Halls Creek: Why Did an Entire Town Have to Move?

Halls Creek lies in the eastern Kimberley of Western Australia, within Country long lived in and cared for by traditional owners including Jaru and Kija people. The colonial townsite formed around a brief gold rush in 1885. The gold quickly faded, but the telegraph terminus, police station, shops and services for pastoral stations and Aboriginal communities kept the old settlement functioning.

Its location became the problem. The old town remained short of water, while wet-season conditions could separate it from the airfield and the developing transport route. An airfield was built about fifteen kilometres away in 1948. Over the following decade, homes and public institutions progressively shifted towards the present site beside the Great Northern Highway. The Shire records that the old town was largely abandoned by 1954, although the police station did not complete its move until 1961. Moving the town was not a single day of loading every building onto trucks; it was a prolonged transfer of services, work and family life.

The old site still holds a cemetery, post office ruins and mining traces. The new town provides administration, health, education, supplies and transport support across a much wider region. What makes Halls Creek memorable is not another outback gold story but the fact that a remote town is never fixed by coordinates alone. When water, an airfield, a highway and public services form a new relationship, the map’s centre can move. Yet that planning still takes place on continuing Jaru and Kija Country: relocation cannot be told as a fresh start on empty land.

https://www.hallscreek.wa.gov.au/community/history
https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/Public/Places/AggregateDetails?SearchToken=882d293f-0b2f-4e02-a3c3-66b7f9af57bc&isCurrentlyStateRegistered=False&itemsPerPage=20&page=972&streetNameContains=
https://library.dbca.wa.gov.au/static/FullTextFiles/069579.pdf