14 November 2023 , 12:06
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A series of tourists have ignored calls to stay away from an abandoned town that is slowly being demolished.
A group of Dark Tourism travellers - aka those who venture to often dangerous or abandoned spots - ignored pleas by officials to stay away from the ghost town of Wittenoom. Western Australian government leaders are so determined to keep people out they've threatened any trespassers with prosecution.
Just over a year ago the remote settlement still had a resident, then 80-year-old Lorraine Thomas. She had outstayed all the others, whose numbers had been whittled down from six in 2015. At its peak, more than 800 people had lived in the town.
In May, which Lorraine safely out of the way, bulldozers moved in and began taking apart what remained of Wittenoom. While the work is undertaken, all roads into the town have been blocked in a bid to stop the curious from taking a peak. Back in 2007 it was officially taken off the map to deter would-be visitors from seeking it out.
Wittenoom is in the middle of the largest contaminated area in the Southern Hemisphere (Getty Images/iStockphoto)The reason for such extensive efforts and the demolition is that Wittenoom is deadly. It sits right in the middle of the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere, in the middle of 50,000 hectares of poisonous earth.
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Back in the 1930s a collection of hardened Australians including an iron ore magnate and a kangaroo shooter had worked out that the area was rich with blue asbestos. They began digging for the material, which was extremely useful in the insulation of steam engines, and in some spray-on coatings, plastics and cement products.
Thousands of workers were drafted in to begin mining the substance, chiselling away through the next three booming decades. In 1966 the mine closed down, because it was no longer making enough money. It would only become completely clear much later that blue asbestos is deadly.
More than 2,000 miners, residents and family members died from asbestos-related diseases, according to one estimate. Many lost their lives to painful cancers that attack the lungs.
Despite the horror of dying a slow death from asbestosis, many tourists have found it impossible to stay away from the site. Lands Minister John Carey previously said the government closed the town to stop "idiotic" visitors to the area, who are attracted by the local picturesque landscape and the eerie quiet of a once thriving town.
Work to demolish the town began earlier this year (Getty Images/iStockphoto)While the state government is working to demolish Wittenoom, potentially deadly asbestos tailing are spread across the area, with no plan currently underway to remove them.
Former Wittenoom resident and retired Western Australia Greens MP Robin Chapple called on the government to act. He told ABC News: "You just can't go around leaving contaminated sites saying, 'it's all too hard'. The government and the mining industry which allowed this to be developed, and actually poured money into the development, has a responsibility to clean up.
Mr Chapple claimed that visitors continued to visit the area via unofficial back roads. He added: "If you keep on covering something up long enough, everybody will want to go and see it."