Ebagoolah
Within the locality of Yarraden, in Ajabatha and Bakanh country west of Princess Charlotte Bay and forty kilometres south of Coen, Ebagoolah is a former mining camp on the western fall of the McIlwraith Range on the Cape York Peninsula. The short-lived centre of the newly proclaimed Hamilton Goldfield was surveyed in September 1900 by James P. Cobon following prospector John Dickie's report of gold in the area in January. While its name may have been a Bakanh word meaning place of stones and snakes, the most Aboriginal pronunciation of gold (gool) with an ah appended ah is equally likely.
By 1901, the town had a population of three hundred, three hotels, and assorted other businesses, including two butchers, two cordial manufacturers, a chemist, a baker, two barbers, two blacksmiths, a confectioner, a tobacconist, a dressmaker, two auctioneers, a commission agent, an accountant, police station, post office and telegraph station, a tent hospital run by the chemist's wife. A hospital building was erected in 1903, while a school operated between 1905 and 1914. A Government well provided the township's water.
By 1910, the population was down to 101. The mines were closed by 1913, and the town was all but deserted when World War I broke out. The last resident died in 1958. The township site and the Ada Stewart battery's remains were added to the Queensland Heritage Register in May 2006.
Links to add:
Yarraden
Coen
McIlwraith Range
James P. Cobon
John Dickie
Ada Stewart battery
