Towns

Where people lived. Noongar and Martu camps and shelters, tent cities on the goldfields, the monumental empty streets of Coolgardie, pastoral homesteads and station quarters, Group Settlement shacks in the karri, Wittenoom degazetted and demolished, fly-in dongas and camp mess halls, and Perth growing out of the boom.

Part of Western Australia

122 moments in this segment.

1. 1901 - Crowd watching parade in Hannan Street, Kalgoorlie, 1901. Hannan Street was laid out wide enough to turn a camel team, which is why it still looks oversized. Kalgoorlie's gold paid for a streetscape of hotels and public buildings out of all proportion to a desert town.
2. 1906 - St John's Church and the Fremantle Town Hall, 1906. St John's in Fremantle and the Perth churches mark the two original centres of the colony. The colony's churches were among its first permanent buildings, and several were raised by convict labour after 1850.
3. 1906 - Fremantle High Street 1906. The tram carbarn is on the right. Fremantle's West End survived because the money moved to Perth and left the buildings standing.
4. 1910 - Derbarl Yerrigan / Swan River Rowing Club. The population went from 49,782 in 1891 to 184,124 in 1901, the largest demographic event in the colony's history. The colony was founded on 17 June 1829 under Captain James Stirling, and deliberately as a free settlement rather than a penal one.
5. 1914 - RJL Joan Helen Rose Aubrey Hall (rotated, cropped). Robert John "Jack" Lodge, Joan Soutter Martin (née Lodge), Helen Rose Hall (née Lodge), and Harold Aubrey Hall at the family house in Forrest Street, Cottesloe, Western Australia. The Round House of 1831 is the oldest surviving public building in the state, put up as a gaol in the colony's second year.
6. 1919 - Rotunda Hospital 1919. The Rotunda Hospital (now Edward Millen Home) in East Victoria Park, Western Australia. Hospitals in a state this size serve catchments measured in hundreds of thousands of square kilometres.
7. 1920 - Margaret, Joan, and Constance, c.1920 in Roebourne. Roebourne is on Ngarluma Country and its old gaol held Aboriginal prisoners, some of whom were sent on to Wadjemup. This is the administration's own record of the people it held.
8. 1933 - Fremantle looking west, St John's Church and Town Hall at centre, 1. Aerial photograph of Fremantle in 1933, looking west over Kings Square. Country churches were often the only building in a district with a floor, a roof and a clock.
9. 1933 - CC514, Canning Volunteer Fire Brigade. A volunteer fire brigade with its appliance. From the City of Canning photographic collection.
10. 1933 - Aerial view Fremantle 1933. Aerial photograph of Fremantle, looking west. St John's Church and Town Hall at centre.
11. 1936 - 10. Marble Bar. 'chief town in the Piibarra District of North West Australia where highest temperatures in Australia are registered.'. Marble Bar holds a long-standing Australian record for consecutive days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, set between 1923 and 1924.
12. 1944 - AWAS picnic at Bibra Lake, c1944. Six women sit on the grass with cases and hats around them. Some women are in army uniform, some are not. Taken at Bibra Lake AWAS camp during WWII. Show days and race meetings were the fixed points of the year in country towns.
13. 1950 - St Andrew's Anglican church, Greenhills, 25, June 1950. Wooden church building in Greenhills, Western Australia. The colony's churches were among its first permanent buildings, and several were raised by convict labour after 1850.
14. 1950 - Lake-Austin-township-Murchison-region-of-Western-Australia-c-1950-DETAIL. 1950 (detail). The goldfields left towns that grew to thousands within a year and emptied within a decade, and their public buildings often outlasted their populations.
15. 1963 - 1963 March 17th - Kununurra Royal Tour - Kevin Richards Film (Silent 16mm Colour). Silent 16mm colour film by Kevin Richards of the Royal Tour visit to Kununurra on 17 March 1963. The town had been established from 1960 for the Ord River Irrigation Scheme workforce and the footage shows the raw townsite, sheds and cleared ground. It is one of the earliest colour records of the town.
16. 1963 - 1963 Royal Tour to Kununurra - Part 1. Kununurra Museum film of the 1963 Royal Tour arriving at Kununurra, part one. The town was only three years old, built from 1960 to house Ord River Irrigation Scheme workers, and the visit was staged in a construction camp. The footage records the town's original layout before the later suburbs.
