Unlikely Oasis, An: Leinster – The First 10 Years

MINING / WEST AUSTRALIANA

Leinster lies like an oasis on the edge of the Gibson Desert in central Western Australia. It was the last of the State’s dedicated company-built mining towns, home to the workforce of a nickel mine. This is the story of a bold social experiment to introduce a ‘people plan’ designed to normalise life in a mining camp and of the families and single people who went there. Set in the mid-1970s, it tells of the efforts to introduce women into the mine’s workforce and their influence on the social life. Tales of carving the golf and race courses out of the bush, breaking in the wild horses, building the squash courts and coaching the many sporting teams are vividly told by those first residents. Children walked or rode to school on ‘snail-trails’ away from vehicular traffic and residents landscaped their gardens from a well-stocked nursery while still preserving the arid vegetation around the town. Against this background, the economics of nickel mining declined to the point that, ten years after a grand opening, the mine and the town were put on care and maintenance – awaiting the inevitable upturn that followed in 1989.
xvi, 319 pages : illustrations (some colour), maps (some colour), portraits (some colour) ; 26 cm #091022 First Edition
Cities and towns — Eastern Australia — Leinster — History. | Cities and towns — Western Australia — Social conditions. | Leinster (W.A.) — Genealogy. | Australian