The People of Western Australia’s Ghost Towns project team are pleased to announce the launch of Phase 5 on 7 December 2025. Phase 5 will add 19 new communities to those already in progress.
Click on the name of the town to find out what we know about it – so far. Our research continues and we will be keeping all our content up to date with our latest discoveries!
Do you know anything about any of these communities? Do you have pictures, stories, documents, records of any type? Please let us know via the comments panel.
The total records captured up to 31 July 2025 is 83,781. During the past month, the communities of Argyle (and Argyle Police Station), Boogardie, Craiggiemore, Derdebin, Howatharra, Kwelkan, Lancefield, Merilup, Noman’s Lake, Shay Gap, Stratherne, Sunday Island Mission, Tardun, Trafalgar, Ullaring, White Well, Wittenoom and Yarri have found their way into our captured list.
Our project team are working hard to capture as many records as possible of the people in WA’s ghost communities. Once our website and search engine is fully operational you will be able to access some of these records. Here are the latest figures followed by a simple line graph showing the growth in total numbers:
Quick Tip: to quickly see if your favourite ghost town is already in this list, press CTRL+f [find].
Map of Giles’s Route (Surveyor General’s Office, 1875) – Reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Australia. Digitized and available via the National Library of Australia; this work is out of copyright and free to use for public purposes.
Among the explorers who expanded knowledge of the Australian interior in the nineteenth century, Ernest Giles occupies a distinguished place. His 1875 expedition, financed through the generosity of the South Australian pastoralist and politician Thomas Elder, represented a major advance in geographical discovery, demonstrating both the challenges of crossing the continent’s deserts and the determination required to overcome them.
At the time, vast tracts of inland Australia remained uncharted, and speculation abounded about the potential of the interior for settlement and communication. Earlier surveys by Baron Ferdinand von Mueller and Augustus Gregory in the 1850s had suggested the broad character of these lands, but much remained unknown. Elder, convinced of Giles’s skill as a leader and of the value of camels for desert travel, offered to fund a new expedition to establish as direct a route as possible between South Australia and Western Australia.
The expedition commenced from Port Augusta in May 1875, and the true crossing began on 27 July from Youldeh. Giles’s party included nineteen camels, provisions for eight months, and equipment for carrying water, all vital in a region where survival could never be taken for granted. From the outset, the expedition encountered formidable obstacles. Sandhills, spinifex, and dense mallee scrub made progress slow, while the scarcity of permanent water dictated the pace and direction of travel.
In an early attempt to cover more ground, Giles divided his men: he himself explored westward while William Tietkens and Young struck north in search of the Musgrave Ranges. Both ventures revealed the inhospitality of the land. Giles discovered saline springs and barren scrub, with no signs of animal or human life. His companions fared little better, returning without sighting the Musgraves or finding fresh water.
At one point disaster nearly struck when the camels bolted. The animals were eventually recovered after a long chase, but had they been lost the expedition would have faced almost certain failure. The precariousness of the journey was underlined again in September, when the party endured seventeen days and 325 miles without locating water. Exhaustion and despair led some members to propose slaughtering camels for survival. Giles, however, refused to abandon hope, and perseverance was rewarded when the party discovered a hidden lake. This crucial water source, named Queen Victoria’s Spring, ensured their survival and allowed them to continue.
From this point the nature of the country began to change. Granite outcrops and quartz appeared, bringing with them more reliable supplies of water and pasture. Yet dangers remained. At Ularring, Giles and his men encountered a large and well-organised Aboriginal group who mounted a determined attack. The explorers’ firm defence forced the assailants to withdraw, and the incident remained Giles’s most serious conflict with Indigenous Australians.
Approaching Mount Churchman, Giles noted that the surrounding terrain did not match Augustus Gregory’s earlier chart, which had described the area as flat. Instead, Giles observed ranges of iron-rich and volcanic-looking rock, so magnetic that compass readings proved unreliable. These discrepancies highlighted both the difficulties of accurate surveying and the continuing importance of first-hand exploration.
On 4 November 1875, after a journey of some 2,500 miles, Giles and his party finally reached settled country at Tootra, a sheep station owned by the Clunes brothers in Western Australia. Their safe arrival was greeted with warm public acclaim. Although the expedition had not revealed fertile lands ready for immediate settlement, it had achieved much in both scientific and practical terms. A direct east–west route had been established, new water sources had been identified, and the suitability of camels for such arduous work had been conclusively demonstrated.
