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.

History

The Wongatha people are the traditional owners, and John Forrest passed through in 1869 searching for traces of Ludwig Leichhardt and named Mount Leonora. Gold was found near its base in May 1896 by Carlson, White and Glendinning, who called their claim Sons of Gwalia, the old name of Wales, after their Welsh backer, the Coolgardie storekeeper Thomas Tobias, and underground mining ran from 1897 until 1963, producing about 82 tonnes of gold from as deep as 1,080 metres, the largest Western Australian gold mine outside Kalgoorlie; when it closed the town was largely deserted (Wikipedia, Gwalia, Western Australia).

What you'll find

• 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.

Before you go

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.

Key facts