Blue death permeates the Pilbara. It blows with the scorching winds across the vast north-west inland area of Western Australia, washing with the wet-season rains through the Fortescue River floodplains.

At its centre is the ghost town of Wittenoom, with its hauntingly beautiful backdrop of ribbon-red scarps and green gorges that adjoin Karijini National Park, one of the state’s most spectacular tourist destinations.

The blue asbestos that was mined around here for more than 30 years continues to kill those who worked with it.

It kills the children – now adults – who hugged their dusty fathers home from long days processing the deadly fibres.

Asbestos-related diseases can strike decades after the sharp, microscopic filaments have been inhaled and pierced the lungs.

Mesothelioma - the most deadly of these diseases - has no cure. It is a painful and aggressive cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs and abdomen, killing many victims just months after diagnosis.

Such is the average latency period, more than 40,000 Australians are expected to die of asbestos-related diseases over the next 15-20 years, according to the federal government, as a direct result of mining, manufacturing and close contact with the material.

More than 10,000 have already died.

Yet mountains of blue asbestos tailings remain in the Pilbara – open to the elements, spreading across the landscape – because those who mined it left it where it was dumped, while successive governments have failed to tackle the problem over 80 years.

The blue-grey mounds of the old Colonial and Wittenoom mines stand out against the red ridgelines and green valleys of scenic Wittenoom Gorge. The riverbeds and creeks are the colour of asbestos, where the tailings have washed down over decades of annual floods, past the condemned townsite, through tributaries, towards the mighty Fortescue River.

There are more than three million tonnes of tailings around Wittenoom, containing up to 5 per cent blue asbestos. The deadly dumps are the product of mining that began in the 1930s and ended in 1966 – 60 years after the first asbestos deaths were formally recognised by British Parliament in 1906.

Of the estimated 20,000 people who lived and worked in Wittenoom during the life of the mines and town, more than 2,000 are believed to have so far died of asbestos-related diseases. Some estimates put the figure at around 3,000.

Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia president Robert Vojakovic – who himself worked in the Wittenoom Colonial asbestos mine in 1961, and has been involved in more than 200 legal claims – estimates more than 4,000 have died, citing those who were never officially diagnosed, and the hundreds of migrant asbestos miners who returned to their native countries to pass away.

Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia president Robert Vojakovic

While Wittenoom was wiped from the map in 2007 – degazetted by the state government – the abandoned tailings contain up to 150,000 tonnes of raw asbestos fibre: almost the entire amount of blue asbestos produced commercially in the area – 165,000 tonnes – over the life of the mines.

An official survey by global engineering firm GHD in 2006 highlighted the ongoing spread of tailings asbestos through the gorges, townsite, floodplains, pastures, towards drinking water and other inhabited areas.

“The undercutting by stream action is serving to feed asbestos material into the Fortescue River catchment that will continue, if unchecked, for hundreds of years,” states the report, commissioned by the WA government.

“The undercutting by stream action is serving to feed asbestos material into the Fortescue River catchment that will continue, if unchecked, for hundreds of years.”

The mine dumps are not the only source of asbestos fibre in the area.

Asbestos tailings were used for decades by local government as infill and construction material in and around Wittenoom: for roads, pipelines, the airstrip, golf course and other infrastructure. In the early 1970s, asbestos tailings were sold to Australian concrete manufacturers for $15 a tonne.

All this happened despite WA government warnings about “asbestosis” as early as 1948 and the internationally known dangers decades prior.

Blue asbestos – known by its geological name crocidolite – is the most deadly form of asbestos due to the length of its filaments that can pierce lung tissue and can’t be contained by the body’s natural defences.

According to US studies, it has killed up to 18 per cent of those who have mined it around the world.

Crocidolite is found in few places on earth, but is abundant in WA’s Pilbara.

Blue asbestos was first noted in the Hamersley Ranges by the WA Mines Department in 1917.

But it was prospector Lang Hancock and partner Peter Wright who started large-scale mining of Wittenoom Gorge, about 30 kilometres from Hancock’s Mulga Downs pastoral station, in 1936.

