John A Carvosso – author

Samuel Carvosso book Page 190 – The origins of the Munduthoo name.

I have now spoken with Munduthoo ‘Hardman’ Earle’s granddaughter, Rosslyn Dodgson (nee Banister/Earle), who was living on the same property in northern Victoria during World War 2. He was a ‘kindly man’. Hardman himself spoke of a very different rescue story.

His father, William Earle, has presence in the newspapers of the 1890s, prospecting to the NW of South Australia. The family narrative places it in NW WA. However, the WA may have replaced SA over the years. (I have found no newspaper record of William prospecting in WA.)  William is credited with finding an “Aladin’s Cave” of gold, though he never disclosed its location. This story later became the famous “Lasseter’s reef”.

According to family tradition passed down by Munduthoo Hardman Earle himself, his father William Earle, a South Australian prospector from the Black Springs/Burra district, later farmer near Ardrossan, travelled into remote Western Australia during the nineteenth century in search of gold. During one expedition in the outback, William reportedly became lost and was close to death before being rescued and cared for by Aboriginal people. The king of that tribe, named Munduthoo. In gratitude, William later gave his son, born in 1879, the unusual name Munduthoo Hardman Earle, and named his Yorke Peninsula farm Munduthoo. The son preferred to go by the name Hardman Earle.

The actual rescue account has not yet been found in contemporary newspapers.  Nevertheless, William Earle is documented as a prospector connected with gold discoveries in the remote Tomkinson Ranges region in 1894. A 1903 Adelaide newspaper article referred to “the late Mr. W. Earle” in connection with those discoveries. This establishes that William genuinely had experience prospecting in isolated NW South Australia, where survival often depended on Aboriginal knowledge and assistance.

Many historians believe that Harold Lasseter may have “borrowed” Earle’s original story of finding gold in the Musgrave/Tomkinson region to secure funding for his own 1930 expedition. 

William Earle’s Farm (1880s) – In the 1880s, William Earle was an established farmer in the Ardrossan area. His farm, “Munduthoo,” became a local landmark, and the hill on the property eventually took the same name. ‘The National Library of Australia’s Trove archive contains numerous references to Earle’s prospecting claims and his life on the Yorke Peninsula (Safari).’

Safari made the interesting observation that the aboriginal word Munduthoo may not of the local aborigine language, giving some credence to the story. This would explain why “Munduthoo” has proven difficult to translate using Narungga (the local Yorke Peninsula language) dictionaries.

In conclusion, the desert rescue story is probably better attested as true, whereas the house fire story in my book should be dismissed. The truth is far more interesting!