Biography

The deceased had been employed at the Champion Gold Mine since his arrival in Kookynie. Dunkley went into a stope at No. 8 level at 8 o'clock In the morning with three mates. Dunkley remarked that the night shift had left the hanging-wall in a rather dangerous way and that he would get a bar and knock some of the stuff down before starting work. He turned to get a bar and, as he did so, a stone (weighing about 8cwt.) fell on him. When the stone was removed, Dunkley was dead. The deceased had been in the district for about three months. Dunkley's parents married in Perth in 1870 (Marriage Registration 3079/1870, Perth). They had two children, William and a daughter named Frances Mary born in Perth in 1875, who married Thomas Hatch in 1889 at Dandaragan and died in 1907. Ellen Dunkley (nee Day) then married Henry James Dennis in 1875 and a further four children were born to that couple. Little is known of William Thomas Dunkley's life before he arrived in Kookynie.