Locality in Western Australia
Parkeston is a suburb of the city of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, located 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) east of the city centre. At the 2016 census, it had a population of 60,[2] down from 69 in 2006.[3] It contains the Ninga Mia Aboriginal community.
Parkeston was gazetted as a townsite in 1904. It was almost certainly named after Sir Henry Parkes, the "father of Australian Federation".[note 1][4]
Railway
Parkeston is located near the western end of the Trans-Australian Railway. From 1917, the town was the interchange between the Western Australian Government Railways narrow gauge railway from Perth and the Commonwealth Railways' standard gauge railway to Port Augusta – a break of gauge that was not eliminated until 1970.[5]
The elevation at the railway sidings is 375 metres.[6]
Camp
In 1919 Parkeston had a quarantine camp, due to passengers on trains from Adelaide being required to be quarantined.[7] The internees produced a newspaper known as the Yellow Rag which had details of passengers and crew.[8][9][10]
During and after World War II, Parkeston was the location of a small prisoner-of-war transit and detention camp, also known as the staging camp.[11][12] 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.[13]
The Ninga Mia settlement was established in 1983,[14] constructed by Aboriginal Hostels Limited as the Ninga Mia Fringe-Dweller Village.[15] It was created as an Aboriginal Lands Trust Reserve and leased to the Ninga Mia Village Aboriginal Corporation.[16] It was also used by visitors from remote Aboriginal communities in the Western Desert.[17]
Ninga Mia contained around 30 houses as well as a management office, health clinic, communal kitchen and computer room.[18] In 2004, it was described by Guardian writer David Fickling as a shantytown with many houses lacking basic facilities.[14] 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.[19] 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, [and] no system of community governance". It reportedly budgeted for the relocation of 56 residents, although some inhabitants were opposed to the closure of the village.[20]