17. 1972 - The Ord River Dam Official Opening-June 30th 1972 - Commemorating 50 Years Ago Today (in 2022 :^). Kununurra Museum footage of the official opening of the Ord River Dam on 30 June 1972. Kununurra itself was built from 1960 as a purpose-made town to house the Ord River Irrigation Scheme workforce, one of the few wholly planned towns in the Kimberley. The dam flooded Miriuwung and Gija Country to create Lake Argyle.
18. 1976 - COOLGARDIE KALGOORLIE GWALIA GOLD MINES 1976 OUTBACK WESTERN AUSTRALIA. Amateur film of Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie and the Gwalia gold mines shot in 1976, when several of these towns were already largely abandoned. Gwalia emptied almost overnight when the Sons of Gwalia mine closed in 1963. The footage records the physical remains of goldfields housing before later demolition and heritage reconstruction.
19. 1986 - Paul's Pt Hedland: "Cossack" and "Pt. Samson". 1986.. Amateur footage of Cossack and Point Samson shot in 1986, before the later restoration of the Cossack stone buildings. Cossack served as the port for Roebourne and the North West pearling fleet from the 1870s and had been abandoned for decades by the time this was filmed. The towns sit on Ngarluma Country.
20. 2007 - 00 0927 Whim Greek Pub - Western Australia. Whim Greek Pub rest house on the North West Coastal Highway, a trunk road in Western Australia that connects Perth to Darwin. The route is part of Highway 1. Whim Creek is a small town in Western Australia. The transcontinental railway promised at federation was completed in 1917.
21. 2009 - Roebourne Post Office by G Temple-Poole. Roebourne is on Ngarluma Country and its old gaol held Aboriginal prisoners, some of whom were sent on to Wadjemup.
22. 2011 - Coolgardie High Street. Great Eastern Highway in Coolgardie, looking west from near Hunt Street.Original description: Coolgardie High Street. The telegraph line from Adelaide reached Perth in 1877 and ended the colony's isolation by months.
23. 2011 - Bunbury freemasons. Freemasons lodge in Wittenoom Street, Bunbury. Limestone quarried on site is the common material of these streets, cut by convicts after 1850.
24. 2011 - City of bunbury. 's name. Walyalup is the Noongar name for Fremantle.
25. 2011 - Perth skyline and Kwinana Freeway 2009. W:Kwinana Freeway, w:Mandurah railway, and w:Perth, Western Australia skyline from footbridge over freeway in w:Como, Western Australia.
26. 2012 - Perth CBD from Mill Point. In 1962 residents left their lights on as John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 passed overhead, which is where the City of Light name comes from.
27. 2012 - Perth City Skyline Across Lake. The state was sealed by its own border from 5 April 2020 to 3 March 2022, close to twenty-three months. Perth's skyline is the visible record of successive resource booms, each one adding a layer of towers.
28. 2012 - Perth Skyline 2012. Boorloo is the Noongar name for this place, on Whadjuk Noongar Country. In 1962 residents left their lights on as John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 passed overhead, which is where the City of Light name comes from.
29. 2014-04-11 - Destination WA - Broome. A profile of Broome, the Kimberley pearling port on Yawuru Country. The town's Chinatown and its cemeteries record a workforce of Japanese, Malay, Filipino, Koepanger and Chinese divers and crew, with Japanese divers making up 943 of 998 workers by 1901. Aboriginal people had collected and traded pearl shell here for at least 500 years before British colonisation.
30. 2014-10-26 - Destination WA - Roebourne and Cossack. A survey of Roebourne and Cossack, the administrative town and its port in the West Pilbara on Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Country. Roebourne was laid out in 1866 and its gaol held Aboriginal prisoners, many of whom were transported on to the Wadjemup / Rottnest Island Aboriginal prison, which ran from 1838 to 1931 with a gap from 1849 to 1855, imprisoned over 3,600 Aboriginal men and boys and where at least 370 died in unmarked graves. Cossack was the shipping point for wool and pearl shell.
31. 2015-03-11 - EXPLAINER : WHY THE WA GOVERNMENT PLANS TO SHUT DOWN REMOTE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES. NITV explains the Western Australian government's plan to close remote Aboriginal communities. The communities in question are on the Country of the people living in them, which is what distinguishes closure from relocation. The plan followed the Commonwealth transferring responsibility for municipal services in those communities to the state.
