Gwalia Ghost Town

well today uh we've come to start a town called leonora which is the gold mining town about 800 kilometers north or sort of north east of uh perth but at this place there's the old gualia ghost town they call it today which was the original little shanty town that was here when the gold rush was on now in the up late 1890s uh they came here and behind me you can see the state hotel that was completed in about 1902 for about six thousand pounds which was i suppose a lot of money back then anyway the short history of this place is that uh there was about 1800 people here and then just one day out of the blue the the mind was closed and so everybody overnight got on the train and went back to calgary to try and um find jobs down there so there's lots of little buildings here there's lots of little houses and some of them actually left if you can imagine a family saying quick grab your clothes or out grab the train and they just left things exactly where they are and this is where they're still at today so let's go and have a look around and i'm sure you'll find this quite interesting so i've just arrived at sort of where probably probably some of the buildings left where the main settlement was and even today there's still a few people living in the old houses just i think there's three or four families or or something like that but we'll have a look around and uh you know i want you to think you know leonora is a pretty hot place it gets up to nearly 50 degrees and we're in the middle of winter so there's hardly any flies but you can imagine in the hot season living in these tin sheds it's all ours tin shacks and it'd be pretty horrendous and things were tough and tough in those days but we'll go for a bit of a walk and uh i'll show you around some of those old buildings now behind me what's was originally called a sly grog shop so there used to be a couple of this is one of the couple of shacks here that where they used to make their own alcohol and there's a few immigrants here a lot of them came from yugoslavia and um italy that worked in these mines so let's go inside and we'll have a little bit of a look so here i'm sure some of the original bottles that you should drink out of and it's quite interesting let's go in here so we'll go into this other room and this is quite amazing here we have the bar where they used to come in and have some of their beer and bear in mind that in those days you'll be drinking hot beer which would have been pretty uh pretty tough i presume this could have been one of the bedrooms an old wardrobe and uh an old bathtub let's just go around here we'll have a little bit of a look another little old bedroom ghost look at that how hard would have been living in here and here i'd say would be like a bit of a living area it could probably sit in here and um have a drink and talk with friends about their day but let's push on we'll go and have a look at uh what else is around this house here is called pink camp and this along it used to belong to a guy called angelo ginger branchi and he came from italy with his three brothers to work at this mine in australia and um you know he worked here and lived and died and is presently buried in the uh calgary cemetery but this was his house so let's just go inside and have a little look and see how this fellow used to live well as we walk in we have a look around to the room on the left here and i presume it's probably a little sitting area all the walls are canvas to shield the heat from the tin from which it was made from then we come around here and possibly his bedroom where he used to sleep and around here was uh you know it's quite it must have been quite short but you can't stand and here's a little kitchen and you can imagine uh having a wood fire going in the middle of 45 degrees to cook your meal would have been another experience and used to sit here and possibly have his dinner and look out the window but uh yeah quite remarkable there what they'd had to endure out in these places [Music] so [Music] so here we are at what's possibly i suppose like a garage a mechanical shop where they used to repair cars and as you can see there's a i don't know what this is probably an old chev or something it's been sitting here for a lot of years but look at the history on the wall all the old number plates and all the vehicles that have come up through this way but just a quick look inside to see all the old tools [Music] and uh plenty of stories here kind of quite amazing really yeah very good [Music] well behind me here is what used to be a function housing so what a function house was is that uh it was like a bit of a community building and people there's pictures around where people sitting out the front in a group and someone's playing a musical instrument and having a bit of a sing song but it has a kitchen and that so i presume it's like a local hall in some ways and people come here and get together and probably have a meal and sing some songs and just primarily enjoy themselves let's go inside and have a quick look well here we have an old piano that uh it's probably been here from the 1900s no doubt and i'm sure everyone who comes here pushes one of those keys so it's pretty raggedy let's go inside and have a bit of a quick look you know when i was a kid my family's live on farms down south and uh when i look at a lot of the uh it just reminds me of those places and look at the old floorboards made out of old boxes and uh walls made out of hessian and it's very much like how i remember it as a kid a lot of the houses with tin walls looks like an old washing washing place this was obviously the kitchen they'd come and cook a meal and probably share a meal but uh yeah it's really good i love these old kind of places let you move on to the next one [Music] this next college was signed by italian giovanna giovanni andrew aletti and he worked on the mine here and so let's go inside and see what his life was about [Music] looking here we see this little house this little kitchen so this is where obviously he ate his meals and prepared his meals [Music] and here we just have the only room and uh passion walls tin on the other side of the course and his little bed little things a little wash basin for washing your face in the morning [Music] so this is a five bedroom minus cottage and obviously by the sound of it sounds like it has the number of miners and just as you go in on the right there there's a uh kitchen each man would have his uh his bedroom so to speak [Music] you know it'd be bitterly cold it'd be bitterly cold here in winter so they had a wood fire here to keep the place warm and of course another bedroom here so good let's go let's go and we'll have a look at some other places [Music] now an interesting fact about this squarely you know one of the american presidents henry hoover before he became an american president not sure where he come from possibly england he uh he came to guayla and he is to actually be in charge of this area and and a little while we'll go up to the top of the hill and uh to henry herbert's house but it's just interesting that uh you know here's this man that came to just one of the remotest places in australia and then later went on to go to america and become the american president but there you go so in a little while we got the hill there to henry herbert's house and this house is located up above and it overlooked the mine and overlooked the town and uh yeah just a little interesting fact [Music] you know interesting thing i've learned over the years about gold mining towns [Music] is that most gold miners didn't really make a fortune at all they'd make a bit of gold they go to the pub and pretty well drink it all up and spend it on women but the people who really made the money in gold towns were people who came and set up a shop that supplied the gold miners like for mining tools or food shops they're the people that really made a lot of money and most of the miners left the town eventually without ever really making a [Music] fortune [Music] the next place i'm going to show you is the guava guest house a little boarding house for people who came to stay here and um it was built in the late 1800s 1891 and obviously has many rooms and i'll show you it's funny even today modern motels are built on the same concept of a main building and lots of little rooms so let's go for a quick look [Music] is the main kitchen where all the cooking would have been done for all the guests and through here would be the dining room so as you stayed here [Music] it's like someone's old meal and of course if you as you stayed here you'd come in here and uh you pay obviously you pay your rent or whatever you do and then um come in here at stone have your meals here you can notice uh whether you used to cook the meals on the back there there's a uh a flap you could open up can be these big cast-iron stoves would have created a lot of heat and so that was open to some of the heat out of the building [Music] so this room here have two guests and uh you'd share about uh obviously a bird in a box and look out the window uh should shoot it tin on the outside and uh hessian on the inside to help keep it a bit cold so here's this big uh flap that i told you about for when they were cooking i mean ladies would be busy cooking in there used to be run by two ladies actually this house they bought it a few years after it was built they'd be busy cooking in there and open this big door up to let the heat out [Music] [Music] thanks for watching but uh appreciate it just click the like button and um we'll catch you next time thanks you

Channel: zoezoe610 Random Travels

Views: 46,798

Keywords: Gwalia Ghost town, gold minig, Kalgoorlie, Leonora, caravanning, camping, ghost towns western Australia

Id: Lbxtry-F7nE

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020