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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

Mount Magnet, Western Australia

town in Western Australia

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 2, 2025
Entity authorityQ986063
Source-derived summary

Mount Magnet is a town in the Mid West region of Western Australia. It is one of the region's original gold mining towns, and the longest surviving gold mining settlement in the state. The prominent hill that is adjacent to the current townsite was called West Mount Magnet in 1854 by explorer Robert Austin, having named a smaller hill 64 km away, East Mount Magnet (now called Carron Hill). Both hills had an extremely high iron content which affected the readings of his compass. West Mount Magnet had its Aboriginal name reinstated by the Surveyor General in 1972, "Warramboo", meaning campfire camping place. The magnetic variation at Mount Magnet is zero: magnetic north equals true north.

Overview

Surrounding the town are remnants of old gold mining operations, and to the north-east are significant Aboriginal sites being preserved jointly by the local community and the Western Australian Museum. Its history is sustained through the Wirnda Barna Arts Centre, and the Mount Magnet Mining and Pastoral Museum.

The area once had three separate town sites: Mount Magnet, Boogardie, and Lennonville. Hill 50 Gold Mines N.L., which was floated on the Perth Stock Exchange in 1934 to acquire leases at Boogardie, started mining Hill 50 in 1936.

Editorial summary

“Mount Magnet, Western Australia” enters the record as town in Western Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mount, Magnet and Western can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1854, 1972, 1934, 1936—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Mount, Magnet and Western.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Mount Magnet, Western Australia” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mount, Magnet and Western provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q986063. Authority coordinates are -28.060, 117.846. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1854, 1972, 1934 and 1936.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mount Magnet, Western Australia”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mount Magnet, Western Australia primary sources, Mount Magnet, Western Australia archive and Mount research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mount Magnet, Western Australia”?
  2. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
  3. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mount Magnet, Western Australia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.