32. 2015-03-17 - REFUGEES IN OUR OWN COUNTRY - KIMBERLEY LOCALS ON INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES CLOSURES. NITV films Kimberley residents describing themselves as refugees in their own Country in response to the proposed community closures. Moving people off Country severs the relationship that native title and heritage law both rest on. The proposal was announced in 2014 and heavily contested.
33. 2015-04-08 - Indigenous communities facing closure I The Feed. SBS The Feed reports on Aboriginal communities facing closure in Western Australia. The state indicated in 2014 that up to 150 remote communities might close. Residents and organisations argued the communities were the only places their Country could be lived on.
34. 2015-05-01 - WA REMOTE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES CLOSURE - KEY EVENTS. NITV sets out the key events in the proposed closure of remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. In 2014 the state government indicated that up to 150 remote communities could be closed on cost grounds. The proposal drew sustained protest nationally and was not carried through in the form announced.
35. 2015 - Perth City Skyline Panorama. Occupation at Upper Swan is dated to about 40,000 years ago, so the metropolitan area stands on ground that has been lived on that long.
36. 2015 - South Coast Hwy 479 E at Esperance. South Coast Highway reaching its terminus in the Esperance suburb of Chadwick, Western Australia. The telegraph line from Adelaide reached Perth in 1877 and ended the colony's isolation by months.
37. 2016-05-25 - Roebourne Aboriginal History Western Australia - Part 2 of 2.. Part two of the Roebourne Aboriginal history documentary. It carries the account through the pastoral era into the town's later decades, including the removal of families and the persistence of community on Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Country. Aboriginal residents narrate throughout.
38. 2016 - Burt Street, Boulder, 2016 (04). The buildings with towers are (left) the Boulder Town Hall and (right) the Court Hotel. Boulder and Kalgoorlie grew as separate municipalities on opposite ends of the same ore body.
39. 2016 - Palace Hotel, Kalgoorlie, 2016. The Palace Hotel, cnr Hannan and Maritana Streets, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. The town had no reliable water until the pipeline arrived in 1903.
40. 2016 - Exchange and Palace Hotels, Kalgoorlie, 2016. The Exchange Hotel (left) and Palace Hotel (right), cnr Hannan and Maritana Streets, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, at dusk.
41. 2016 - McKenzie's Buildings, Kalgoorlie, 2016. McKenzie's Buildings, cnr Hannan and Maritana Streets, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. Kalgoorlie's gold paid for a streetscape of hotels and public buildings out of all proportion to a desert town.
42. 2016 - Australia Hotel, Kalgoorlie, 2016. The Australia Hotel, cnr Hannan and Maritana Streets, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. Hannan Street was laid out wide enough to turn a camel team, which is why it still looks oversized.
43. 2016 - Kalgoorlie Town Hall, 2016. The Kalgoorlie Town Hall, cnr Hannan and Wilson Streets, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. The town had no reliable water until the pipeline arrived in 1903.
44. 2016 - Former Duke of Cornwall Hotel, Kalgoorlie, 2016. The former Duke of Cornwall Hotel (now Sylvesters Nightclub), 52 Hannan Street, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. To its right is the former Cremorne Theatre (now ChurchWest), 46 Hannan Street.
45. 2016-12-16 - Northcliffe - Western Australia. A local history of Northcliffe, one of the karri-country towns created under the Group Settlement Scheme. Group Settlement began in 1921 under Premier James Mitchell, and the 1923 Migration Agreement set a target of 6,000 men on 6,000 farms in five years across the southwest for dairying. Northcliffe's blocks were cut from heavy karri and jarrah forest that the settlers were required to clear by hand.
46. 2017-02-21 - Roebourne Aboriginal History Western Australia Part 1 of 2 ★ Aboriginal Documentary HD. Part one of a long oral-history documentary on Roebourne, a Pilbara town on Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Country, told by Aboriginal residents. Roebourne was laid out in 1866 as the administrative centre of the North West, and its gaol shipped Aboriginal prisoners on to the Wadjemup / Rottnest Island Aboriginal prison, which ran from 1838 to 1931 with a gap from 1849 to 1855. Over 3,600 Aboriginal men and boys were imprisoned there and at least 370 died and were buried in unmarked graves. The town has remained a place where Aboriginal families live alongside the institutions built to control them.
