Tips on How to Research in the SROWA

Retiring State Record Office Archivist David Whiteford also spent decades working in the Battye Library and was renowned for his knowledge of the library's map collection. 

In this, his final contribution to the SROWA News, he gives advice on 'how to research' with particular reference to FHWA's People of Western Australia's Ghost Towns project.

The SRO collection can be used in many ways. In August last year there was a request in the Can you help? column of The West for information on Thomas Doyle who was a mayor of Kanowna (one of our best-known ghost towns). An SRO catalogue search for Thomas AND Doyle brought up 60 results but doing a search for Doyle AND Kanowna gave 17.

One of my long-term projects has been to add content notes to SRO’s catalogue records. Not only do these provide a better idea of a file’s content compared to the title, but they also provide more names and terms that can be searched in the catalogue. The Doyle / Kanowna example included some items with content notes. If you’re researching any family name and you know a town or district that the family resided in you can do a similar search. Smith AND Dunnsville (another mining ghost town) brought up 6 results.

Bankruptcy case files (series 165 and 166) can provide fascinating records of people and businesses in what are now ghost towns, especially if the file contains interviews with the bankruptee and others. Place names have now been added to many catalogue records. You can do a search S165 AND Kanowna (for example) and get 47 results including storekeepers, hotelkeepers, miners, bakers and many other residents and businesses of the town. Even Yundamindera (see first paragraph) has a result of three from that search strategy. The Cons3580 civil court cases can also be researched that way – e.g. Cons3580 AND Davyhurst (13 results) and there is often a correlation between the civil cases and the bankruptcy files!

Even the shorter-lived ghost towns often had a school and while the actual school records may often not survive, Education Department records usually do. See S24 (Series 24, Education Dept. files) AND Davyhurst for example. Of course, it is not only the mining areas that have ghost towns - they exist throughout the state. The Whiteford family arrived in WA in 1966 and went straight to Wialki, about 100 miles north of Merredin and to a property bordering the emu proof fence – the very edge of the wheatbelt. I went to school there and there was also a general store, active church, hall, operating railway siding, golf club and a few other features. Apart from the hall, and the dis-used grain bins, all now gone. Wialki is a ghost town but lives on in the archives with 70 results in the SRO catalogue – including at least one of the Cons3580 court cases. But files such as those from the Education Department will record names of residents of the town and farming hinterland, as well as social and other activities that may have centred around the school.

Other collections that can help record the life of a town are Health Department (notably Cons1003 – try Cons1003 AND Niagara) and Mines Department (try s20 AND Paddington). The majority of SRO files don’t have content notes but a search through the large result of a simple place name search (such as Walgoolan) will be rewarding.

I’ll use two timber mill ghost towns as final examples. Many of you may have visited or camped at the popular Nanga site, south of Dwellingup, and know of the drowned mill town of Banksiadale to the north (within the South Dandalup Reservoir). Nanga Brook had a school, a branch of the Independent Order of Oddfellows, and of the Australian Natives Association. Banksiadale, too, had a school. WA Government Railways owned the mill and operated the railway and there are some employee record cards for Banksiadale workers in Cons3393. The United Ancient Order of Druids had a branch. And there are many other records that can help build up a history of these towns and their residents.

For homework, try the wheatbelt ghost town Baandee and the mining ghost town Lennonville.

Signing off, David Whiteford