Frank Doucutt
Francis “Frank” Doucutt (or Duguid) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, around 1850, the son of John and Annabella Duguid. He trained in banking and worked for the City of Glasgow Bank before emigrating to Australia in the early 1870s. After a period with the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency, he was posted to northern New South Wales, eventually taking up the position of bookkeeper at Bangate Station.
Doucutt was a highly educated man with a dry wit. He was a remittance man and had a reputation for having a drinking spree when his regular payments from overseas would arrive. On one occasion, he threw a box of shotgun cartridges into the camp stove after an argument with the cook, blasting apart the stove and sending the cook running seven miles to the Weetalibah Hotel.
Following the publicity surrounding the White Cliffs opal field in the early 1890s, Duguid and hotelkeeper Joe Beckett discussed the possibility of opal mining in the Lightning Ridge area. They arranged a geologist, who assessed (incorrectly) that the opal, if present, would be too deep to be workable. The matter was dropped until 1902, when news reached them that an experienced opal prospector, Charles Nettleton, had identified “pretty stones” as true opal.
Doucutt and Beckett helped organise a formal mining syndicate to prospect. Their first shaft, sunk by Nettleton, was on a site previously identified by the visiting geologist. While the initial shaft was not successful, it set in motion a course of events leading to the beginning of the Lightning Ridge opal industry.
By the early 20th century, Frank Doucutt had moved to Edgeroi Station near Narrabri, where he worked as bookkeeper for more than twenty years. He also handled local electoral duties and regularly donated magazines to the district school.
Frank Doucutt died at the private hospital in Narrabri on 24 August 1926, aged 76, and was buried in the Narrabri Old General Cemetery. He had no known relatives in Australia, though two sisters remained in Scotland.
Article: Research by Russell Gawthorpe and Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Lightning Flash Newspaper, 10 May 1979; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 175; ‘Obituary’, Thew North Western Courier, 2 September, 1926, p. 1.