Bardoc

Bardoc is an abandoned town in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. Located 50 Kilometres north of Kalgoorlie, it is situated between Kalgoorlie and Menzies along the Goldfields Highway. Alluvial gold was first discovered in the area in 1894, and by 1895, when the town was surveyed, over 400-500 men were working the area with four hotels to quench their thirst at the end of the day. The town was gazetted on 3 June 1896. The town’s name is from the Aboriginal word barduk meaning near or close. What this remote location may have near or close to remains a mystery!

However, by 1908 no mines were in operation and the town was effectively deserted¹. By 1911 the police station, which had been constructed in 1897, was closed. In 1914 the areas was flooded and the few remaining residents received provision from Broad Arrow. The 1921 Bardoc Postal Directory lists 21 names – including a postmistress and a teacher and two female licencees². By 1981, a visitor to Bardoc would have found only three houses remaining beside the railway line³.

There’s not much left to see of Bardoc these days. There are 2 cemeteries – the first of which was closed in 1897 after it was considered to be too close to the town site. In August 2019 local historians and mining companies got together and restored three separate areas and preserved the graves in each location. As with a lot of the cemeteries from old mining towns in the Goldfields, there are more than likely people buried in areas which have not been recognised but fencing has been erected around the known/visible sites⁴. Outback Family History have erected a sign detailing the known burials at Bardoc⁵.

Collections WA⁶ have a B&W copy of original photo; 3 men seated in front of a tent; Brushwood High fence behind seated men; All are wearing hats; man on left has a coat and waistcoat and holding a fly swatch; shovel, axe and gold pan leaning against tent poles. The three men are identified as George Whitfield, Ernest Growse, Arthur Growse by an inscription in bottom righthand corner.

If you want to have a look at Bardoc today, Doug Hardman has included Bardoc at about the 16min mark in his video, Ghost Towns 3⁷.

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Sources

1. Wikipedia, 2022. Bardoc, Western Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardoc,_Western_Australia accessed 19 Oct 2023 ↩︎
2. Outback Family History, n.d. Bardoc Postal Directory 1921. https://www.outbackfamilyhistory.com.au/records/record.php?record_id=11 accessed 19 Oct 2023 ↩︎
3. Darroch, Doug, 1981. A History of Bardoc. Printed by David Paton Printing, Boulder, WA. ↩︎
4. Fina A Grave, 2016. Bardoc Cemetery. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2614217/bardoc-cemetery accessed 19 Oct 2023 ↩︎
5. Photograph by Danelle Warnock on the Find A Grave site. ↩︎
6. Collections WA Camp at Bardoc from the Shire of Toodyay collection. https://collectionswa.net.au/items/d39b5a16-4f15-4f59-900b-d09d1667c557 accessed 19 Oct 2023 ↩︎
7. Hardman, Doug, 2023. Ghost Towns 3. Video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLHHWn4Fo1Y&t=1s accessed 21 Oct 2023 ↩︎