Respected Goldfields stalwart remembered for dedication to recording region’s history

A respected Kalgoorlie-Boulder historian and community stalwart is being remembered for her kind and humble character and contributions to documenting Goldfields history.

Teresa Thelma “Tess” Thomson nee Peart died on April 5, aged 86.

She was born in Kalgoorlie Regional Hospital to father Jack and mother Patricia in 1938.

Ms Thomson attended Boulder Central School where she received an academic prize which provided her with a limited membership to the Boulder Municipal Library.

Tim Cudini, Ms Thomson’s grandson, said she became fascinated with the library and the learning opportunities it presented and asked her parents for an ongoing membership.

“Her parents weren’t particularly wealthy, but they managed to have enough money to do that,” he said.

“She read through the whole children’s section of the library within a year or so, and then had to get permission from the librarian to start reading the adult section.”

This set her on course as an enthusiastic reader and life-long learner.

“You’d always find her . . . with a book in her hand, usually fiction or some kind of historical fiction,” Mr Cudini said.

Ms Thomson completed school in 1953 and was employed by D&J Fowler, a grocery wholesale chain operating in Kalgoorlie.

At the age of 17 she moved to Perth to undertake studies at Stott’s Business College.

It was there she met Barrie Thomson and the couple married in May 1958 and moved to Boulder.

They had four children — Jim, Megan, Catherine and Joy.

Ms Thomson completed a five-year stint with Kalgoorlie School of the Air before she was employed at Christian Brothers College with the school’s library.

In 1978, she became involved with the Eastern Goldfields Historical Society and spearheaded a project to identify forgotten graves at Boulder Pioneer Cemetery.

She helped to create the historical society’s first cataloguing system in collaboration with June O’Brien and was later awarded a life membership.

Ms Thomson’s research led her to join the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Cemetery Board where she held the position of honorary secretary (1982 to 1993) and board historian (1993 to 2012).

Her work with the cemetery board saw her spend time in Kalgoorlie Town Hall.

A fascination with the mayoral portraits led her to compile information on the town’s former mayors and write a biography of Sir Richard Moore, which was published in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Ms Thomson also wrote a biography on Paddy Hannan, titled A Claim to Fame.

Research for the biography took her as far as the village of Quin, Ireland, and the suburb of Brunswick, Victoria, to meet Hannan’s relatives.

Mr Cudini, City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder heritage officer and EGHS president, said Ms Thomson’s projects sparked his own passion for the region’s history.

“I grew up hearing all of the stories of prospectors and Paddy Hannan,” he said.

“One of my earliest memories was going to the launch of the (Paddy Hannan) book at the Kalgoorlie Town Hall.

“At the same time they had the centenary of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and so I was there at the planting of Paddy Hannan’s tree.”

Ms Thomson was the driving force behind a decision to host the Royal West Australian Historical Society’s 1993 State conference in Kalgoorlie-Boulder during the centenary year of the discovery of gold.

Mr Cudini described Ms Thomson as a professional and organised historian with a kind and caring character.

“She was a very warm person, very easy to get along with and have a joke,” he said.

“As you met her you could tell she was a very intelligent lady, very well organised.

“Everything in her office, all of her research, was very neatly catalogued.”

Ms Thomson was inducted into the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Walk of Fame in 2022.

Then mayor John Bowler described Ms Thomson as a “true Goldfielder” who played an important role in recording the region’s story.

“She was a fantastic historian. If she wrote it, you knew it was accurate,” he said.

“She is a very worthy inductee into the Walk of Fame.”