Yamarna HS Ruins - WA

The Yamarna lease of 360,00 acres (about 140,000 hectares) was taken up in 1963. Yamarna itself had no houses or buildings. There was one Government water-well a mile from where the homestead would be established. The ‘Well’ had an old windlass to draw water and no windmill. In the late 1950s, the Lovicks had built a low lying tin shed at Minnie Creek about 16 miles from Yamarna. They had lived there for a few years trying to established a sheep property.

The first building on the property was transported on a low loader 314 kilometres (195 miles) from Leonora in 1964. The low loader or jinker trailer was pulled by a canvas roofed Thornycroft truck. The building was in fact the old Police station from Gwalia and one of the ‘bedrooms’ was the cell block. The building never made it to Yamarna as the truck conveying it became bogged in a creek system only
1.5km form its intended destination due to heavy rain. It was jacked off the trailer and remained in the creek system until it was demolished by a mining company in 2011.

The mining company Gold Road Resources are now developing one of Australia’s newest goldfields. Called the Yamarna Belt, it holds interests in tenements covering ~6,000 km² in the region. According to the company the leases contain a gold resource of some 6.5 million ounces.

All that remains at the site of the homestead is the remnants of the bore, a windmill and old vehciles. The mining companies have sunk a bore and turkey nest dam at the location.