Wittenoom: The survivors of an erased town

Updated

In the 1950s, Wittenoom's streets were literally paved with asbestos. Today, decades after the town was declared too dangerous to live in, three people refuse to leave.

Lorraine, 36-year resident

When Lorraine Thomas first visited Wittenoom in 1979, she fell in love with the place. Before long she had moved up from Victoria with her three daughters.

"I was taken in with the beautiful blue sky and the beautiful white trunk trees and everything was so beautiful. [There were] these beautiful hills and big mobs of green budgies flying around," she said.

Wittenoom: 1946-2007 The town of Wittenoom once lived and breathed blue asbestos

It was built at the entrance of Wittenoom Gorge in 1946, to house workers who returned home coated in deadly dust from the mine and mill 10 kilometres away

Its roads were paved with asbestos tailings

By 1961, a former Wittenoom miner was diagnosed with mesothelioma and died, the first of more than 300 former mine workers to die of the disease

The mine was closed for good in 1966, and the town's population peak of approximately 20,000 people began to rapidly decline

The WA Government officially struck Wittenoom from the map in 2007

It was almost 20 years after Wittenoom's blue asbestos mine closed for good that Lorraine first settled in the town.

"When I arrived here there were 100 residents but there wasn't a fence in the area other than ring lock and barbed fire fences," she said.

"There was no trees, no lawns, no gardens at all, it was just a plain mining town — very, very wide across the width of the roads from one side of the street to the other."

By then, the Western Australian Government had begun demolishing buildings.

Former state MP for Pilbara Larry Graham described it as "extraordinarily dangerous ... the most contaminated place on the planet".

Although the local shire re-sealed the roads to cover the old asbestos tailings, the Government had weighed up the cost of cleaning up the town and decided it was cheaper and safer to abandon it.

The process was already underway, but Lorraine said she was too busy running a gem shop, tourist information centre and caravan park with her late husband.

"Gradually things were changing and going backwards, but to be quite honest, we were that flat out and I worked 12 hours nearly every day of the week I just couldn't keep up with the business," she said.

Even when services were cut completely and the visitors stopped coming, she bought a generator and still refused to leave.

"I have my own vegetable garden: mangos, mandarins, vegetables," she said.

"The fact is to the south of here we have the beautiful, burnt soil — yellowy gold-y Spinifex grows on the side of the hills ... it's just absolutely beautiful — we have lots of birdlife, we have kangaroos come in, we have the cattle mow our lawns for us even at times."

She said she had known families who had lost loved ones to mesothelioma, but the threat of the disease did not worry her.

"I believe that everyone has breathed in some asbestos. It's been in brake linings, it's a life saver, war years it saved lives," she said.

"It takes a hell of a lot of asbestos particles in the dust to cause cancer and basically if you're going to die of that, well you're going to die of that. You're going to die of something anyway."

Mario, 27-year resident

Mario Hartmann immigrated to Australia from Austria in 1990. By the time he arrived in Wittenoom, its population was below 50.

"The pub was still open and there were shops and now since they have turned the power off it's very small," he said.

"It was hard seeing houses being demolished and things like that, but now it's just like you live on a station.

"It's basically the same lifestyle you like on a big property with no neighbours, no big crowds of people."

Mario built his own power station with three generators and pumps his own water, but the cut to services over the years affected his livelihood.

His job with the power company ceased to exist, as did his work delivering mail.

"It is a pretty hard life here. You have to be pretty organised because the summers you can have over six months over 40 degrees, very hot nights, and now the closest place for shopping is Tom Price, 130 kilometres [away], so you have to be organised," he said.

Today the locals' mail gets delivered to Mulga Downs, 15 kilometres away, twice a week, while their phone service comes from solar-powered telephone equipment outside town.

Mario said the State Government had offered him money to leave, but it was not enough to make it worth his while.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Super 8 footage shows Wittenoom in its heyday (ABC News)

"I don't want to leave here — to replace what I got here, my lifestyle they would have to pay me well over $1 million that I can keep, to buy a property so I can keep my lifestyle," he said.

While not completely dismissive of dangers of living in an old asbestos town, he said the risks were nowhere near what they once were.

"I heard stories that in the mine people couldn't see each other from two metres apart because of the dust and now it is completely different," he said.

"I believe as long as you stay away from the big tailing dumps out in the gorge, I don't think there is a problem here, but I still have respect for the asbestos because it does kill people."

Peter, 24-year resident

By the time Peter Heyward moved to Wittenoom from New Zealand in 1992, the population was down to around 35.

"I didn't come here to be in a community because there was already the stigma that it was closing down, so it was bound to get smaller so, I wasn't here for that. I am here for the country, that's what I like," he said.

"The land just feels ancient, it feels uninhabited.

"It's got that beautiful feel about it, you can go up the gorge and you will see tourists now and then but sometimes in the summer you can be the only one up there for days."

The odd tourist braving the warnings is about the only people you see up here — government and private companies do not let their workers in, at least not without full safety gear.

The three remaining residents all said they did not even spend much time with each other. Peter said he actually likes the dangerous reputation the town now has.

"The stigma of asbestos or the stigma of the dangers of the town, I quite like it because it keeps a lot of people away," he said.

"There isn't any evidence to say that it's bad at the present moment. Thirty to 40 years ago it may have been, but people they go on and they believe and I don't tell them otherwise I just keep it quiet."

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Topics: mining-environmental-issues, asbestos, government-and-politics, mining-rural, wittenoom-6754

First posted