47. 2017 - Hannan Street looking south. Kalgoorlie's gold paid for a streetscape of hotels and public buildings out of all proportion to a desert town. Hannan Street was laid out wide enough to turn a camel team, which is why it still looks oversized.
48. 2017 - Early evening traffic at the Hannan Street lights. The town had no reliable water until the pipeline arrived in 1903. Boulder and Kalgoorlie grew as separate municipalities on opposite ends of the same ore body.
49. 2017-09-06 - Liveringa Station West Kimberley. Photography and footage of Liveringa Station in the West Kimberley, one of the large pastoral leases on the Martuwarra / Fitzroy River floodplain. Kimberley stations were run for most of the twentieth century on Aboriginal labour that was unpaid or paid in rations, and station camps housed the families of the stockmen. Comprehensive legal protection for Aboriginal pastoral workers did not arrive until 1968.
50. 2018 - Former Union Bank, Beverley, 2018 (02). The former Union Bank of Australia building, Vincent Street, Beverley, Western Australia. Their public buildings date from the colonial decades and the gold boom that paid for them.
51. 2018 - Union Bank building, Wagin, 2018 (01). The former Union Bank building, Tudhoe Street, Katanning, Western Australia. Their public buildings date from the colonial decades and the gold boom that paid for them.
52. 2018 - New Albany Police HQ 1. Photographed in, March 2018 from the southeast. It was taken by the officers, not by anyone in their custody.
53. 2018 - Sun Picture Gardens, Chinatown Precinct, Broome Western Australia. Sun Picture Gardens was built in 1916, as a half-open and half-roofed cinema. The site was originally occupied by the Yamasaki emporium, which sold Asian foodstuffs, clothing and household goods. Air links hold the state together across distances that make road travel impractical, and the fly-in fly-out rosters of the Pilbara run through these terminals.
54. 2018 - Bourne & Inglis Store, Broome, Western Australia. Constructed 1903 - very neglected. In 1903, a store was built by Herbert Greenhill Bourne and Percy Inglis, operating as Bourne and Inglis, storekeepers and pearlers.
55. 2018-09-03 - Football is like a religion in remote WA. ABC Indigenous on the place of football in remote Western Australian communities. Community sport is one of the structures that holds remote settlements together across long distances. The clip is part of the ABC's Indigenous programming strand.
56. 2018-10-16 - Public Silo Trail Pingrup. A FORM documentary on the Public Silo Trail mural at Pingrup, in the eastern Wheatbelt. The trail paints grain silos in small Wheatbelt towns whose populations have fallen steadily since farm amalgamation began. The silos are usually the only structures in these towns visible from a distance.
57. 2019-05-09 - Tony Robinson's Time Walks | S2E1 | Kalgoorlie. An episode of Tony Robinson's Time Walks on Kalgoorlie, walking the town's mining, drinking and brothel districts. Kalgoorlie was located in 1893 by Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan Shea at Mount Charlotte, and the Golden Mile followed. The town's built form was shaped by a workforce housed as single men.
58. 2019 - Perth (AU), View from Kings Park -- 2019 -- 0525-. From Kings Park to the city of Perth, Western Australia, Australia. Perth's skyline is the visible record of successive resource booms, each one adding a layer of towers.
59. 2019 - Perth (AU), Elizabeth Quay Bridge -- 2019 -- 0252. Elizabeth Quay Bridge, Perth, Western Australia, AustraliaThe Elizabeth Quay Bridge is a striking pedestrian bridge in Perth city center. The colony was founded on 17 June 1829 under Captain James Stirling, and deliberately as a free settlement rather than a penal one.
60. 2019 - Perth (AU), Elizabeth Quay -- 2019 -- 0331-3. Elizabeth Quay, Perth, Western Australia, Australia. It nearly failed: reports reaching England in early 1830 described starving colonists, and prospective settlers diverted to Cape Town or New South Wales.
61. 2019 - The Albany, Old Hall Street 2019. Complete front elevation of The Albany, a Grade II* listed building in Old Hall Street, Liverpool. The port and coastal towns carry the colony's oldest surviving streetscapes.