Two years later, asbestos trading partners Islwyn Walters and Walter Leonard started mining nearby Yampire Gorge with their company, West Australian Blue Asbestos Fibres Ltd, which was later sold to WA Goldfields entrepreneur Claude de Bernales.

In 1943, the Colonial Sugar Refining Company – with no experience in mining – bought out both ventures, renaming Hancock and Wright’s interest Australian Blue Asbestos Ltd, which later became Midalco Pty Ltd. Hancock remained as manager until 1948, when he and Wright sold their remaining shares in the company.

CSR opened the Colonial Mine upstream from Wittenoom Gorge in 1953, and it’s the asbestos tailings from this site, according to GHD, that now poses the biggest risk.

“The dump is currently unstable and this needs to be addressed... the priority should be to stabilise [it],” the engineering report states of the largest source of asbestos tailings.

About 8 kilometres downstream is the old town of Wittenoom, which was established by the WA government in 1947 at the behest of the miners to house their growing workforce. The foundations were laid one year after the first asbestosis case was reported there in 1946.

In 1959, WA Health Department mines medical officer Jim McNulty visited Wittenoom and raised serious concerns about the asbestos mine and processing plant, three years later reporting Australia’s first case of asbestos-related malignant mesothelioma in a man who had worked there.

Asbestos mining at Wittenoom continued until 1966, with more than 100 cases of lung disease recorded in the last five years.

Dr McNulty later served as WA’s Commissioner for Public Health – from 1975 to 1984 – and was instrumental in the decision to phase down Wittenoom from 1978. But the town would officially remain open another three decades, serving as a prime tourist destination with up to 40,000 visitors a year, and hosting the annual Wittenoom horse races and other events.

Tailings and other contaminated sites near the township have been cleaned up in recent decades, but asbestos fibre is still widespread – especially in the gorges. (Blue asbestos also occurs naturally in the area, which is obviously why it was mined.)

In 2008, a “Wittenoom Asbestos Contaminated Area” of almost 470 square kilometres was declared and listed by the WA Health Department as "not suitable for any form of human occupation or land use". It borders Mulga Downs station to the north and Karijini National Park to the west, south and east. The Youngaleena Banjima Aboriginal community lies 15 kilometres east.

In 2013, Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting applied to start iron ore mining Mulga Downs station. An initial application for environmental approval was not pursued by the company, according to WA’s Environmental Protection Authority.

Wittenoom remains to this day, of the most beautiful places in the Pilbara and continues to attract hundreds of tourists and travellers each year.

Wittenoom resident Lorraine Thomas

Wittenoom is not quite a ghost town.

There are working telephone lines.

Despite there being no power grid, no official post service, no road maintenance and signs posted around the old township warning visitors of the deadly risks of airborne asbestos, three people remain.

One of them is Shire of Ashburton councillor Lorraine Thomas, who moved to Wittenoom from Victoria in 1984 claiming she “knew nothing about asbestos” when she arrived.

Ms Thomas runs the local gem and souvenir shop – still open to adventurous tourists – and owns 10 properties in the town, which she bought as part of a failed mining accommodation venture. At 72, and having lived half her life in Wittenoom, Ms Thomas is dismissive of the health risks.

“It’s only the dust that’s dangerous,” she says, claiming there is little or no airborne asbestos in the town since mining activities ceased.

However, Ms Thomas says it’s a different story in the nearby gorges, and is aware the tailings are being eroded downstream and carrying with it asbestos fibre.

“It’s only the dust that’s dangerous.”

“[The tailings] are eroding down into the Fortescue River,” she says. “That Fortescue River goes to Mill Stream – which is a drinking water area.”

Ms Thomas also cites the potential danger to tourists and mine workers camped inside adjoining Karijini National Park.

“The tailings are 10 kilometres from here and they’re closer to the main attractions at Karijini,” she says. “There’s a mining camp at Karijini – there’s more than one. They’re much closer than we are.”

Ms Thomas is in no doubt who is responsible for cleaning up the tailings.

“Both the state and the commonwealth governments subsidised all aspects of the mining to keep it going,” she said. “They are entirely responsible. If the government owns the problem – they also own most of the town – they should [clean it up].”

The WA government is fully aware of the dangers and spread of abandoned blue asbestos tailings around Wittenoom, as stated in a 40-page WorkSafe document published by the Department of Commerce in 2012.

