Leonora is a town in the Goldfields-Esperance 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 t ...

, located northeast of the state capital,

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 is ...

, and north of the city of Kalgoorlie.

History

The first European explorer to visit the area was

John Forrest Sir John Forrest (22 August 1847 – 2 SeptemberSome sources give the date as 3 September 1918 1918) was an Australian explorer and politician. He was the first premier of Western Australia (1890–1901) and a long-serving cabinet minister ...

in 1869. On 21 June 1869 Forrest's party made camp near a conspicuous hill, which Forrest named Mount Leonora, after his six-year-old niece Frances (Fanny) Leonora Hardey. In 1895,

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 ...

was discovered in the area by prospector Edward "Doodah" Sullivan at the Johannesburg lease just north of the current townsite. In the following two years a number of rich finds resulted in rapid development of the area. The

Sons of Gwalia Sons of Gwalia was a Western Australian mining company that mined gold, tantalum, spodumene, lithium and tin. It was Australia's third-largest gold producer and also controlled more than half the world's production of tantalum,Gwalia Gwalia is an archaic Welsh name for Wales. It derives from the Medieval Latin ''Wallia'', which in turn is a Latinisation of the English 'Wales'. (For the Germanic etymology of this name see Walha.) Although never as widely used as ''Cymru'', G ...

, from 1901 to 1921. Initially steam driven, the service was electric from November 1908, and petrol powered from 1915. A reverse osmosis desalination treatment plant was opened in October 2005 to improve the quality of the town's water supply from the Station Creek wellfield by reducing the naturally occurring high levels of salinity, nitrate and hardness. It was designed to supply of treated water per day. In 2010, the Rudd Government relocated

asylum seekers An asylum seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country and applies for asylum (i.e., international protection) in that other country. An asylum seeker is an immigrant who has been forcibly displaced and ...

from Christmas Island to the "Leonora Alternative Place of Detention", an immigration detention centre, previously used as a mine workers hostel, in Leonora. The Abbott Government closed the facility in February 2014.

Economy

Leonora is primarily a

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

town. There are a number of major

mines in the shire, as well as the Murrin Murin laterite nickel project. The area supports a significant pastoral industry.

Demographics

At the 2016 census, Leonora had a population of 556, 27.6% of whom were of Aboriginal descent.

Climate

The area has an

arid climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk''), is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in deser ...

(''BWh''), with very hot summers and cool winters. Frost may occur occasionally on some winter mornings. Rainfall is very sparse.

References

External links