62. 2019 - Perth (AU), Old Perth Technical School -- 2019 -- 0291. Old Perth Technical School, Perth, Western Australia, Australia. School photographs are frequently the only surviving image of a town that later emptied.
63. 2019 - Global climate strike Perth 200919. Students Global Climate Strike, Perth Western Australia 2019. Schools followed the towns, and in the goldfields they were often the first permanent building after the hotel.
64. 2019 - Fishers House, Roebourne. From Withnell Street. Roebourne is on Ngarluma Country and its old gaol held Aboriginal prisoners, some of whom were sent on to Wadjemup.
65. 2019 - Bunbury Recreation Oval (north-west from Ivey Street). ), in 2019. The port and coastal towns carry the colony's oldest surviving streetscapes.
66. 2019 - Bunbury Recreation Oval (south-west from Ivey Street). ), in 2019. Fremantle's West End survived because the money moved to Perth and left the buildings standing.
67. 2019 - Telephone booths, Broome, 2019 (01). A row of now mostly abandoned telephone booths, opposite the entrance to the Broome Regional Prison in Hamersley Street, Broome, Western Australia.
68. 2019-10-25 - Sustainable Housing in Aboriginal Communities. Ngikalikarra Media on sustainable housing in Aboriginal communities. Housing design in remote communities has to work with extreme heat, large households and long supply lines. The material is produced by Kimberley Aboriginal media workers.
69. 2019-10-28 - This is Kununurra. A profile of Kununurra, built from 1960 as a purpose-designed town for the Ord River Irrigation Scheme in the East Kimberley. It is one of the few Australian towns laid out from scratch in the second half of the twentieth century. The town sits on Miriuwung and Gija Country.
70. 2020-05-22 - Indigenous Employment Pathways. Ngaanyatjarra Council Regional Housing on employment pathways in its communities. The Ngaanyatjarra lands cover a large area of the Western Desert in the state's east. Housing maintenance is one of the few sources of paid work on Country.
71. 2020 - Peron Homestead Precinct, Shearers Quarters, July 2020. Peron Homestead Precinct, located in the Francois Peron National Park, Western Australia.The Shearers Quarters. Pastoral stations across the Kimberley and Pilbara ran on Aboriginal labour paid in rations rather than wages, which is what the 1946 strike was about.
72. 2020 - Bunbury Spencer ALDI with steeple. ALDI Bunbury from Spencer Street, Bunbury, Western Australia, with St Patrick's Cathedral's steeple visible. Walyalup is the Noongar name for Fremantle.
73. 2020 - Bunbury Spencer ALDI from NE. ALDI Bunbury from Spencer Street, Bunbury, Western Australia, with St Patrick's Cathedral visible. The 1987 America's Cup defence drove a wave of waterfront redevelopment here, which is the lasting local legacy of the yachting.
74. 2020 - Bunbury Victoria & Wellington looking NE. Looking north east across the intersection of Victoria and Wellington Streets in Bunbury, Western Australia, in, December 2020.
75. 2020-09-24 - Wirrimanu Remote Aboriginal Community WA.. Wirrimanu, the community also known as Balgo, in the south east Kimberley. Warlayirti Artists, the community's art centre, operates there. Remote communities of this kind were the subject of the closure proposal announced by the state in 2014.
76. 2021-01-15 - New Norcia - Western Australia. A local-history survey of New Norcia, the Benedictine monastery town founded in 1847 north of Perth. The mission was established to convert and school Aboriginal people and ran children's institutions on the site for over a century. The Spanish-styled buildings that draw visitors were built around that purpose.
77. 2021-06-15 - Perth is a growing city. An industry film on Perth's growth from the Urban Development Institute of Australia. Perth is on Whadjuk Noongar Country, and the Upper Swan River shows occupation by about 40,000 years ago, so the metropolitan area sits on ground occupied for 40,000 years. The Derbarl Yerrigan / Swan River is the axis the modern city is built along.
78. 2021 - Northam street and tower. A street of former shops in northam with millbank house tower in the background. The Avon Valley and wheatbelt towns stand on Ballardong and neighbouring Noongar Country.
79. 2021 - 2 Derby Street, Prescot. Grade II listed offices of Tickle Hall Cross, solicitors, across Derby Street. The Kimberley towns are built for heat and cyclone, with corrugated iron, deep verandahs and floors raised off the ground.
