Historical Collections

Gwalia Buildings

The buildings of Gwalia evoke the heady days of the Western Australian gold rush. There are the hessian, timber and iron cottages, the mine buildings, the impressive State Hotel and Hoover House, and the mine manager’s house designed and commissioned by Herbert Hoover.

The Sons of Gwalia, at the time one of Australia’s major underground gold mines, provided work for hundreds of people including a large number of Italian and Yugoslav immigrants. The miners erected dwellings in Gwalia from 1898 to be within walking distance of their work . 

Gwalia also boasts Western Australia's first Government-owned hotel (1903), the State's first regional passenger tramway (1903) and one of the Goldfields’ first public swimming pools (1943). The State school was gazetted in 1899.

• The mine office, assay buildings and the mine manager’s house were commissioned in 1897 by Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer for Bewick Mooring and Company. Hoover was later to become the 31st President of the United States of America.
• The Gwalia State Hotel was established by the State Government to combat the sly grog trade in Gwalia and to provide an alternative to the hotels in Leonora.  Construction of the Hotel was completed at a cost of £6,000 and the doors opened in 1903.  The Gwalia State Hotel Closed in 1964. Today it is privately owned and can only be viewed from the street.

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