The Fabulous Londonderry Gold Bubble

       It is a little known fact that Scrooge McDuck arrived at the Kalgoorlie gold fields in the pouch of a kangaroo. It just goes to show that, although separated by half and century and half the world, the story of the great Western Australian gold rush of the 1890s had come to the attention of a well read cartoonist. Kalgoorie is still a major town, with a gigantic open cut mine, because it is no longer feasible for gold to be extracted except on a massive industrial scale. The site of the first discovery, Coolgardie is now a village living on tourism and its history. But 14 km from Coolgardie stands the ghost town of Londonderry. This was the site which, in 1894, brought wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to the original discoverers, and a huge financial "bubble" which brought disappointment and ruin to innumerable others in its wake.