Bill Wedgwood
William Henry “Bill” Wedgwood (sometimes spelled Wedgewood) was born 11 June 1858 in Collingwood, Victoria. He married Margaret Lindsay Russell in 1883 in Queensland, and they raised six children.
Wedgwood was a barber, miner and community advocate. By 1909 he was on the opal fields, where along with mining partners he found a large, bright stone, but it was unfortunately broken by the miner’s pick.
In January 1910 he was robbed of several hundred rough and cut stones, stolen from his tent at Wallangulla.
Bill Wedgwood working on the Three Mile.
Bill Wedgwood was the self-appointed and community endorsed “Mayor of Lightning Ridge”. He was honorary secretary of the Three Mile School in 1910 and a member of the Three Mile Progress Association. He worked very hard for the settlements, writing a number of lengthy and detailed letters to government agencies in an attempt to smooth over hostilities as instruction was given the vacate the Old Town and Three Mile settlements in favour of the new surveyed town.
In the 1920s he signed the Western Lands Petition to secure public space for miners, and by 1930 he was running a barber’s shop in Morilla Street.
In 1931, during the Depression, he and “Big Otto” mined a stone that would be later known as The Queen of Australia. They sold it for £10, but within twenty years the same stone, cut and polished, was valued at £15,000.
After a long illness, Wedgwood was transferred from hospital in Walgett to Sydney, returning to Lightning Ridge before he passed away in 1934. He is buried at Lightning Ridge Cemetery.
Bill (Will) Wedgwood’s signature sourced from correspondence to the Minister of Mines regarding the preservations of businesses at the Three Mile Flat settlement, 24 May 1910.
Article: Research by Russell Gawthorpe and Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Walgett Spectator, 15 April 1910, 12 May 1934; The Daily Telegraph, 23 March 1933, p. 14; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 36; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, p. 74; A Journey With Colour: A History of Lightning Ridge Opal 1873-2003, Len Cram, 2003, pp. 114, 163-164, 361.