Ghostly Scrabble

One of the most frequent questions that is asked is how do we decide what communities are included on our list of Ghost Towns. Other frequently asked questions are – how do you choose what towns to work on? and when will my favourite town be included? So I thought I might run through the process from start to finish to help everyone to understand what is going on in the background.

So we started at least eight months ago now, with a preliminary list of Ghost Towns that numbered about 250. It was only ever a starting point, but it was a great way to kick everything off. We created a master list that included, not only the name of the town, but any/all alternative names. Some of the towns only ever had one name (as far as we know) but others have, over time, been known by two, three, four or even five different names. The main name for a community is known as Primary, while all the rest are known as Secondary.

A couple of great examples of this are included in our Pilot. Cossack was originally known as Tien Tsin, and by the traditional name of Bajinhurrba. In some records it is recorded as Tien Tsin Harbour or Butcher’s Inlet. And other records talk about the Lazarette (the Cossack Leprosarium). Goongarrie was originally called 90 Mile or Ninety Mile, as well as Roaring Gimlet and sometimes called Canegrass or Canegrass Swamp. When we are researching Cossack and Goongarrie, we have to also research all of the alternative names to make certain we don’t miss anyone. So the original list of 250 grew very quickly to 500 or more. Once we launched the Facebook group and started to get media coverage we received lots more leads, so that, by the time the Pilot started to actually collect data the list was nearing 700.

We chose the first four communities that are part of the Pilot early on. They were chosen because they represent a cross section of the types of community that will be found in the full list. But the question now arose – How do we decide the order in which we will proceed through the list? We needed to come up with a process that spread the workload evenly and was not influenced by any indivduals personal preference for any of the towns.

Step 1 – estimating how much work might be involved in processing any particular town on the list.

The tasks were ranked as High – more than 200 records, Medium – between 76 and 199 records, Low – between 26 and 75 records, and Small – less than 25 records. To spread the workload, we made the decision that each phase of the project would include:

• High – 1 communities
• Medium – 2 communities
• Low – 4 to 6 communities
• Small – 6 or more communities

Step 2 – Determining the order in which the communities will be processed

And now the fun starts. How do you choose the communities for each phase without fear or favour. We considered pulling names out of a hat, but then we came up with a fun game that made a very long, potentially tedious, task become fun – Scrabble tiles (just 26 tiles, no duplicates).

Starting with the list of High Primaries, we drew the first tile. G. And just like that we had the first town for Phase 2 – Gwalia. Putting the G back into the bag, we filtered the list so that we had Medium Primaries. Then we drew two tiles – B and E. And so it went all the way through the list until every community was prioritised. It took several days, but by the end we had a prioritised list.

New communities being added to the list

Since that was done nearly 100 more communities have been suggested to be added to the project. These will be considered by the Project Board and, if suitable, will be added to the prioritised list. Of course, the pressure is off as they will, of course, be added to the latest phases of the project.

Right now, we are working on the Pilot and it is going very well.

And, let me be the first to thank our wonderful Volunteers. You guys rock!