Goldfields and Ghosttowns

By Hugh Campbell

Dr Hugh Campbell is Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture,Landscape & Civil Engineering in UCD. In 2002, he and a group of UCD students spent a month based in the University of Western Australia working on a mapping project for the goldfields region. His account of development predicated on the whims of international markets is as resonant now as it was when first published in Building Material 14, Boom and Bust.

Western Australia is largely empty. 1.5 million people live in a state of 2.5 million sqkm, with 1.2 million of those living in the state capital, Perth. This vast, sparsely populated region seems to epitomise the enduring conception of Australia as the terra nullius - a blank land, free of the marks of settlement or development, a place which might be seen on the one hand as harsh, unforgiving, inimical to inhabitation and on the other, as a huge untapped resource with the potential to produce great wealth.

It was the challenge offered by the former interpretation, combined with the promise of the latter, which led explorers into the vast desert interior of Western Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Early accounts of these adventures, like that of Ernest Giles in his classic Australia Twice Traversed tended to emphasise the extremity of the landscape and the hardships it induces... For several years previous to my taking the field, I had desired to be the first to penetrate into this unknown region where, for a thousand miles in a straight line, no white man's foot had ever wandered, or, if it had, its owner had never brought it back, nor told the tale... But towards the end of the century it became apparent that there was indeed a great resource which might make it worthwhile venturing into this inhospitable wilderness: gold.

Initial discoveries of gold were made in the Kimberleys in the north in 1885, then a few years later gold was found further south in Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. On June 14th 1893, an Irishman, Paddy Hannan, pegged out the first claim in Kalgoorlie. What followed was an extraordinarily rapid period of speculation and development in the region. The population increased exponentially - from 35,000 in 1885 to 101,000 in 1895 and to 239,000 by the end of 1904 - as people from all over the world arrived to make their fortunes. An extensive network of gold-mining settlements quickly sprang up, and along with them, the infrastructure necessary to support the industry and transform this barren region into a profitable, inhabitable landscape. From the coast at Perth came the railway, followed by a water pipeline which ran more or less in a straight line for 350 miles from Mundaring reservoir near Perth as far as Kalgoorlie. The pipe still follows the path of the main road west from Perth. By 1903 the goldfields of Western Australia were producing 2 million ounces of gold a year - a total which has not been exceeded in the century since. Production was centred on Kalgoorlie, its so called 'Golden Mile' of poppet heads and cyanaide treatment plants reputedly the most valuable land in the world.

Photographs from the period portray a society founded on the rapid growth of a precarious industry. While below ground a vast network of shafts and tunnels relentlessly expands, above ground great efforts are being made to sound a note of stability and permanence. Over the course of a decade Kalgoorlie moves from the makeshift character of a works camp to the solid certainties of brick buildings, verandahs, bicycles and afternoon tea. All the trappings of Edwardian civilisation have been translated directly into the Australian outback. Although Kalgoorlie is thought to be the first major Australian settlement created out of sight of any 'western' landscape feature, its architecture provides familiar reference points.

The speed of development in the region is even more evident from a pair of photographs of a smaller settlement in the goldfields, Kookynie. Between 1899 and 1901, the place has been transformed from a basic encampment to a fully functioning town of 2500 people. The brick-built, tin-roofed buildings include hotels, post offices, town halls and clubs. And while the flatness and expansiveness of the landscape make the establishment of towns easy - they can go anywhere, extend in any direction - these same features tend to emphasise the very thinness of the veneer of civilisation that has been drawn across the land. Raw nature is only ever one layer away.

This thinness was soon confirmed as, as quickly as it had risen, the tide of development began to recede in the wake of falling gold prices and lessening yields. The industry became focussed on a few major seams - at Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie, Leonora etc - and the scores of smaller mining towns were quickly abandoned. In most cases, the buildings were taken down and removed, so that almost no trace was left of the original settlement. This is certainly the case in Kookynie, By the early 1920s, almost everyone had left. Today the town has a population of ten, most of whom spend their evenings in the bar of the Grand Hotel, one of the few remaining buildings. It is difficult to get any sense that this remote outpost was once a thriving town. Besides piles of bricks and a fragment of building here and there, nothing remains. Former streets have reverted to bush, unpopulated apart from the occasional kangaroo. The abandoned adit attests to the existence of another, equally abandoned realm of shafts and tunnels underground. There is still gold to be found here, and prospectors still come seeking their fortune.

Nowadays, the shafts have been replaced by open-cast mining. Most of these modern operations now operate like oil-rigs, with workers being flown in for two-week stints followed by a spell back in 'civilisation' on the coast. Kalgoorlie, though, continues to thrive, thanks to the existence of the so-called 'Superpit', a vast operation which has engulfed the whole territory onf the Golden Mile. Wealth keeps coming out of the ground, but it is much more hard-won than a century ago and the profit margins on an average yield of a gram of gold per ton of rock are slim. Existence in this remote town is still precarious, reliant on supplies of water and produce from the coast. At the central crossroads, an LED monitor constantly displays the price of gold. If it dips too low, the whole settlement might yet disappear.