Wittenoom, Administrative division in Pilbara region, Western Australia.
Wittenoom is a former mining settlement in the Shire of Ashburton, located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The site sits within the Hamersley Range about 1420 kilometers (880 miles) north-northeast of Perth and covers roughly 50000 hectares (123500 acres) of contaminated land.
The area developed from pastoral land into a mining settlement starting in 1947 and reached its population peak of 881 residents in 1961 as Australia's only blue asbestos producer. The town status was formally revoked in 2007 and following passage of the Wittenoom Closure Bill in 2022 the last resident left the completely abandoned administrative division in September of that year.
The Panyjima people, traditional landowners, continue advocating for site remediation following decades of health issues connected to asbestos exposure in their ancestral territory.
The area is closed and inaccessible to the public due to severe asbestos contamination throughout the site. The government acquired all remaining properties and began demolishing structures in 2022 to contain health risks.
The site is considered the largest contaminated area in the Southern Hemisphere and remains completely uninhabited today. Traditional landowners from the Panyjima people continue to advocate for remediation following decades of health damage from asbestos exposure on their ancestral land.
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