Qualla: Wittenoom, Western Australia

Wittenoom, Western Australia: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Five Years, CC BY-SA 3.0. The road signs for Wittenoom were removed. The town's name was taken off official maps. In 2007, the Western Australian government formally degazetted it — erased its administrative existence — as if a place could be cancelled by bureaucratic procedure. But the buildings remained, slowly crumbling in the Hamersley Range, and the asbestos tailings remained, and the invisible fibres in the soil remained. And, for decades, the last few residents remained, refusing to leave a place the government had declared too dangerous to inhabit. The last was evicted in September 2022. In May 2023, demolition of the surviving buildings began.

Image: User:Five Years | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wittenoom, Western Australia: The Blue Asbestos

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit lindsaybridge from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0. Crocidolite — blue asbestos — was first recorded in the Hamersley Ranges by the Mines Department in 1917. In the early 1930s, mining entrepreneur Lang Hancock discovered Wittenoom Gorge on his Mulga Downs property and recognised the deposit's commercial potential. During the 1950...

Image: lindsaybridge from Sydney, Australia | CC BY 2.0

Wittenoom, Western Australia: The Town After the Mine

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit wilford peloquin, CC BY 2.0. The mill processed ore by milling it and blowing the fibres through the air to separate them. Asbestos dust settled everywhere — in houses, gardens, streets, the airport runway. Wittenoom Gorge Airport's runways were partly surfaced with gravel and asbestos tailings; it was later...

Image: wilford peloquin | CC BY 2.0

Wittenoom, Western Australia: The Panyjima People

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Five Years, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Panyjima, also known as the Banjima, are the Aboriginal Australian people of this area of the Pilbara. They hold Native Title over the land. The Panyjima petitioned the Western Australian Parliament not only to remove Wittenoom's remaining buildings but to remediate the land ...

Image: Five Years | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wittenoom, Western Australia: What Wittenoom Became

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Five Years, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the years after closure, Wittenoom acquired a strange cultural gravity. Midnight Oil wrote the song Blue Sky Mine about it. Tim Winton set portions of his novel Dirt Music there. A digital poet named Jason Nelson created an interactive work about the town's death that won the ...

Image: User:Five Years | CC BY-SA 3.0