In a state that is larger than many countries around the world, you could expect to find some extraordinary stories. Stories of hardship and courage; stories of extreme wealth and extreme poverty; stories of cultural diversity and of bonds formed in adversity; stories of the building of a national identity but also stories of environmental vandalism. It is all there written in the earth. And sometimes the earth is all that is left to mark the passing of the communities that have made up the history of the state. There’s one thing that brings all these stories together – the people who lived them.
2029 will mark two significant Western Australian milestones. The first milestone is the Bicentenary of European settlement. The second is FamilyHistoryWA’s 50th Anniversary. To mark these events, the Society (FHWA) has launched a project to gather together everything we can find about the people who lived in the ghost towns of Western Australia. The project timeframe is six years. The project will be launched in 2029 to coincide with the joint celebrations.
At present the list of identified ghost towns sits at more than 500. Of these perhaps the mining towns are the best known. In the 1901 census the largest towns in Western Australia included the mining towns of Day Dawn, Kanowna, Mount Morgan, and Nannine, all of which are ghost towns today. But there were many other non-mining gazetted towns that reflect Western Australia’s history of building railway lines, a long pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie, timber towns (which supplied the railway sleepers), the government-initiated Soldier Settlement and Group Settlement schemes and towns that were created to service spread out farming communities.
Today I have added 36 new Towns to the alphabetical listing on the website. Over the next few days, I will also add them to the “By Region” and “By LGA” listings so that there’s complete functionality.
The towns include:
Candlelight
Emu Hill
Hester
Holleton
Kukerin
Mount Palmer
Toolibin,
…and lots more!
Check the list to see if your town is included!! Contact us if it is missing or if we have something wrong.
There’s more to Zanthus than its position at the end of every list of Western Australian place names. The name is derived from the latin name for the Kangaroo Paw, Western Austalia’s floral emblem1.
Zanthus appears to have started life as a depot and rail siding during the construction of the Trans Australian Railway. Materials needed for the construction of the railway were sent to Zanthus from Kalgoorlie. Work started on the line (that would join Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie) in 1912 and the line opened in 1917.
The Trans Australian Railway was the main route for the movement of Australian troops during World War II. Here RAAF personnel enjoy a stopover, probably to allow the steam locomotive to take on water, at Zanthus circa 1940 Photo from P Rogers Collection.
In 1921, the census recorded 24 people living at Zanthus and in 1933 there were 26 males and 21 females occupying the same 9 dwellings2. It must have been very crowded! That is the last time Zanthus appears in the census records. However, post 1933 census records carry a couple of caveats. The first is that only localities “in which at least 50 persons were enumerated” are included and that the record is “exclusive of full-blood Aboriginals and of dwellings occupied solely by them”3.
Even so life at Zanthus has never been dull. A quick search of Trove reveals a number of rail-related incidents over the years. In 1948, passengers were stranded when floodwaters washed away tracks and some of the passengers completed their trip in a Golden Airways airplane, and 50 workmen were required to repair the damage4. A derailment in 1953 resulted in tracks being torn up and repair crews worked through the night to have a deviation in place by the following day5. Rain from Cyclone Trixie in 1975 resulted once again in a major washaway, this time requiring construction of a new bridge in just two weeks6. And, as recently as 1999, the Indian Pacific collided with a stationary train on the tracks7. The speed with which each of these incidents was resolved speaks volumes about the continuing importance of the only transcontinental rail link8.
Today, the population of Zanthus is 09 and it appears that it has been that way for a very long time. and Zanthus is a crossing point on the railway where one train pulls off the main line to allow another heading in the opposite direction to pass.
Australian Bureau of Statustics. Census Bulletin No.25 Population and Occupied Dwellings in Localities. 30 Jun 1933. 21 Jan 1936, p.91. https://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/. Accessed 20 Sep 2023 ↩︎
Over the weekend we added 29 more names to the Ghost Towns list. We don’t expect them to be the last. A number of the new listings are schools that have closed in the Shire of Esperance. The list now totals 539. If you know anything about these towns, or know of any that we haven’t yet picked up on, please let us know.
Nungarin North was a small settlement about 2Km north of the current town of Nungarin1.
On 21 Aug 1912, a correspondent from the Merredin Mercury and Central Districts Index reported that that Mr A C McCorry had 700 acres of land to the north of the railway siding at Nungarin. The report continued with the news that Mr McCorry was “erecting a store, a blacksmith’s shop and a stone hotel containing 20 rooms at a cost of £4,000 “2. That roughly equates to $550,000 in today’s money!
This investment seems to have been aimed at encouraging people to move into the area north of the siding as he was also creating several half acre blocks near to the hotel site. The Commissioner of Railways had visited the site and promised to upgrade the Nungarin Siding with the addition of a good shed, lavatories, an extended ramp and the appointment of a man in charge.
Mr McCorry was also a driving force behind the building of an agricultural hall in the area, hosting a fund-raising dance at his home on the 31st March, 1912.
So what happened to Mr McCorry’s entrepreneurial enterprise? Hopefully our ongoing research will tell us and we will let you know.
Source
Joukovsky-Vaisvila, Olga, 1978. Around the Rock: A History of the Shire of Nungarin, Western Australia.↩︎
For a project of this complexity, it is important to get the processes correct right from the beginning. To do this, we need to test our tools and work flows on real examples. So the Project team have chosen four communities that represent different types of settlement, different industries, different population profiles, so that we can work out the bugs before the full teams start work.
