well-known book ?Loaming For Gold? while he was prospecting around Coolgardie. The Hampton Plains Company had been given 547 km2 of Crown Grants by Queen Victoria in the Coolgardie-Kalgoorlie area, which was not available for pegging, and they had a portion of the major nickel and gold deposits inside their boundaries.

In 1963 I pegged an area at Canegrass north of Scotia for nickel. That belt of country has now been drilled and pegged for nickel. I later found another nickel area at Londonderry before Kambalda was found. I sold the Londonderry lease for $10,000 but was offered it back for $2 when the company pulled out of Australia. I immediately sold it again to another company for $11000! Close to the nickel areas were gemstones deposits especially chrysoprase and moss agate and this got me started on cutting and polishing rocks. At Canegrass I picked up a flat rock to jack up my car when I had a puncture and when it cracked open I saw that it was full of chrysoprase. I had a shop in the main street of Coolgardie then for many years selling rocks, gemstones and old bottles. ..."

In 2007, Harry became a member of the Coolgardie Gem & Mineral Club and, as of that time, was teaching members how to cut and polish rocks. He led a convoy of cars from the Perth Lapidary Clubs on a field trip out of Coolgardie and had a display of rocks at the Coolgardie Jazz & Gems Festival and at the Hall of Fame open day. Harry had a stall selling his gemstone jewelery and polished rocks every Coolgardie Day.

Obituary of Harry Boucher:

The West Australian
Edited by Torrance Mendez

"Prospector Harry, salt of the earth.

There are few lives that resonate with the sentimental notion of what it is to be an Australian. The life of Harry Boucher, the celebrated prospector who scratched, dug and cracked rock in the wilderness of the Outback for 75 years was just that.

Call him child migrant, call him Fairbridge kid and call him intinerant farm worker who stumbled into prospecting and made several small fortunes, which he blew on something that made sense of his actions; the search for his family.

For all his enterprise in raising his pickaxe against creation's strongest elements, he was overwhelmed by the security and comfort that only human beings afforded him.

In later years, so strong was his need for contact, he wanted to dump the solitary lifestyle of the prospector for the love of Perth widow Kay Nash.

But fate intervened. And so the 14-year relationship that he hoped to extend with her, having left his beloved Coolgardie to share her home in the 1990's ended when she was taken by cancer. Harry returned to the Goldfields.

He derived some comfort from remaining relatives in England bu tthat pleasure, too, was set back when May, his only surviving sibling who was to visit him in October, died last December.

Harry's heartbreak might have been assuaged had he known that he was to be named 2008 Prospector of the Year by the Amalgamated Prospectors and Leaseholders Association. Again, that joy was denied when he succumbed to pneumonia on August 16 [2008].

APLA desperately tried to lift is spirits in Kalgoorlie Hospital with premature news of his victory but it is doubtful whenther by then he could comprehend.

Yet for all his misfortunes, Harry remains a legendary figure in Australian mining; the man who discovered nickel before the mid-1960s boom in Kambalda and who made several gold discoveries on his own befoer turning to gemstones. Yet he never owned a house, preferring to pay rent.

Harold Boucher was born in England on October 23, 1915, one of four children to motorbike facotry worker Reuben Boucher. In a transcript of recorded interviews he made with prospector Janet Mears, Harry said his last recollection of his mother, May, was of her being loaded into an ambulance.

When he was 12, he volunteered to come to Australia and his father and an aunt waved him off with 27 other boys from orphanages, on the SS Benalla.

At Fairbridge Farm School in Pinjarra, he learned how to bake bread, chop wood, milk cows and butcher sheep, pigs and bullocks. One one occasion, he could not get bread to rise and kept adding yeast, eventually throwing out the mixture which was eaten by a horse. The horse exploded."

Harry Boucher's funeral took place at the Kalgoorlie Crematorium at 10 am Monday, August 18, 2008. 
ContributorsCreated : 2009-03-12 15:58:13 / From original database

Additional Contributions from : mollipops1

Last Updated : 2009-03-12 16:21:05 /

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3090 ABRAHAM, Reginald Robert1908ENG, STS, Newcastle-under-Lyme Sep 1920 : Minnedosa CAN Catholic Emigration Association  
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3119 ACKLEY, Margaret1881ENG, STS, Stoke on Trent May 1888 : Polynesian CAN Liverpool Catholic Childrens Protective Society (now Nugent Care)  
2977 ADDERLEY, Fanny Hannah1896ENG, STS, Gnosall May 1911 : Victorian CAN Waifs & Strays  
13111 ALLSOP, Ernest1885ENG, STS, Stoke on Trent Jun 1896 : Sardinian CAN Catholic Protection Society  
3698 ANSON, Kate1887ENG, STS, Stoke on Trent Jun 1902 : Siberian CAN Middlemore  
26826 ASHTON, Lucy1922ENG, STS, Wolverhampton May 1934 : Ballarat AUS Fairbridge Homes  
11067 ASTLEY, Katherine E1896ENG, STS Mar 1910 : Tunisian CAN Barnardos  
3768 BAINBRIDGE, Harry1886ENG, STS, Hanley Sep 1905 : Kensington CAN Barnardos  
10669 BARKER, Richard James1894ENG, STS, Hanley Mar 1909 : Dominion CAN Barnardos  
9157 BARLEY, Edward 1894ENG, STS, Wolverhampton May 1907 : Carthaginian CAN Middlemore  
7199 BARLEY, Frederick1897ENG, STS, Wolverhampton May 1907 : Carthaginian CAN Middlemore  
9156 BARLEY, Letitia1900ENG, STS, Wolverhampton May 1907 : Carthaginian CAN Middlemore  
12770 BATE, Albert Victor1902ENG, STS, Dudley Jun 1911 : Carthaginian CAN Middlemore  
3627 BATE, Benjamin1897ENG, STS, Woodsetton Jun 1909 : Carthaginian CAN Middlemore  
4362 BATE, Daisy1904ENG, STS, Woodsetton Jun 1910 : Mongolian CAN Middlemore  
4428 BELL, Kathleen Louisa1922ENG, STS, West Bromich Oct 1934 : Moreton Bay AUS Fairbridge Homes  
16249 BENNETT, Donald Stewart1907ENG, STS, Cannock May 1924 : Franconia CAN Middlemore  
16165 BENNETT, Elizabeth Mabel1904ENG, STS, Lichfield May 1920 : Minnedosa CAN Middlemore  
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5535 BOUCHER, Harold 1915ENG, STS, Wolverhampton Mar 1928 : Benalla AUS Fairbridge Homes  
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