John Maley's walking stick

This walking stick was hand-carved from jam wood by John S. Maley in the late 1890s.

In 1863 Maley opened a General Store adjacent to the flourmill and by 1867 built another flourmill at Dongara. Maley introduced modern farming equipment to the district and was the first person at Greenough to grow grapes commercially. He also planted a large orchard of fruit trees including olives, figs and almonds.
Maley assisted in establishing organizations such as the Victoria Agricultural Society, the Victoria Horticultural Society, the Greenough Agricultural Society, and the Greenough Board of Education. He was a founding member of the Greenough Roads Board, of which he was chairman for a number of years and a member for many more.
Maley also worked as an auctioneer, selling the property and possessions of farmers bankrupted after losing successive wheat crops to red rust. He increased his land holdings in the district, buying farms on the Front and Back Flats. He built and owned the Golden Sheaf Hotel and a brewery in Geraldton. Quite the entrepreneur, he was known locally as the “King of the Flats.”
There were economic setbacks in the late 1880’s when the railway was built on the Back Flats and not via the Golden Sheaf Hotel and the Victoria Mill. In February 1888 the Greenough Flats was devastated by floodwaters and whilst neither Maley’s home nor his mill was damaged, water flowed through the Golden Sheaf Hotel. His biggest losses were the many debts owed him by the struggling farmers on the Greenough Flats.
By 1890 Maley was in serious financial difficulty with the bank pressing for recovery of debts. The store closed its doors, the Victoria Flour Mill ceased grinding in 1891 and the Golden Sheaf Hotel was sold.
A sick and broken man, Maley died in this house on 28 December 1910. He is buried in the Greenough Cemetery.

The walking stick was donated in 1979 by his grand-daughter Claudia Kniest Whitfield.