Local author Lynne Cairns is bringing the raw spirit of Western Australia’s gold rush days back to life with her new historical novel, Gold Town, set for release in April 2025.
Cairns, a Thornlie author with deep roots in WA history, draws on personal family stories and years of research to tell the gripping tale of Nora Patterson, a woman who travels across the country to find her husband in the wild shanty town of 1895 Kalgoorlie.
“My ancestors came to WA during the gold rush and my parents grew up on the WA goldfields, so I heard a lot about the period when I was young,” Cairns said.
“Fresh water could be rarer than gold, and my grandfather’s uncle was one of the men who died of thirst in the near-desert conditions.”
In her book, Cairns introduces readers to Nora Patterson, a resilient and determined woman who becomes the heart of this story set in the 1890s WA goldfields.
Nora’s journey, over 3,000 kilometres from Melbourne to Fremantle, and hundreds more into the goldfields, is a physical and emotional odyssey. But when she arrives in Hannans (now Kalgoorlie), her husband is nowhere to be found.
Alone and broke, Nora is soon caught in the harsh reality of frontier life, where danger comes not just from the brutal landscape, but from the imbalance of hundreds of men and very few women.
“For a woman, obviously the presence of hundreds of men was an ever-present danger, as Nora finds out,” Cairns explained. “Illness, poor medical help, and potent or useless medicines added to the struggle.”
Inspired by her background as a social historian and a lifelong love of WA stories, Cairns said her protagonist represents the strength of real women who helped build early Australia.
“Nora represents the courageous and resilient women, like my ancestors, who helped settle Australia’s wild places,” she said. “We see them in old photographs wearing long skirts and high-necked blouses, standing by the tents and hessian shacks they helped to build.”
While the story is fiction, it’s firmly grounded in history. Cairns used Trove, the National Library of Australia’s online newspaper archive, to uncover forgotten details of everyday life in the 1890s.
“I found the old newspapers a wonderful resource,” she said. “They gave insight into people’s lives that never made it into the history books.”
A former Fremantle maritime historian, Cairns is also known for Secret Fleets, a nonfiction account of WWII submarine operations, and for co-authoring Unfinished Voyages, a book on WA shipwrecks.
In addition to writing, Cairns paints and once played the bagpipes. “The occasional artist or Scottish musician sneaks into my writing,” she added.
Cairns hopes Gold Town resonates especially with readers.
“I hope it encourages people, particularly young women, to realise that we’re capable of surviving and having meaningful lives without the comforts of modern life,” she said. “I’ve known women, like my own mum, who lived through tough times but kept their courage and sense of humour.”
