A tiny cemetery about 620 kilometres east of Perth is probably the last place you would expect to find two headstones inscribed with Japanese calligraphy.

The two graves sit side-by-side in a graveyard just east of Kanowna, 20 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

They belong to 49-year-old Ji Yano and 26-year-old Sono Samamoto, both of whom were murdered by Samamoto's ex-husband Chomatsu Yabu on December 10, 1902.

The three were part of a small, close-knit Japanese community living on the Goldfields at the time.

Ji Yano's headstone on the outskirts of Kanowna. ( ABC Goldfields-Esperance: Sam Tomlin )

Eastern Goldfields Historical Society President Scott Wilson said the onset of the White Australia Policy meant there were fewer Asian workers in WA's gold rushes compared to those in the eastern states.

"You had to fit a certain creed in order to get a miner's right," Mr Wilson said.

"Cooks, laundry and prostitutes were quite common."

Sono Samamoto's gravestone at the relocated Kanowna Cemetery. ( ABC Goldfields-Esperance: Sam Tomlin )

Jealousy, entitlement drove shocking crime

Yano, a laundry worker, lived in Kanowna, then a bustling mining town of more than 10,000 people.

Samamoto, also known as Osano, moved there to live with him early in 1902 when her relationship with Yabu broke down.

In what the judge in his murder trial labelled as a "demented" state of mind, Yabu bought a revolver and bullets from a Kalgoorlie ironmonger on November 21.

The double murders attracted considerable attention from local and statewide media — this report from the Western Mail. ( Trove: National Library of Australia )

On December 21, he calmly took the 5.30pm train from Kalgoorlie to Kanowna, walked to Yano's home in the town's Japanese quarter, and shot Yano and Osano dead as they ate their dinner.

Yabu then returned to Kalgoorlie and was eventually apprehended, but not before opening fire on local police constable J.P. Brown, who had been sent to apprehend him.

"After going about 50 yards, [Yabu] called out 'no follow, I kill.'," Boulder's Evening Star newspaper reported at the time.

"Then, without further warning, he turned around and fired."

Constable Brown returned fire, injuring the gunman, who was taken into custody.

After a high-profile murder trial, Yabu was initially sentenced to death, but eventually commuted to life imprisonment after intervention from WA's Executive Council.

Kanowna boasted a population of more than 12,000 at the turn of the century. ( Trove: State Library of Western Australia )

Town lived and died with gold

The double murder is just one of hundreds of stories to come out of Kanowna that have been carefully preserved by local historians.

Along with Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Coolgardie, it was one of the three major centres that emerged in WA's Goldfields from the rushes of the 1890s.

"The town became a real centre, it did vie with Kalgoorlie for the mantle of the premier town," Mr Wilson said.

"They wanted the [trans-Australian] railway to go into Kanowna and deviate, rather than starting from Kalgoorlie."

Mr Wilson said Kanowna's chief attraction was surface gold, with prospectors literally picking fortunes off the ground.

"Speculators came in off the back of that, then English capital, and away it went," he said.

The town reached a peak population of 12,500 in 1899.

But with the alluvial gold picked clean and underground mines producing less gold, the town's population drifted away. It was abandoned by 1953.

Metal and wooden signs mark the location of Kanowna's former buildings and landmarks. ( ABC Goldfields-Esperance: Sam Tomlin )

Historians hoping to preserve town as tourist attraction

More than a century on from its founding, Kanowna has been almost swallowed by surrounding bushland.

Metal and wooden signs dot the landscape, marking the locations of former landmarks, such as the town's courthouse.

"You can see garden beds and footpaths under bushes if you know what you are looking for," Mr Wilson said.

"People often go out and say 'there's nothing there'; that's the point, you look across and there's no trees, everything has been cut down."

The Historical Society hopes to develop a more permanent historic trail at the site, including a lookout designed to make the town's former streets more visible to tourists.

A truck drives beside the Kanowna Cemetery, where Yano and Osano are buried. ( ABC Goldfields-Esperance: Sam Tomlin )

"We've got a ready-made destination, another attraction for people who come to Kalgoorlie," Mr Wilson said.