“Canada Bill” Etheridge
“Canada Bill” at his camp on The Dooley. Photograph: LRHS.
Edwin William “Canada Bill” Etheridge was born in October 1876 in Gloucestershire, England. He spent some time in Canada, and acquired a Canadian drawl. He came to Lightning Ridge in the early 1910s.
According to miner, namer-of-famous-stones and Walgett Spectator correspondent John Landers, Etheridge had been working as a ringer when he was persuaded to work alongside Landers and his mate Ronald McDonald in 1912. Etheridge found opal where others had failed, finding stones worth around £500. His claim at what became known as Canada’s opal field was one of the most productive of the early fields, with returns of more than £30,000 over several years.
Etheridge served in World War I, where he was wounded, before returning to the Ridge. In 1922, working with Harold Frazer, he found the opal field that would be known as Butterfly Flat. The field had several good parcels, though there would be much later dispute about whether the famous Butterfly stone itself came from this field.
Etheridge stayed at the Ridge until the early 1920s, before moving to Sydney. He died on 5 August 1925 at Drummoyne, aged 48, and was buried at Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde.
Bill Etheridge’s signature sourced from a petition to resist the relocation of residents from Old Town and The Flat to the surveyed town, 1912.
Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: The Opal Book, Frank Leechman, 1961, p. 202; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, pp. 44, 67, 69; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, pp. 87, 89, 137; ‘Notice of Election in the Supreme Court of New South Wales’, Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales, 16 October 1925, p. 4538.