William Frederick Wilkes (1884-1920) (Third Generation)

William was the third child of Christina Power/Minogue and Frederick William Wilkes. He enlisted in the army at the age of 18 and went to the Boer war in South Africa in 1902, serving in the 2/23 infantry as a supervisor of horses.

William held the license of the Gol Gol hotel (built in 1877, four miles down the river on the NSW side, from Mildura) from 1908 to 1917 (see map).
The Chaffeys brothers had founded Mildura (with irrigation commencing in 1886) as a temperance town (like the earlier California irrigation settlements). They made it a condition that there was to be no liquor sold in that area (of Victoria).
A railway line joined Melbourne and Mildura in 1903. Mildura gew to close to the size of Wentworth around this time, but remained without a hotel until 1918, when the Grand Hotel was opened.
The Gol Gol punt began operation across the Murray river in 1910, and was popular with Mildura people who wanted to buy alcohol. Alongside the punt there there was a…
“…row boat ferry service (operated) by two aboriginals named Wurlong and Black Mac for a fee of sixpence return. The customers would sometimes get a little rough and throw both owners bodily in the river. Granny Minogue was one to make sure they survived such ordeals. When Wurlong and Black Mac died, a gathering of twenty or so Aboriginals wailed for twenty hours as part of the mourning ritual interrupted only by Granny Minogue’s meals”.
(from Timelines of Wentworth shire (Peter Thomson 2007) p.53)

Granny Minogue lived in Gol Gol with William, her grandson, for the last nine years of her life, dying in 1920 aged 84 years.

… she was always a careful, thoughtful person. She had been known to intervene when Police caught and handcuffed an aboriginal to a tree in Gol Gol when she owned the Gol Gol hotel. While the police were rounding up other offenders she cut him loose. She was to retire in Wentworth. (P. Thomson)

Des also told this story, adding that she cut through the rope with an axe.

Around 1920 William purchased a sheep property called Darragh at Youll Plain, on the Murrumbidgee, near Balranald (see map) and married Molly Garrigan.