80. 2021 - Foundation stone Guildford Council Chambers, April 2021. The Foundation stone of the state heritage listed Guildford Council Chambers (now Guildford Public Library), Western Australia.
81. 2021 - Foundation stone Wagin Town Hall, April 2021. The town hall, the largest building the district had built. The foundation stone of the Wagin Town Hall, Western Australia.
82. 2021 - Foundation stone Guildford Town Hall, April 2021. The town hall, the largest building the district had built. The Foundation stone Guildford Town Hall, Western Australia.
83. 2021 - Former Baldivis Primary School, Western Australia, January 2021. The school was opened in, February 1924 as part of the Group Settlement at Peel Estate. Schools followed the towns, and in the goldfields they were often the first permanent building after the hotel.
84. 2021-09-19 - New Norcia historical child abuse survivors call for civil claims to be fast-tracked | ABC News. ABC News coverage of survivors of historical child abuse at New Norcia calling for civil claims to be fast-tracked. New Norcia is a Benedictine monastery town north of Perth that ran boarding institutions for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children. The institutional history of the town is inseparable from its architecture and its tourism.
85. 2022 - Grt Nthn Hwy. Panorama of the town site of New Norcia from the Great Northern bypass built to divert through traffic from the town site and minimize damage to the buildings. The state's highways run for thousands of kilometres between towns, and road trains are the freight that uses them. The camera here belonged to the mission administration, not to the people in front of it.
86. 2022 - Perth CBD skyline, Western Australia, 2022. The University of Western Australia was established in 1911 and began teaching in 1913. The state was sealed by its own border from 5 April 2020 to 3 March 2022, close to twenty-three months.
87. 2022 - Newman Senior High School, in Newman, WA, Australia. Administration office at the Front entrance of Newman Senior High School in Newman a small town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
88. 2022 - Vasse Highway, main street of Nannup, Western Australia, 2022. In 1970 the Indian Pacific made the first uninterrupted transcontinental rail journey. The state's highways run for thousands of kilometres between towns, and road trains are the freight that uses them.
89. 2022-06-29 - Early Days (1899) - Crossing the Ord River - Ivanhoe Crossing ( Short Kimberley Histories : ). A Kununurra Museum short on Ivanhoe Crossing and the crossing of the Ord River in the earliest years of European presence in the East Kimberley, dated to 1899. The Ord was the route for stock and supplies long before the irrigation scheme and the town of Kununurra. This is Miriuwung and Gija Country.
90. 2022-09-25 - COSSACK WA 1870, Township.. A record of the Cossack townsite, established in the early 1870s as the port for Roebourne on Ngarluma Country. Its stone buildings were raised by convict-era and imported labour to serve a pearling fleet whose divers were coerced Aboriginal men, women and children before hard-hat diving shifted the work to indentured Asian crews in the 1880s and 1890s. Cossack was effectively empty by the mid twentieth century.
91. 2023 - Perth CBD skyline from Kaarta Gar-up Lookout, 2023. There were only about 1,500 colonists by 1832 and 5,886 by 1850, twenty-one years of near-stagnation before gold changed everything.
92. 2023 - Perth skyline from Wellington 2023-. The northern end of Perth's skyline as seen from Wellington Street slightly west of the train station entrance. Occupation at Upper Swan is dated to about 40,000 years ago, so the metropolitan area stands on ground that has been lived on that long.
93. 2023 - Old Swan Brewery, Perth skyline, Narrows Bridge and South Perth, seen from Kings Park, October 2023. 17 June 1829 under Captain James Stirling, and deliberately as a free settlement rather than a penal one.
94. 2023 - House 170 Aberdeen Street, Northbridge, July 2023. The state heritage listed House at 170 Aberdeen Street, Northbridge, Western Australia. The 1987 America's Cup defence drove a wave of waterfront redevelopment here, which is the lasting local legacy of the yachting.
95. 2023 - Fremantle Technical School foundation stone, July 2023. The foundation stone of the state heritage listed Fremantle Technical School building, Western Australia. Correspondence schooling covered children on stations too far from any classroom.
96. 2023 - AUS Perth, Central Business District, Parliament House, View 001. Im Central Business District, Perth, Western Australia, Australien. There were only about 1,500 colonists by 1832 and 5,886 by 1850, twenty-one years of near-stagnation before gold changed everything.
