Gwalia

Gwalia grew around the Sons of Gwalia mine, managed in its early years by Herbert Hoover before he became president of the United States, and it held over a thousand people, many of them Italian and Slavic migrants living in houses of corrugated iron and hessian. When the mine closed in December 1963, the town emptied within weeks; families walked away leaving furniture, clothes and possessions in place. Several of those houses have been conserved as they were found, open to walk through, alongside the State Hotel, the mine offices and Hoover House, now a guesthouse. A lookout gives a view into the enormous open pit that has since swallowed part of the old site.

What you actually see

• The abandoned houses - corrugated iron homes conserved with possessions in place.
• Hoover House - the mine manager's residence, now a guesthouse and tearoom.
• The museum - mining machinery and the town's migrant history.
• The open pit - the modern mine's enormous excavation beside the ghost town.

When to go

April to September; summer in the Goldfields regularly exceeds forty degrees and the iron houses are ovens. The museum keeps daily hours but reduces them in summer. Winter days are warm and clear.

Honest expectations

The site is small and takes a couple of hours. Summer heat inside the iron buildings is severe. The working mine alongside is noisy and industrial, and parts of the historic site have been lost to it over the years.

Nearby

Leonora lies four kilometres north; Lake Ballard is west via Menzies.