“There is extensive, severe crocidolite fibre contamination in the town of Wittenoom and surrounding areas,” the document reads. “The tailings have washed into the beds of nearby creeks that eventually flow into the Fortescue River. These sites are still popular tourist sites.

“[Asbestos] fibres readily migrate as a result of wind and flooding, and human activities such as the movement of vehicles. The Department of Health, which has reviewed the [2006 GHD] report, has expressed the view that the exposure and risks identified in the report pose an unacceptable public health risk.”

An “extreme risk” and “imminent risk of exposure to harmful levels” – is posed to indigenous people, tourists and residents in the area.

The GHD summary – which can be found here – lists all human activity and potential health risks in and around Wittenoom, including the highly-contaminated gorges, townsite and floodplains. It states:

• Up to 40 tourists a day visit the gorges and townsite year-round, mostly during the dry season.

• Up to 200 Aboriginal people visit the gorges and townsite during ceremonies, mostly during the wet season.

• Up to 100 cars a day drive through Wittenoom and over connecting roads year-round, mostly during the dry.

• Pastoralists, mining explorers, remediation and contract workers all visit the town or work on the floodplains each year.

“The risk assessment indicated that the gorges, in particular, could present a high or extreme risk to certain user groups,” the GHD report states. “Other areas of concern were the floodplain, and in particular contaminated creek beds, used by Aboriginal people and pastoralists, and the townsite, where residents, pastoralists and construction contractors may be at high risk from exposure to respirable fibres.”

An “extreme risk” and “imminent risk of exposure to harmful levels” – is posed to indigenous people, tourists and residents in the area.

Yet there are still no concrete plans to clean up the asbestos tailings almost 80 years after they were first dumped there.

What strikes you most as you fly towards the old asbestos mining town of Wittenoom is not the spectacular Hamersley Ranges washing on the horizon like red-crested waves.

It’s the activity.

Cutting across the dry Fortescue River, a train runs along the spur line from Fortescue Metals Group’s Solomon iron ore mine.

Mining billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Mulga Downs Station looms into view with its dirt airstrip – presumably from which her father, the late Lang Hancock, flew.

The township appears in the somewhat hazy, dusty distance, sitting at the mouth of Wittenoom Gorge.

Cars can be seen driving along a bitumen road through the condemned town that links Auski Tourist Village, on the Great Northern Highway, to Karijini National Park.

In the short time we’re overhead, we count four vehicles, including a car and caravan parked deep inside the gorge - just a few hundred metres from the old Colonial asbestos mine and its mountains of deadly tailings.

Wittenoom itself is an almost-square grid of paved roads, empty blocks and demolished structures, however some lots have lush lawns, large trees and kept-up houses - including a neat little row of four homes owned by Lorraine Thomas.

The other lots are where remaining residents Peter Heyward and Mario Hartmann live.

To the west is the old Wittenoom race track, which used to host a popular annual event named after the town.

From the town, it’s an almost straight run up the gorge to the asbestos tailings.

The landscape is breathtaking - like a swirling, rolling maze of red-ribbon rock, lime-green trees and pockets of blue water.

At the old Colonial mine and adjacent East Gorge (old Wittenoom) mine, the blue-grey tailings form their own walls and ridges for hundreds of metres.

Asbestos doesn’t have a smell, but the industrial stench – even 50 years after mining finished – burns the nostrils.

It smells like freshly-laid asphalt: tar, diesel, creosote and other chemicals.

Deep channels – like the tendrils of an octopus – can be seen running down the mountain-sides where the tailings have been washed away by heavy wet-season rains for over half a century.

Blue-grey tailings fill the natural creeks, flowing from the gorges and out on to the nearby floodplains.

The colour of asbestos stains the ground all the way to the Fortescue River.

From the air, the scale of any clean-up operation seems so vast... it’s almost no wonder successive governments have been trying to hide Wittenoom from the rest of the world.

So, Who is responsible?

“The problem confronting the government is that, no matter what they do, it’s going to cost them money - money to clean up the asbestos, or money to settle the legal claims if they don’t.”

Wittenoom may have been stripped from Western Australia's map, but the deadly blue ghosts remain.