Peters Icecream, Miling, Western Australia - Ghost Signs on Waymarking.com

Miling was established on its present site in 1925 when the railway was completed. There was already a thriving group of farmers in the area, the first of these had arrived in 1906 to start clearing the virgin bush blocks they had selected.

This early group settled around an area approximately eight kilometres north east of Miling that contained a natural spring called the Duckling Mining Spring.

The name Miling was derived from this spring and there was a deliberate change of a road sign by one of the early settlers that cemented the change.

The population of the area grew constantly through the decades as farms were developed and productivity increased through the advent of superphosphate fertiliser and subterranean clover.

As the size of machinery grew and the value of commodities fell farmers started to increase their acreages and employ less people, this led to a population decline that has continued from the late 1960s to the present day.

In 1966 and again in 1967 I stopped at Miling on my way to and from the Murchison Region (1,000 kilometres further north), and at the time the only businesses in town were this eatery, a 'motor service station and garage', a 'stockfeed merchant', and I almost forgot, a hotel.

I ate at the eatery on each occasion, as it was the only place for over a hundred kilometres in either direction to buy food.

I don't recall the eatery looking particularly new or 'recently constructed' at the time.

Of course at the time of my earlier visits I wouldn't have noticed the hotel, because until December 1969 I couldn't legally enter it, and by then I could have entered 3 years earlier when they changed the drinking age to 18. It's a sad indictment on the society of the day when I could legally fight and die for my country in Vietnam, but I couldn't drink to my survival in my home state.