97. 2023 - Narrows Bridge and Perth skyline seen from Kings Park, October 2023. 49,782 in 1891 to 184,124 in 1901, the largest demographic event in the colony's history.
98. 2023 - AUS Perth, Fremantle, Newman Court 003. In der City of Fremantle, Perth, Western Australia, Australien. Country churches were often the only building in a district with a floor, a roof and a clock.
99. 2023-06-25 - Community Heritage Grant Project – Shire of Coolgardie – Vic Dale History. A Community Heritage Grant project by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage recording Shire of Coolgardie history through local custodian Vic Dale. Coolgardie's public buildings were built at a scale set by a population of about 15,000 in 1898 that had collapsed to a few hundred within two decades. The gap between the buildings and the town that remains is the whole story of the goldfields.
100. 2023-07-04 - Coolgardie - Western Australia. A local-history survey of Coolgardie, where Arthur Wellesley Bayley and William Ford located a goldfield at Fly Flat in 1892. The town was made a municipality in 1894 and was the third-largest in the colony by 1898 at about 15,000 people, with some 700 Coolgardie-based mining companies registered on the London Stock Exchange. Its federal electorate was abolished in 1913 for lack of population and the town fell to roughly 200 residents.
101. 2023-08-06 - Historical Town of Cossack, in the Pilbara, Western Australia. Footage of Cossack, the Pilbara port town on Ngarluma Country that served Roebourne and the North West pearling fleet from the 1860s. The pearling industry it supplied relied on blackbirding of Aboriginal people, including women and children used as skin divers; regulations of 1871 to 1873 banned Aboriginal women divers, which is itself the evidence they were being used. The town was abandoned as shipping moved to Point Samson and Port Hedland.
102. 2023-11-23 - Broome and The Pearl of Great Price. A long documentary treatment of Broome and its pearling history. The town's built quarter grew around a workforce of indentured Asian divers and crew after hard-hat diving became standard in the 1880s and 1890s, with Japanese divers making up 943 of 998 workers by 1901. Before that the industry used blackbirded Aboriginal skin divers, and regulations of 1871 to 1873 banned Aboriginal women divers.
103. 2023-12-30 - Marble Bar, in Western Australia, set to break major records | 7 News Australia. 7NEWS coverage of extreme heat at Marble Bar, the Pilbara town widely described as Australia's hottest. Marble Bar holds the Australian record for consecutive days at or above 37.8 degrees Celsius, set between 31 October 1923 and 7 April 1924. The town exists because of a gold field, and the heat is the condition under which people worked it.
104. 2024-04-13 - 100 Years of Group Settlement. A Margaret River and Districts Historical Society talk marking a century of the Group Settlement Scheme. The scheme ran from 1921 under Premier James Mitchell, with the 1923 Migration Agreement setting a target of 6,000 men on 6,000 farms in five years. Families arrived to unclear bush blocks, tents and group camps rather than to farms.
105. 2024-05-01 - The history, culture and heritage of Roebourne prison. A University of Liverpool research film on the history, culture and heritage of Roebourne prison, the Pilbara gaol whose stone cells held Aboriginal men through the pastoral era. Roebourne fed prisoners into the Wadjemup / Rottnest Island Aboriginal prison, which operated from 1838 to 1931 with a gap between 1849 and 1855, imprisoned over 3,600 Aboriginal men and boys, and where at least 370 died and were buried in unmarked graves.
106. 2024 - Broome International Airport, Broome, WA, Australia. The airport bisects the town of Broome into the CBD of Chinatown, and the resorts/restaurants/beach area of Cable Beach. To get from one to the other involves a massive detour around the perimeter of the airport. Air links hold the state together across distances that make road travel impractical, and the fly-in fly-out rosters of the Pilbara run through these terminals.
107. 2024 - Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, Broome, WA, Australia. Jehovah's Witnesses Hall, 2 Palmer Rd, Cable Beach Western Australia 6726. Broome's Chinatown grew around a pearling workforce of Japanese, Malay, Filipino, Koepanger and Chinese workers.
108. 2024 - Johnny Chi Lane, Chinatown, Broome, WA, Australia. Chinatown was previously named Japtown prior to WWII. Pearling was the only industry exempt from the White Australia policy, because the work could not be staffed otherwise.
