Lawlers 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), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...

on the Old Agnew Road, northeast of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

, Western Australia, in the

Shire of Leonora The Shire of Leonora is a local government area in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, about north of the city of Kalgoorlie and about northeast of the state capital, Perth. The Shire covers an area of , and its seat of go ...

in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia.

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

was discovered in the area by Anderson, Hall and Heffernan, a party of

prospector Prospector may refer to: Space exploration * Prospector (spacecraft), a planned lunar probe, canceled in 1962 * '' Lunar Prospector'', a NASA spacecraft Trains * Prospector (train), a passenger train operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western ...

s that left Cue in 1892. Patrick Lawler and his party arrived in 1893 and had little success until they left and returned in 1894. The townsite was surveyed and gazetted in 1896 and named after Patrick Lawler. A ten stamp battery was established about northwest of town in 1899 on a five-acre lease. A police station/ courthouse was built the same year; it was closed in 1927, reopened in 1938, then closed permanently in 1950. In 1996 it was used as an office by the gold mining company Plutonic Resources. At its peak, Lawlers was the state's third-largest town, with a population of 8,000. It had a separate local government area (the Lawlers Road Board) until 1929, when it was divided between the Leonora-Mount Malcolm and Mount Margaret Road Boards.

Notable residents

* Dan Mackinnon, a prominent pastoralist, was chairman of the Lawlers Road Board from 1928 to 1929. * Charles Maley, a future state MP, managed a brewery in Lawlers in the early 1900s, and also served on the Lawlers Road Board. *

Emil Nulsen Emil Nulsen (9 June 1885 – 3 August 1965) was an Australian politician who was a Labor Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia from 1932 to 1962. He served as a minister in the governments of John Willcock, Frank Wise, ...

, another future state MP, was secretary of the Lawlers branch of the

Australian Workers' Union The Australian Workers' Union (AWU) is one of Australia's largest and oldest trade unions. It traces its origins to unions founded in the pastoral and mining industries in the 1880s and currently has approximately 80,000 members. It has exer ...

in the late 1900s.Emil Nulsen
– Biographical Register of Members of the Parliament of Western Australia. Retrieved 4 January 2017.

References

{{authority control Ghost towns of the Goldfields of Western Australia Shire of Leonora