“BACK TO THE MULGA”

Evening Star, Issue 22805, 13 November 1937, Page 10

“BACK TO THE MULGA”

A MINISTER'S QUEST Somewhere in the Erliston district, 700 miles inland in West Australia, there is a mulga tree, under which the Minister of Labour, Mr Mackrell, hopes shortly to retrieve a “ sock ” of gold specimens which h© secreted there .in his prospecting days 35 years ago (says the Melbourne ‘ Age ’). The Minister spent three years from 1902 prospecting in the back country, and one Good Friday he found a rich specimen, which, with several others believed to be worth at least £lO, he wrapped in on© leg of an undergarment and buried under a mulga tree near the camp—a popular hiding place in the early gold days. Suddenly he received a call to return to his home State, and in his hasty departure he was unable to locate the hidden treasure. Mr Mackrell remarked yesterday that he had long promised his wife a visit to “ The West,” and that he had arranged this for next autumn, when he, intended to journey to the interior in search of the mulga tree, and incidentally to see the magnificent everlasting flowers that bloom over hundreds of square miles of the outback. The quest will involve 100 miles of travel from the Laverton railhead to a spot which 30 odd years ago contained only 60 whites, and where only two women were seen in three years. The Minister fondly cherishes the hope that he will locate the “plant” from the position of the dump of the old Golden Spinifex mine, but old-timo prospectors and fossickers amongst his friends, who know the eagerness with which potential treasure plants were plundered by adventurous wanderers, are prepared to wager that the mission “ back to the mulga ” will be made in vain.