Albert Miles

c. 1876 – 11/9/1941

Albert was born in Forrest Creek (Castlemaine) Vic, and even as a child at school was fascinated by faraway places. He made up his mind to go to Port Darwin. At that time, early in the 1900’s the railway went only as far as Oodnadatta, so he would have walked most of the way to Darwin from there, taking what jobs he could get along the way.

An account of his walk appeared in the Melbourne Age in 1911. Away 4 years, he had made a round trip of 6,000 miles from Melbourne to Melbourne via Darwin.

It is not known when he arrived in Coober Pedy but he was certainly here in the 1930’s. He was somewhat of a naturalist, interested in reptiles and fossils as there are newspaper articles about how he unearthed petrified trees, the size of telegraph poles and of seeing giant perentie lizards.

Once while on a walkabout, he was cut off by flood waters at Mt Willoughby and lived for 5 days on raw tadpoles and pigface until an aboriginal on horseback met him.

When he was found dead (of apparent suicide) in his water tank outside his dugout, local residents were shocked as he was in a sound financial position, always cheerful and ready to help others.