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In a state that is larger than Europe, 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.
Please join us on our journey of discovery. [https://ghostswa.au]