Mount Margaret was an abandoned town located northeast of

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

and southwest of Laverton in the Goldfields-Esperance region of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. The first European to visit the area was government surveyor

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 ...

who passed through in 1869 while on an expedition in search of the lost explorer

Ludwig Leichhardt Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (; 23 October 1813 – ), known as Ludwig Leichhardt, was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.Ken Eastwood,'Cold case: Leichhardt's disappearanc ...

. On 25 June he named a nearby hill Mount Margaret after Margaret Elvire Hamersley whom he later married in 1876. The local

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

name for the hill is ''Kalgara''.

Gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

was discovered at the site of the future town in 1893 by prospectors James Ross and Bob McKenzie. The town's main mine was the Mt Morven (formerly the Mt Margaret Reward), situated on the eastern side of the townsite. By 1896 the local progress association began campaigning for the townsite to be declared. By 1897 lots had been surveyed and the townsite was gazetted in the same year. A police station opened in the town in 1898 but was closed in 1899. Following a

drought A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, ...

in the area in 1921 Rod Schenk established the Mount Margaret Aboriginal

Mission Mission (from Latin 'the act of sending out'), Missions or The Mission may refer to: Geography Australia *Mission River (Queensland) Canada *Mission, British Columbia, a district municipality * Mission, Calgary, Alberta, a neighbourhood * ...

in 1922, to the northeast of the townsite. In 1924 many Aboriginal people were forced to go to nearby Mount Morgans for food following another drought and hostility towards them by local

station Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle statio ...

owners. When the Mount Morgans and Linden food depots were closed in 1927, the Aboriginal peoples moved to the mission at Mount Margaret.

References

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

See also

References