1899 Coolgardie Mining & Industrial Exhibition Opening Ceremony Program

International Mining & Industrial Exhibition, Coolgardie, Western Australia, 1899. Silk commemorative Opening Ceremony program with an image of the Exhibition building and the opening date (March 21, 1899) on the front, the internal pages providing details for the arrival of the Governor, members of the W.A. Government, Invited Guests, Season Ticket Holders, etc., as well as details of the Ceremony. 26 x 44 cm (opened out). Some water staining, but extremely scarce; we have located only one other example.. Provenance: Sir Ernest Henry Wreford (1866 - 1938), thence, by family descent. Wreford was manager of the Coolgardie branch of the National Bank of Australasia from 1896 to 1906. 'It was nothing but desert in 1892. Seven years later Coolgardie was the third-largest town in Western Australia. Shops lined the extraordinarily wide main street, there were seven newspapers, six banks and two stock exchanges, schools, theatres, churches, a synagogue and a mosque for the 'Afghan' cameleers who kept the 5,000-or-so inhabitants supplied with goods and much of their water. Two cemeteries held over a thousand underground residents, while three breweries and twenty-six hotels slaked the prodigious thirst of the miners. In 1896 the railway arrived and just a few years later 'the mother of the Western Australian goldfields' hosted a World Fair.' [Graham Seal, 'The World Fair in the Desert.']