Harry Anstey

Who was Harry Anstey?

Harry Francis Anstey was a metallurgist and gold prospector who led the prospecting expedition that discovered gold in the Yilgarn, leading to the gold rush that established Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields.

Born in England in 1847, Anstey was educated at Rugby from 1863 to 1865. In 1877, he was living in Earl's Court, Kensington, Middlesex and working as a civil engineer; that year he married Edith Euphemia Carnegie. Anstey arrived in Western Australia on the Yeoman in June 1887, and set up a metallurgical laboratory in Perth.

Shortly afterwards¹, Anstey was invited to join the prospectors Dick Greaves and Ted Payne in a prospecting expedition to Bindoon. Soon after their return, news reached Perth that a Yilgarn farmer had found a nugget while sinking a bore. In response to this news, a prospecting syndicate was formed, and the party was sent to the Yilgarn, with Anstey in command. On about 20 October, the party discovered a rich reef in the Yilgarn Ranges, near the present day site of the town of Southern Cross. The discovery prompted the gold rush that established Southern Cross and the Yilgarn Goldfield, and led to the subsequent rich finds at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie that established the Eastern Goldfields. Many years later, Dick Greaves published The Golden West and How it was Discovered, a book about the discovery of the Yilgarn goldfields, in which he claimed that Anstey was a poor metallurgist; that his contribution to the discovery of the Yilgarn Goldfield was minor; and that he had unfairly claimed both the credit and the financial reward for the discovery.