Day Dawn is a

ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * Ghost Town (1936 film), ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * Ghost Town (1956 film), ''Ghost Town'' ...

in the

Mid West The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...

/upper Murchison region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. It was a significant mining town and mine in the late nineteenth century. Located a short distance south-west of Cue, rich gold deposits were discovered there in 1891 by Ned Heffernan, who pegged out what became known as the 'Day Dawn Reef'.History of country town names – D

Landgate The Western Australian Land Information Authority operates under the business name of Landgate. Formerly known as the Department of Land Information (DLI), the Department of Land Administration (DOLA) and the Department of Lands and Surveys ( ...

website, accessed: 25 January 2010 Originally the settlement was informally called Four Mile, that being its distance from the town of Cue. It was gazetted as the town of Bundawadra on 2 March 1894, p. 320 and renamed Day Dawn on 25 May 1894. It had its own municipality, the

Municipality of Day Dawn The Municipality of Day Dawn was a local government area in Western Australia centred on the mining town of Day Dawn. It was established on 21 December 1894. It was placed under the Health Act and Building Act in 1896. The municipality built speci ...

, from 1894 to 1912. The Northern Railway arrived at Cue from Mullewa, a distance of , in 1894. In 1895 the ''Day Dawn Associated Gold mine'', ''Kinsella'', ''Trenton'' and the ''Day Dawn South mine'' were all operating ten head

stamp mill A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking material down is a type of unit operatio ...

s close to the town for processing ore. An important strike was staged there for nine weeks in 1899 when local miners protested against the use of Italian immigrant contract workers and Great Fingall's attempt to reduce miners' wages by five shillings per week. A newspaper for the town, the ''Day Dawn Chronicle'', launched in May 1902 and ran for about seven years. Great Fingall Consolidated Gold Mining Company operated the mine from 1898 until 1918, when it was closed. By October 1921, shorings at the abandoned mine, which had been known as the 'Great Fingall mine', had collapsed and the town had disappeared altogether by the 1930s. All of the town's buildings are now in ruins with the exception of the

Great Fingall Mine office The Great Fingall Mine office is a heritage listed building in Day Dawn (near Cue), within Western Australia's Goldfields. It was built from stone in the Federation Italianate architectural style, during the Western Australian gold rushes, . T ...

, which is on state and federal heritage registers. Various mining companies have operated the mine from the early 1990s using the open cut method and by reprocessing the tailings from past activities at the Big Bell gold processing plant. The last owners, Harmony Mining, have recently halted production and have sold the mine to Monarch Gold along with the Big Bell Mine and the

Hill 50 Gold Mine The Hill 50 Gold Mine, now referred to as the Mount Magnet Gold Mine, is a gold mine located 4 km north-west of Mount Magnet, Western Australia.semi-arid A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-ar ...

climate with hot summers and mild to cool winters, but is prone to the occasional inundation, in 1925 several buildings in the town collapsed following heavy rain and flood waters. The town received of rain over the course of two days.

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