For many Shetlanders who left in the nineteenth century, the story ends at the shoreline: a departure, a voyage, an arrival in a distant colony. But for the Sinclair brothers of Dunrossness, the story did not end there. It continued far inland, into a dry and unfamiliar landscape where water had to be made, and where communication depended on a single wire stretching across vast distances.
In October 1891 the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition reached Fraser Range Station, pausing before continuing north towards the Murchison. Led by David Lindsay and financed by Sir Thomas Elder, the expedition was one of the last great privately funded journeys into the Australian interior. Its aims were scientific as well as geographical: to collect specimens, record geological formations, and extend knowledge of a region still only partly understood by colonial authorities.
Yet even such an expedition depended on more than camels, instruments, and scientific ambition. Movement through the interior relied on a fragile network of stations, water sources, and the scattered workers who made travel possible. Among these were the Sinclair brothers.
At the very moment the expedition reached Fraser Range, Laurence Sinclair was also travelling there under contract to sink reservoirs. His work lay not in exploration but in the harder task of making water available in a dry and uncertain land. Their paths crossed at a place recorded as Jennapulup. Lindsay noted the meeting in his journal:
“Met here… a Mr. Sinclair, who has a contract for sinking reservoirs on the Fraser Range station… I arranged with him to bring… the collections made by the scientists, to Esperance Bay.”
It is a fleeting entry, but it reveals much. Exploration depended on men already working in the country—men like Sinclair, who knew the ground and could move through it. The expedition might map and describe the land, but it was contractors and station workers who made it usable.
When Lindsay later returned to Fraser Range after a spell at Esperance, he found Laurence deeply engaged in dam construction. In inland Western Australia, “dam sinking” was not the building of a formal structure but the reshaping of the land to capture scarce rainfall. Natural depressions were deepened, clay layers exposed, and low embankments formed from the excavated earth. Without machinery, everything depended on labour.
Lindsay described the scene:
“Some natives with shovels, others with their hands fill handbarrows, made with two mallee sticks and a flour bag… Old and young of both sexes… are thus employed.”
It is an evocative picture: improvised tools, coordinated effort, and the steady reshaping of the land. It also reminds us that much of this labour was Aboriginal. Their work—rarely recorded in detail—was essential to the development of pastoral infrastructure. Contractors like Laurence Sinclair depended on it to complete projects that would determine whether stock could survive in these dry districts.
Water was the key to everything. In Shetland, it was abundant and rarely remarked upon. In inland Western Australia, it was the central fact of life. To find it, hold it, and make it reliable was to make settlement possible. Dams and wells became fixed points in a shifting landscape, guiding both travellers and stock.
If Fraser Range represents the problem of water, Esperance reveals another necessity: communication. During his stay on the coast, Lindsay encountered a “Mr Sinclair” at the telegraph station—almost certainly Laurence’s brother James. The settlement itself was small, little more than a sheep station, telegraph office and police post, yet it was connected to the wider world by the electric telegraph.
Lindsay’s description of its operation is particularly striking. The telegraph station stood some distance from the main buildings, and when a message was received a flag was raised on a mast. This signal would be seen from the station, and an Aboriginal messenger sent to collect the telegram. Communication thus moved in stages: from distant centres along the wire, then by signal and runner across the final stretch.
The system was both modern and improvised. The telegraph line itself was part of a vast network linking remote settlements to Perth, Adelaide and beyond. Yet its operation on the ground depended on sightlines, distance, and human carriers. The raising of a flag and the dispatch of a runner were as important as the electric signal itself.
For places like Esperance, the telegraph was a lifeline. It allowed communication with markets and authorities, coordinated shipping and supplies, and offered rare contact with distant family. Lindsay himself was granted use of the line to communicate with his wife—a small but telling reminder of how precious such communication could be.
Seen together, the roles of Laurence and James Sinclair show how migrant families adapted to this new world. One brother worked inland, shaping the land to hold water; another worked at the coast, maintaining the flow of information. Between them lay a network of movement—of people, goods, and messages—linking the interior to the outside world.
Lindsay noted, almost in passing, that a prospector had been in the district the previous year. Within two years, gold would be discovered at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, transforming the region. Laurence Sinclair himself would soon be drawn into that story. In 1894, while working in the Dundas district, he made the discovery that led to the establishment of Norseman.
That discovery would change his life, but it also grew naturally out of his earlier experience. The skills required—reading the land, understanding water, enduring isolation—were the same skills that had taken him to Fraser Range in the first place.
The story of the Sinclair brothers begins in Dunrossness but unfolds across a very different landscape. Like many Shetlanders, they did not remain in one place but moved into roles shaped by opportunity and necessity. In a dry inland country, water had to be made and managed; in isolated coastal settlements, communication had to be maintained.
Their brief appearance in Lindsay’s journal—one brother encountered on the track, another at the telegraph station—offers a glimpse of how such families became part of the infrastructure of the frontier. It is a small moment, easily overlooked, but it reveals something larger: how Shetland migrants, working in different ways, helped sustain the networks of water, labour, and communication on which inland Western Australia depended.
Sources
- Journal of the Elder Exploring Expedition 1891, Adelaide, 1893.
- State Library of South Australia, Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition Collection.
- ‘The Norseman Find’, The W.A. Record, 8 November 1894.
Copyright © 2026 Michael Robinson.
Non-commercial use permitted with attribution.
Last updated 22 April 2026
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