Russian Jack Biography

Australian gold prospectorFor the park in Anchorage, Alaska, see Russian Jack Springs Park.

Russian Jack's grave stone at Fremantle Cemetery

Ivan Fredericks (1864–1904), known as Russian Jack (Русский Джек), was a goldminer of the Western Australian gold rush in the 1880s. In 1885, while working in the Halls Creek goldmines, he pushed his sick friend in a wheelbarrow 300:km through the Great Sandy Desert to Wyndham, the nearest town with a medical centre. A statue was erected to him in Halls Creek. He is buried in Fremantle Cemetery. While he may not be very well known in Russia, Russian Jack is a famous figure in Western Australia.

The Peter J. Bridge work Russian Jack claims the actual distance travelled to the nearest medical centre was not 300:km but actually closer to 50:km.

Notes


    Description above from the Wikipedia article Russian Jack, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

    Russian Jack