Notes from research by Newton Walkington
Born on 13th October, 1874 at Appila in South Australia. His father was a farmer at Appila from about 1873-1880. At the age of 18, (18920r 1893) attracted by the news of the latest gold discoveries in the Coolgardie/Kalgoorlie area in Western Australia, he left home and took a boat to Esperance, the southern port for the new goldfields area. It should be noted that his father remarried in 1892. On arrival, he walked the 126 miles north to the mining area of Norseman and then a similar distance north again to the Coolgardie/Kalgoorlie goldfields. He was later joined here by his elder brother, Fred. and they prospected and mined together until Fred’s death of typhoid in the epidemic of 1896.
Albert then moved on to the goldfields at Ravensthorpe, 120 miles west of Esperance, and was joined here by his younger brothers Arthur and Gilbert. Albert was a keen cyclist, operated a cycle agency at Ravensthorpe, and sometimes took part in cycle races in Esperance. It was here at Esperance that he met his future wife, Elsie May Crossman, who was living there with her Aunt, Mrs William Rossiter (her mother having died when she was 5.). Elsie later moved with her Aunt to Guildford, Western Australia, but the marriage with Albert had been arranged, and took place in Albany, Western Australia, Wesleyan Church, on 9th April, 1902.
After their honeymoon at the Esplanade Hotel, Middleton Beach, Albany, Albert and Elsie travelled back by boat to Hopetown (the small port, 33 miles south of Raventhorpe) and thence to Raventhorpe, where they lived for some years. Their daughter, Audrey Edith, was born here on 28th September, 1903, and their first son, Albert Victor, on the 22nd February, 1908. Around 1909 they spent a short time at Mundaring, in the hills near Perth, where Albert’s younger brother Gilbert now had an orchard, after which they moved to Norseman, and then back to Ravensthorpe again, where their second son Kenneth George was born on 15th August, 1910.
Around 1912 the family moved back to South Australia, and lived at Kilkenny. Albert joined his wife’s sister’s husband Charley Grant in running a grocery store on the Parade at Norwood. This venture did not prove a success, so Albert then took a position as manager of a chaff mill at Salisbury.
About 1914 they moved back to Western Australia and lived for a short period at a house in Stirling Highway, Claremont (a suburb of Perth) before returning to their favourite town, Ravensthorpe, where they remained for the next four years. Albert mining and Elsie running a newsagency. In 1919 they returned to Perth and opened a greengrocery shop at Cottesloe. This was not a success, so the family moved to a house in Maylands while Albert sought work at the stone quarries at Donnybrook in the southwest of the state, and then later in 1919 they all moved to the small mining town of Westonia, 200 miles east of Perth. Conditions here were arduous, and after the whole family had one by one succumbed to a Spanish Influenza Epidemic they travelled to Albany for a holiday. Their daughter Audrey obtained employment at Drew Robinson’s store there and remained in Albany when the time came for the rest of the family to return to Westonia. It was here that Audrey met her future husband, Robert Stanley Greenhalgh, whom she married two years later on 23rd August, 1922.
In 1920 Albert and Elsie with their two sons, now aged 10 and 12 moved back to the Perth area and bought the house at 24 Ivanhoe Street, Bassendean, where Albert and Elsie were to spend the rest of their lives. Albert established himself as a plumber, bred some horses, and also invested in several blocks of land in the area. The two sons married, Albert Victor to Hilda Hodgson in 1929, and Kenneth George to Ethel Maddren in 1933.
Albert Walkington died at Bassendean on 6th September 1946, aged 71 years and was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery in Lot FA94 in the Wesleyan Section. Elsie May Walkington lived on alone at their Bassendean house, a gentle saintly person surrounded by her carefully tended gardens, and loved by her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, until her death on 4th June, 1974, 100 years after the year of her husband’s birth, at the age of 92. Her body was cremated and the ashes sprinkled upon her husband’s grave, where the headstone now records their two liv
“in loving memory of our beloved husband and father
Albert Walkington, passed away 6th September, 1946 aged 71 years.
Joined by his dear wife and our loved mother, Elsie May, 4th June, 1974aged 92 years, At Rest.”