Hi Listers Was your ancestor a miner in North Queensland and you have "lost his death"? Try Western Australia! The following extract is from a book called "The Rush That Never Ended", regarding the gold-fields of W.A. The break through the desert was one of the hardest tasks in the history of Australian prospecting. It called for the stamp of prospector that tropical Australia had tested in the 1880's. The men from the dry regions of North Queensland and the Northern Terrotory who had rushed the Kimberley and Pilbara and the Murchison were in fact a distinct breed from the prospectors who had blazed the gold trail along the mountains of eastern Austalia. These men employed black-boys to tend their horses, to guide them to water, and to look for gold. This new breed of prospector could endure dust and intense heat; he often preferred them. He was adapt at prospecting without water, a master of dry-blowing and specking. Often he liked native women and so he prospected for long periods in the one area. He succeeded where other gold-seeksers failed. This item is for Joy who found her ancestor's death and burial at Geraldton, WA, in 1895. At the height of the rushes, fevers killed as many men on the Murchison as they had killed on the Kimberley. Enteric fever was widespread in the tent hospital at Cue. On some days at the island on Lake Austin four or five men died, were wrapped in their blankets and buried in coffins hammered from packing cases labelled "Coleman's Mustard"and "Milk Maid Brand". The Geraldton Family History site has an alphbetical list of burials, showing age, date and place - check it out on www.wn.com.au/GFHS/ Judy