Parkeston is a suburb of the city of

Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie-Boulder (or just Kalgoorlie) is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder as the surroundi ...

, Western Australia, located east of the city centre. At the 2016

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

, it had a population of 60, down from 69 in 2006. It contains the Ninga Mia Aboriginal community. Parkeston was gazetted as a townsite in 1904. It was almost certainly named after Sir

Henry Parkes Sir Henry Parkes, (27 May 1815 – 27 April 1896) was a colonial Australian politician and the longest-serving non-consecutive Premier of New South Wales, premier of the Colony of New South Wales, the present-day state of New South Wales in ...

, the "father of Australian Federation".The name was suggested in February 1901, a month after the federation of the Australian states. The Goldfields region was a strong supporter of federation, whereas much of the rest of Western Australia opposed it.

Railway

Parkeston is located near the western end of the

Trans-Australian Railway The Trans-Australian Railway, opened in 1917, runs from Port Augusta railway station, Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie railway station, Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, crossing the Nullarbor Plain in the process. Built to standa ...

. From 1917, the town was the interchange between the

Western Australian Government Railways Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) was the state owned operator of railways in the state of Western Australia between October 1890 and June 2003. Owned by the state government, it was renamed a number of times to reflect extra respon ...

narrow gauge railway from

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 the

Commonwealth Railways The Commonwealth Railways were established in 1917 by the Government of Australia with the Commonwealth Railways Act to administer the Trans-Australian Railway, Trans-Australia and Adelaide-Darwin railway, Port Augusta to Darwin railways. In 1 ...

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), international gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa. It is the ...

railway to

Port Augusta Port Augusta (''Goordnada'' in the revived indigenous Barngarla language) is a coastal city in South Australia about by road from the state capital, Adelaide. Most of the city is on the eastern shores of Spencer Gulf, immediately south of the ...

– a

break of gauge With railways, a break of gauge occurs where a line of one track gauge (the distance between the rails, or between the wheels of trains designed to run on those rails) meets a line of a different gauge. Trains and railroad car, rolling stock g ...

that was not eliminated until 1970. The elevation at the railway sidings is 375 metres.

Camp

In 1919 Parkeston had a quarantine camp, due to passengers on trains from Adelaide being required to be quarantined. The internees produced a newspaper known as the ''Yellow Rag'' which had details of passengers and crew. During and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Parkeston was the location of a small

prisoner-of-war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...

transit and detention camp, also known as the staging camp. It operated between June 1940 and March 1947 as a transit place for prisoners transiting across the country by rail, having a capacity of 20 internees in small cells.

Aboriginal community

The Ninga Mia settlement was established in 1983, constructed by

Aboriginal Hostels Limited Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), the oldest inhabitants of central Italy in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of sev ...

as the Ninga Mia Fringe-Dweller Village. It was created as an Aboriginal Lands Trust Reserve and leased to the Ninga Mia Village Aboriginal Corporation. It was also used by visitors from remote Aboriginal communities in the

Western Desert In Egypt, the Western Desert is an area of the Sahara that lies west of the river Nile, up to the Libyan border, and south from the Mediterranean Sea to the border with Sudan. It is named in contrast to the Eastern Desert which extends east fro ...

. Ninga Mia contained around 30 houses as well as a management office, health clinic, communal kitchen and computer room. In 2004, it was described by ''

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unit ...

'' writer David Fickling as a

shantytown A shanty town, squatter area, squatter settlement, or squatter camp is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such as corrugated iron s ...

with many houses lacking basic facilities. A state government audit in 2018 found that no major refurbishments had been carried out since the 1980s and recommended that the community be closed; the Aboriginal corporation holding the village lease had been deregistered several years earlier. A number of homes were subsequently demolished and residents relocated. The Department of Communities described Ninga Mia as "a site of continued social dysfunction with no governance, declining, aged and no longer fit for purpose infrastructure, ndno system of community governance". It reportedly budgeted for the relocation of 56 residents, although some inhabitants were opposed to the closure of the village.

Notes

References

{{Suburbs of Kalgoorlie Suburbs of Kalgoorlie–Boulder Trans-Australian Railway