WA Abolished This Asbestos Town in 2007, 41 Years After the Mine Closed: Wittenoom, WA

In 1943 the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, through its subsidiary Australian Blue Asbestos, took over the blue asbestos mines in Wittenoom Gorge, in the Pilbara of Western Australia. With the state government’s help, a company town was built at the mouth of the gorge, its streets laid with the mill’s tailings. At the 1961 Census, 881 people lived there. Doctors warned of the danger from 1948. The mine closed at the end of 1966, but the town lived on. In March 2007 the Government of Western Australia abolished the townsite by gazettal — 41 years after the mine closed. In March 2022 Parliament passed the Wittenoom Closure Bill, providing for the compulsory acquisition of the last private properties and the removal of every remaining structure. Demolition began in May 2023. At least 1,200 former residents and workers have died from lung cancer and mesothelioma, according to a University of Western Australia database reported by the ABC in 2022. What you’ll learn — how a sugar company’s blue asbestos mine and the state built a town of 881 people in a Pilbara gorge — who decided Wittenoom’s fate: the 1966 closure, the 2007 gazettal and the 2022 Closure Act — the warnings doctors gave from 1948, and what came of them — what remains: a contaminated area of more than 46,500 hectares that the state says will never be safe to live in About the figures: accounts differ. The 1961 Census counted 881 people; figures of about 20,000 describe everyone who lived or worked there over the life of the mines, not the town at one time. For deaths we use the UWA database; higher figures in other reports name no source. Sources also differ on when mining began (1933, 1936 or 1937). Scenes are visual reconstructions, not archival photographs. Please do not visit: the area is a closed contaminated site. Sources and acknowledgements • Landgate, Government of Western Australia, ‘Town names’: Wittenoom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_W... • Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 30 June 1961, Vol. V, Part V: Western Australia — Population and Dwellings in Localities https://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/f... • Lenore Layman, ‘Saint, Eric Galton (1918–1989)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 18 (2012) • Government of Western Australia, media statement ‘Wittenoom to be closed permanently with passing of bill through State Parliament’ (24 March 2022) • ABC News, ‘WA government bill to close asbestos-riddled town Wittenoom ends “dark chapter” of state’s history’ (24 March 2022) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-24/wit... Did your family live in Wittenoom, or work at the mine, the mill or on the trucks to Point Samson? Tell me in the comments — corrections go into the pinned comment. We acknowledge the Banjima people as the Traditional Owners of the land where Wittenoom stood. Where Australia Changed — the Australia that’s gone. #history #Australia #Wittenoom #WesternAustralia #Pilbara ℹ️ About this film Educational and historical content. This episode draws on the published research and records credited in the description. Some images are illustrative reconstructions created with the help of AI — they are not authentic photographs or recordings of the time; archive photographs and stock footage are used where they exist. The narrator’s voice is AI-generated. The story is simplified for a general audience and may contain small approximations. The aim: to tell what happened to this place and to keep its memory.