109. 2024 - Kimberley Bookshop, Broome, and environs. WA, Australia. 3 Napier Terrace, Chinatown, Broome Western Australia 6725. "Chinatown used to be called Japtown before the Japanese attacked Broome in 1942 during WWII. They are small, remote, and mostly Aboriginal, and each sits on the Country of the nations around it.
110. 2024 - Bunbury CWA. Country Women's Association rooms in Wellington Street, Bunbury, Western Australia. The Round House of 1831 is the oldest surviving public building in the state, put up as a gaol in the colony's second year.
111. 2024-09-16 - A Little Trip Back in Time. Cossack WA. A visit to the Cossack townsite in the Pilbara, the port that served Roebourne and the North West pearling fleet from the early 1870s on Ngarluma Country. Its stone courthouse, gaol and bond store were built for a town that no longer had residents by the mid twentieth century. The pearling trade the port existed for relied on blackbirded Aboriginal skin divers before hard-hat diving shifted the work to indentured Asian crews in the 1880s and 1890s.
112. 2024-11-14 - The History and Future of Perth's Skyline. A history of the Perth skyline and how the city's building stock was rebuilt in successive mining booms. Perth is on Whadjuk Noongar Country along the Derbarl Yerrigan / Swan River, where the Upper Swan shows occupation by about 40,000 years ago. Almost nothing of the nineteenth-century town survives above two storeys.
113. 2025-02-16 - Living Off The Grid On Australia's Most Remote Cattle Station!. A record of living conditions on a remote northern cattle station, off the electricity grid and hundreds of kilometres from a town. Station homesteads, quarters and camps are self-contained settlements with their own power, water and airstrip. Kimberley and Pilbara stations were built on Aboriginal labour and Aboriginal camps stood alongside the homesteads for most of the twentieth century.
114. 2025-10-27 - Exile. A feature-length production from PAKAM, the Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media network, made by and for the communities it covers. PAKAM operates a remote media network across Kimberley and Pilbara communities, producing video in language and in English for people living on Country. Community-controlled media of this kind is one of the few records of camp and community life made from inside rather than about it.
115. 2026-03-09 - New Norcia, Experience the Peace.. A short film from the New Norcia Benedictine Community itself, presenting the monastery town as it wishes to be seen. New Norcia was founded in 1847 as a mission to Aboriginal people and later operated boarding institutions on the site. Survivors of abuse at those institutions have pursued civil claims against the community.
116. 2026-04-08 - ICTV Contributor Profiles Project: Fernandez Shoveller (2019). A contributor profile from ICTV, Indigenous Community Television, which broadcasts material made in remote communities. ICTV carries programming produced by the communities themselves rather than about them. It is one of the few outlets where remote community life is recorded from inside.
117. 2026 - Northam Village Square shopping centre, April 2026. The Northam Village Square shopping centre, Western Australia. The wheatbelt thinned as farms consolidated, and several towns now carry painted silos as a tourism strategy.
118. 2026 - House 65 Duke Street, Northam, April 2026. The house at 65 Duke Street, Northam, Western Australia. Clearing for wheat brought the salinity that is now the region's defining environmental problem.
119. 2026 - Foundation stone of the Northam Town Hall, April 2026. Foundation stone of the state heritage listed Northam Town Hall, Western Australia. York was the first inland town in the colony, settled in the 1830 s.
120. 2026 - 85 Fitzgerald Street, Northam, April 2026. The heritage listed building at 85 Fitzgerald Street, Northam, Western Australia, formerly a bank building. The Avon Valley and wheatbelt towns stand on Ballardong and neighbouring Noongar Country.
121. 2026 - Perth skyline viewed from Mount Pleasant, July 2026. Perth skyline viewed over the Canning River from Mount Pleasant, with Canning Bridge visible in the foreground. It nearly failed: reports reaching England in early 1830 described starving colonists, and prospective settlers diverted to Cape Town or New South Wales.
122. 2026-07-29 - The Rise and Fall Of Australia's Most Notorious Sin City: KALGOORLIE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA. A history of Kalgoorlie, located in 1893 by Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan Shea at Mount Charlotte. Hannan is the one with the statue but he was not alone, and the three men's find opened the Golden Mile. The town's later reputation as a frontier city rests on a licensed brothel trade and a mining workforce that lived in single men's quarters.