Francis Henry Critch was a loyal employee of the Geraldton “Express” / “Guardian” for over 40 years.
He held the positions of Foreman, Printer and Manager in that time. He had come to the “Express” from the Fremantle Express.
One of his sons, Leo, was among the first settlers in the Tenindewa area, 78 kilometers east of Geraldton, in the early 1900s and during the span of about 30 years he (seemingly) moonlighted for the Express under the pseudonym of (Our Own Correspondent)
Among the following plethora of articles are many he very possibly contributed.
But there were several other contributors including a Mr. Harold Johnson, a Bindu farmer, who contributed using the tag of (From Our Correspondent) and Robert Oldham who did so by using, (By Our Correspondent).
Jim Bedford, another Bindu farmer seemingly wrote under (By Jingo) and maybe more will be identified as time goes by.
It needs to be disclosed that unmasking these “correspondents” has been done 100 years post the event, so to speak, by a process of examining each and every one of these articles written to the papers of the day about Tenindewa and eventually, by a process of elimination, concluding a suspect”.
Within these articles the writers have guarded their nom de plumes reasonably well but occasionally they let a crumb or two of personal information drop and from those crumbs a case has been built to personify each of the above.
Note; All Tenindewa Rainfall data for the years 1908 to the current time is available on one of the following BOM site location numbers …Tenindewa Store (08120) Tenindewa North (08128) Tenindewa South West (08237)
Go to BOM…Go to Past weather…Go to Data and Graphs…Enter one of the location numbers eg 08120
