Went alone, which was stupid, and I'd say so even though nothing happened. No signal past the entrance, and the layout does not match any plan I could find beforehand. Bring someone. Bring a second light.
Tailings, a street grid, and the two or three buildings still standing.
Anomaly✓ VERIFIED
Wittenoom
A town removed from the map for what is in its soil
Region
Western Australia, Australia
Coordinates
-22.2394, 118.3358
Access
Restricted
Risk
Do not go alone
187
The record
A blue asbestos mining town from 1938 to 1966. Australia's worst industrial disaster: over 2,000 deaths linked to exposure. Degazetted in 2007, removed from official maps, power disconnected. Entry is prohibited and the tailings remain.
The oracle
sign in to retell
The approach gives nothing away. Wittenoom does not announce itself. What registers first is scale — the structure is larger inside than the approach prepares you for, and colder.
Paint has come off the walls in sheets, curled like bark. The known history covers perhaps two thirds of what you are standing in. Beyond that the record thins into municipal paperwork and hearsay, and then into nothing at all.
The building's own plans, where they survive, describe one more room than anyone has found. At danger level 5 of 5, the honest advice is that the place deserves more caution than curiosity usually allows.
Site reconstruction
Walk inside Wittenoom
You arrive outside. Orbit the site, fly over it or walk the grounds, then go in — four fragments of this site's record are scattered through the structure, and your torch runs down the whole time.
ENTER THE SITE →orbit · fly · walk, then inside · sign in to keep the record
Generated from this site's record — a anomaly of its scale and condition. Its character, not its surveyed floor plan.
Field reports · 3
Written by people who actually went. Where these contradict the oracle, believe these.
A note on the approach rather than the site: the obvious track is not the right one. Locals were friendly and pointed us at the longer route, which is longer for a reason. Take the long one.
Second visit, three years after the first, and the difference is grim. Water has got into the upper floor and taken the ceiling with it. Whatever you were planning to photograph here, do it now or don't bother.
Sign in to file a field report.
Discussion · 4
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Whoever wrote this dossier has clearly been. The hazard list is exactly right.
Been on my list for six years. Every time I get close, the weather turns.
The 1963 date is off by a year in most sources. The municipal record says otherwise, I can dig out the reference.
Went last month. Add 'no parking within 2km' to the terrain notes.