While in the West Australian goldfields, I tracked down the Darling Downs’ most successful builder of the last two centuries. I told a version of this story live on Darling Downs radio 4AK.

The trail began when I researched Daniel or Dan Connolly who is 1886 was charged with murdering the Warwick police constable Thomas Kelly on Queensland’s Darling Downs. An altercation took place between the two in the lane at the back of the Warwick police stables.

Connolly knocked Constable Kelly down, the constable was left unconscious, somehow with a broken leg, and he died a few days later. Warwick’s Dr. Frederick Margetts testified that the constable’s death was hastened by the treatment handed out by Connolly.

The doctor’s sons included Andrew who had thousands of fish fall from the sky on his property, Albert who appeared in Warwick courthouse when he and his arch nemesis threatened to burn each other’s house down, and Thomas who spent time in Brisbane’s Boggo Road gaol for failing to pay his wife alimony.

Connolly was committed to stand trial in Toowoomba on a charge of murder. However, without explanation the charge was downgraded to manslaughter, and then it was dropped altogether. That meant that Connolly never faced trial, and no one was ever brought to justice for the constable’s death.

Warwick was the location of remarkable election riots in 1871, so the place was known to be pretty rough and ready back then, and it’s more than possible that Connolly benefitted from his connections.

He is likely to be the same Dan Connolly who later went into partnership with his cousin James Connolly and built a number of the public buildings both in Warwick and Clifton. The cousin went to Western Australia and tried to persuade our Dan to join him. But Dan preferred to live in Warwick where he twice ran for state parliament and served on the Warwick council for 25 years including 10 years as mayor.

And so, when I was in Kalgoorlie last week, I traced the cousin James Connolly who of course is another high-achieving product of the Darling Downs. I discovered that he was even more influential and is even linked to Herbert Hoover the U.S. president.

James Connolly was born in 1869 in Allora, he began his schooling at Warwick, and trained as a quantity surveyor. His first project was not surveying but constructing a school building at Elphinstone near Allora where his sister was a pupil teacher.

Gold had just been discovered in Western Australia when Connolly went west in 1893 and he began building there. The fabulous wealth being unearthed in the goldfields meant that his construction contracts were up to £200,000 or over $200 million dollars in today’s money.

Connolly was subsequently elected to the Kalgoorlie town council and went onto serve in both houses of the Western Australia parliament. He went to London where he served as agent-general for Western Australia, he was knighted, and then served as agent-general for Malta.

While I was in Kalgoorlie, I stayed in the Palace Hotel. It was built in 1897 and was one of the many buildings in town that were put up by Connolly.

Herbert Hoover – the future US president – lived at the Palace Hotel when he was a mining engineer. Hoover fell in love with a bargirl there and gifted a huge hand carved mirror. The mirror is still there today, and it is amazing. I stayed up by Herbert Hoover’s room and enjoyed the view from balcony, and I can say that hotel’s entrance and staircase are just as impressive today as ever.

It’s amazing the West Australian legacy, particularly in Kalgoorlie, left by James Connolly the boy from Allora on the Darling Downs. He was a cousin of the Warwick mayor, followed the goldrush west, and I think is pretty much unknown in his hometown in the east today.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON 4AK.

Photo credits:
Palace Hotel, Kalgoorlie, 2026 – Harold Peacock 20260606_130823.
Doctor Frederick Margetts of Warwick driving a horsedrawn buggy c1890 – State Library of Queensland.
Mr Dan Connolly – Warwick Daily News, 15th July 1948, page 2.
President Herbert Hoover – Wikimedia Commons.
Sir James Daniel Connolly – National Portrait Gallery, London.
The Hoover Mirror, Palace Hotel, Kalgoorlie, 2026 – Harold Peacock 20260605_171815.