The decaying ruins of Jubilee tell a tale of what might have been.
Like many other Victorian gold mining towns of the age it boasted busy diggings, mighty processing engines and cosy homes for the hopeful miners that lived and toiled there.
The local school once echoed to the laughter of 500 children.
But Jubilee was not destined to become one of Australia’s famed mining cities.
Once the gold was dug out and carted away, Jubilee dwindled and died.
What’s left are the remnants of a town that might have been.
Federation University associate professor of history David Waldron said Jubilee had succumbed to the boom-bust cycle typical of many mining communities.
“What tends to happen is the economy that drove the town disappeared, the reason for the town to be there disappears and people gradually move on,”
Dr Waldron said.
“That becomes self-perpetuating as people leave. The shops have fewer people to sell to. There’s less reason to be there, facilities disappear, and eventually so does the town for all intents and purposes.”
As is the way, Jubilee had a relatively short life.
Gold was found in the 1850s and, after a gold-bearing reef was uncovered in 1887, it become a boom town.
However, the gold soon dried up and by 1912 Jubilee was completely abandoned.
Other ghost towns
Old Tallangatta’s path to ghost-hood was anything but a gradual decline.
When the Hume Dam’s height was raised 9 metres it eventually flooded the town, previously named Tallangatta.
The town’s population famously moved about 8 kilometres west to Bolga where a new town (renamed Tallangatta) was built.
The flooded town posthumously became known as Old Tallangatta.
The town’s remains can be seen when the Hume Weir dips to half-full, with a handful of occupied houses remaining above the dam’s high-water mark.
It’s not the only ghost town on Australian maps.
Cook, in far western South Australia, was a railway town that serviced the Trans-Australian Railway and once boasted a hospital and school.
But the introduction of more reliable trains and railway lines meant Cook’s role was eventually rendered redundant.
Its population dwindled to next to nothing and it is now little more than a stopover point for passengers on the Indian Pacific train.
It’s now widely regarded as a ghost town, despite an official population of 71, according to the 2021 census.
Dr Waldron said any town that once boasted a large population but had declined to the point where practically all businesses and services had been wound up could be classified as ghost towns.
“If you look at the famous ghost town of Linda in western Tasmania, there are still some people who live there, who are hanging on,” he said.
“Sometimes they try and set up tourism, which is the case [in] … Linda, being quite a strange gothic spectacle of a place.”
Dr Waldron said other locations like Steiglitz in Victoria had become heritage sites.
“It’s no longer about the industry that once led to the town being significant,” he said.
Few reasons to stay
Gold and other precious metals aren’t always found in the most convenient places.
When gold was found in Gippsland, it was often in mountainous regions that were difficult to reach.
The wealth it generated was encouragement enough for families to build in out-of-the-way places like Grant.
But once the ground’s wealth dissipated, so did their willingness to remain in Grant.
Linda Barraclough, a Gippsland historian, said Grant was a thriving place in its heyday.
“It was so busy it even had a double main street,” she said.
“It had hundreds of people, and pubs, and dance halls … they brought it a prefabricated church from England to put up.”
She said once the Grant gold rush concluded, so did the town’s chance of survival.
“If you go there now, there is nothing there. You might find the cemetery, and some old bricks and that’s about it.”
End of the line
Victoria and Western Australia’s ghost towns often rose and fell with those states’ gold mining fortunes.
In New South Wales and Queensland, railways were the common denominator.
But when the trains stopped coming, so did the people, according to photographer and outback explorer Greg Davis.
“Often they were agricultural towns [that closed], and when the agriculture declined during times of drought, the trains stopped coming and the town closed up,” Mr Davis said.
“A lot of them became ghost towns in the 1970s, especially in NSW.
“A government decision — a flick of a pen by a minister — closed many country [railway] branch lines, dooming these towns.”
New ghost towns
Changes in agriculture continues to impact rural townships to this day.
Dr Waldron said some farming towns risked following old mining and railway settlements into ghost-town status.
“Farming is now a high-tech agricultural industry. The number of people employed has declined and the kind of employment is declined,” he said.
“Those regional centres that accommodated those labourers now face economic decline and, in those cases, face a slow death as that industry transforms.”
Dr Waldron said there was hope for some of these ghost towns, mainly though tourism.
“Ghost towns are gaining in popularity and a lot of people are coming out from Melbourne as well as internationally to explore them,” he said.
“With the tourists, and of course the tourists’ money, comes new industries, new development and new opportunities.
“That’s certainly happened in old gold mining towns in central Victoria such as Maldon and Castlemaine, which have redeveloped as cultural tourism centres.”