The 1875 expedition stands as a testament to Giles’s qualities as an explorer. His leadership, endurance, and refusal to succumb to despair carried his party through regions he described as “utterly devoid of animal life” and “utterly forgotten by God.” While the lands traversed were not destined for agricultural development, the knowledge gained contributed to the broader project of mapping and understanding the Australian interior.
In this respect, Ernest Giles belongs to the company of Gregory, Stuart, and Eyre—men whose journeys across the deserts and ranges expanded the limits of colonial knowledge and shaped the geographical imagination of nineteenth-century Australia. His 1875 crossing of the continent remains one of the most remarkable achievements of its era, demonstrating the extraordinary perseverance required to chart a land as unforgiving as it is vast.
AUTHORS NOTE: This article is based on an 1876 correspondent’s account of Giles’s expedition.1 More recent accounts of the Giles expedition have questioned the contemporary accounts of the Ularring incident.
I have noticed something today while researching the ghost community of Woop Woop. The name “Woop Woop” has often been used as a humorous or derogatory adjective.
If you have been following along with our project, you will already know that Woop Woop is one of the communities included in Phase 2. Woop Woop was a timber mill situated about 70Km south of Collie, and just a couple of Kms from the little town of Wilga, in the Shire of Boyup Brook. It only last for three years (1925-1928) but in that time it had six huts for single men, two houses, a boarding house, an office, and the Mill itself.
So today I have been working through a publication call The Guardian that has been published in Perth since 1937. While doing this I came across these “references” to Woop Woop – not to the place, but in a completely different context.
On 27 November, 1942, a random report about a scientific discovery related to the size of the solar system (and the universe) was concluded with a pretty obscure reference to Adolf Hitler as the bantamweight champion of Woop-Woop. 1
In February 1945, in a report decrying poor quality journalism in relation to reports on the distribution of preferences in Victoria Park. Claiming that any junior reporter would have done a better job than the senior reporters tasked with informing the public. The report concludes with the statement “A Woop Woop editorial staff would have made a better job of a simple duty to the public”. 2
Elections once again figure in a report from January 1947, where everyone from the Federal Government all the way down to “the Woop Woop Shire Council” is looking for a handout. 3
These stories may have been meant to be humorous, but between 1937 and 1954, seven times the name “Woop Woop” was used in a way that, if I had been a local resident, would have seen me writing a letter to the editor to demand an apology. And, perhaps, in this litigious age, seeking compensation.
A LAST NOTE: The seven articles are all in The Guardian. There are probably hundreds in the 365 other Western Australian newspapers currently digitised on Trove. Have a look for yourself and see what you can find.
The total records captured up to 31 July 2025 is 78,987. During the past month, the communities of Black Range, Burbridge, Cork Tree Flat, Culham, Dattening, Garden Gully, Gum Creek, Hawk’s Nest, Kintore, Kudardup, Linden, Paynesville, Red Lake School, Spargoville, Warriedar, Wyening, and Zanthus have found their way into our captured list.
Our project team are working hard to capture as many records as possible of the people in WA’s ghost communities. Once our website and search engine is fully operational you will be able to access some of these records. Here are the latest figures followed by a simple line graph showing the growth in total numbers:
Quick Tip: to quickly see if your favourite ghost town is already in this list, press CTRL+f [find].
The total records captured up to 30 June 2025 is 74,222. During the past month, the communities of Barton, Bummers Creek, Cuddingwarra, Davyhurst, East Kirup Timber Mill, Fly Flat, Galena Bridge, Kathleen, Kathleen Valley, Mount Ida, Mulgabbie, Naretha Railway Siding, Niagara North, Pingin, Pinjin, Sandstone, Sir Samuel, Surprise South, Webb’s Patch, and Yundamindera have found their way into our captured list.
Our project team are working hard to capture as many records as possible of the people in WA’s ghost communities. Once our website and search engine is fully operational you will be able to access some of these records. But for now, here are the latest figures along with a graph showing the growth in total numbers:
Quick Tip: to quickly see if your favourite ghost town is already in this list, press CTRL+f [find].
Our project team are working hard to capture as many records as possible of the people in WA’s ghost communities. Once our website and search engine is fully operational you will be able to access some of these records. But for now, here are the latest figures along with a graph showing the growth in total numbers:
Quick Tip: to quickly see if your favourite ghost town is already in this list, press CTRL+f [find].
People of Western Australia's Ghost Towns 