Murrin Murrin is an abandoned town in

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 ...

located east 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 ...

, situated along the Old Laverton Road in between Leonora and Laverton in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. The town began as a mining camp, as part of a

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New ...

, with allotments being made available in 1896. Alfred Edward Morgans, who later became Premier of Western Australia, established a short-lived

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

smelter in the area in 1896. Town lots were sold in 1900 but the railway to Leonora, built in 1905, bypassed the townsite and the railway station was located north of the original townsite. The boundaries of the town were extended in 1906 to the include the railway station. All further development occurred alongside the railway line. A police station was opened in 1905, with building constructed in 1906 and then closed in 1911. The station was then reopened in 1943 and then closed again in 1951. Murrin is an

Indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

name for a species of Acacia tree that is commonly found in the area. Nickel was discovered in Kambalda and the nearby Mount Windarra in the 1960s. The giant

Murrin Murrin Joint Venture The Murrin Murrin Mine is a major nickel-cobalt mining operation being conducted in the North Eastern Goldfields, approximately 45 km east of Leonora, Western Australia. The project was initiated as a joint venture between Murrin Murrin H ...

which produces

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow ...

and

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

is approximately to the northwest of the abandoned townsite from which it takes its name.

References

{{authority control Shire of Leonora Ghost towns in Western Australia