Before Broome, Cossack, at the mouth of the Harding River in the Pilbara, was the hub of the pearling industry in Western Australia. Originally named Tien Tsin in 1863, the name was changed to Cossack in 18711 and the townsite was officially declared in 1872. The area is also known by the traditional name Bajinhurrba.
Apart from the pearling industry, it was a major port for the Pastoral industry and, in the 1880s, hundreds of prospectors arrived there searching for gold in the Pilbara. The major buildings in area during this period included a stone wharf, the bonded store and customs house, a post and telegraph office, police barracks, court house, school, tramway and a selection of stores. Chinese, Malays, Japanese and Afghans all came to the area, and many of them, including prisoners, were involved in the construction of the Jarman Island Lighthouse2. By the 1890s, Cossack was a thriving community. However, on 4 April 1898 a major cyclone destroyed much of the town34. By 1900 the pearling fleet had moved north to Broome and by 1910 the municipality was dissolved.
That wasn’t the end of the story. In 1910, a site on Butcher’s Inlet was gazetted as a quarantine reserve for a leprosarium and this remained in operation until 1931 when the remaining fourteen patients were transferred to Darwin5.
People continued to live in Cossack in small numbers until after World War II, but by 1950 it had become a ghost town. The remaining buildings have now been restored, and Cossack has become something of a tourist destination in recent years.
Goongarrie
In 1893 a group of goldminers named Frost, Pickersgill, Bennett and Cahill discovered gold in an area6 about 84Km north of Kalgoorlie. Initially known as 90 Mile (the estimated distance to Coolgardie) or Roaring Gimlet (the sound of the wind blowing through the Gimlet trees)7, the town was gazetted in 1895. The town was located on the railway line that ran between Menzies and Kalgoorlie.
At its peak the town had a water supply, police presence, transport services (coach and later rail), post and telegraph, hotels and a boarding house, a miner’s institute including a library, and a full range of retail including two restaurants.
By 1903 the population was down to 66 while the 1921 postal directory contained only 25 entries8. Eventually the town site became first a pastoral station (also known as Goongarrie) and now part of the Goongarrie National Park.
Nugadong
The settlement at Nugadong grew up around a railway siding on the Wongan Hills to Mullewa Railway in 19139. The Gregory brothers first explored the area in 1846 for agricultural and pastoral potential but no settlement took place for many year10s. In 1894 the Midland Railway, linking Perth and Geraldton, was completed and this brought settlers.
Our research into Nugadong hasn’t gone far yet, but we do know that, in 1922, Arthur Jenner and Tom Hodgson took up war service land there, as did Harry & Jesse Atkinson in 1948 who raised a family of six on a farm there11.
Until the 1970s there was a race track called Nugadong in the area, and the Dalwallinu air field is located by the Nugadong Rail Siding.
The town of Dalwallinu was originally called South Nugadong12.
Goodwood Timber Mill
The Goodwood Timber Mill was chosen as a pilot site to represented the many Timber communities in our list. It is proving to be extremely ghostly. What do we know (or think we know) so far – not a lot!
Most records refer to the settlement simply as “Goodwood”.
We have some births registered at Goodwood between 1885 and 1888
We have a drowning in 1886
On 11 March 1891, J. A. Evans advertised “All houses, buildings and fences at Goodwood Saw Mill” for immediate sale13.
That’s about it. But the search is ongoing. And, after all, we did want to know the sort of challenges we would face during the project, didn’t we!
One of the question we are frequently asked is “What is meant by the term “Ghost Town”? What follows is an attempt to answer that question.
A ghost town is a term used to describe a once-thriving or populated settlement or community that has been largely abandoned and has few or no permanent residents remaining. These towns typically experienced a decline in economic activity or some other significant change in circumstances that led to their abandonment. There are various reasons why a town may become a ghost town, including:
Economic downturn: Many ghost towns were originally established as mining towns or as centers of economic activity linked to industries like mining, timber, agriculture, or manufacturing. When these industries declined or collapsed, people left in search of better opportunities elsewhere.
Resource depletion: In cases where a town’s existence was tied to the extraction of a finite resource, such as coal or minerals, once those resources were exhausted, the town often declined and was abandoned.
Changes in transportation: The construction of new transportation routes, such as highways or railroads, can bypass existing towns, leading to their economic isolation and eventual decline.
Project completion: In Western Australia many of our ghost towns grew up to support the development of huge infrastructure projects, such as the Goldfields Pipeline, the Trans-Australian Railway, and the construction of water and power infrastructure. When the projects were completed, the people moved on to the next one.
Government actions: In some instances, government policies or decisions, such as the establishment of new national parks or the relocation of communities for various reasons, have resulted in towns being abandoned.
Ghost towns can vary in size and historical significance. Some have been well-preserved as historical landmarks, offering a glimpse into the past, while others have deteriorated or disappeared entirely. People may visit ghost towns for tourism, historical research, or as a way to experience a unique and often eerie atmosphere associated with these abandoned places.
Some ghost towns aren’t towns at all. They were communities that grew up organically for many different reasons, such as telegraph stations, rail sidings or timber mills. Some of these communities went on to become towns and even cities, while some just disappeared.
As we work through the project, we will be assessing every community on a case-by-case basis. You can help us. Tell us what you know about these places and help us to make the right decision.
People of Western Australia's Ghost Towns 