Such Was Life: GW Hall
Virtually unknown today, Welsh entrepreneur and amateur geologist GW Hall was a true “movers-and-shaker” in the early years of the WA Goldfields Hall was a journalist, later London financier, who found himself investigating mining leases for his business partner Pritchard Morgan in outback Western Australia. Around a campfire one night Hall heard about a potential gold find near Mount Leonora.The name of the lease was Sons of Gwalia (Sons of Wales). Intrigued by the name Hall investigated and quickly realised its potential. He rushed to Coolgardie and bought the lease from a fellow Welshman who had backed the original prospectors who staked the claim. Over the next two years Hall used his journalism background to feed glowing reports to newspapers; hosted lavish dinners in London; built a town and major industrial underground mine on the edge of the desert; and oversaw the successful flotation of the company on the London Stock Exchange. Hall became very wealthy and popular - and a political career beckoned. But matters turned sour for Hall. Mining accidents, falling share prices and his wife’s scandalous affair with a Uniting Church Reverend resulted in making Hall virtually penniless and, ten years after that campfire conversation, Hall returned to Wales. As his biographer, Alwyn Evans, explains Hall was “like a meteor” flashing across the sky - and then forgotten. However, over 125 years after that outback campfire conversation, the Sons of Gwalia is still a working gold mine.
