Warburton, Western Australia
community in Western Australia
Warburton, Warburton Ranges or Milyirrtjarra (in the Ngaanyatjarra dialect) is an Aboriginal Australian community in Western Australia, just to the south of the Gibson Desert and located on the Great Central Road (part of the Outback Way) and Gunbarrel Highway. At the 2016 census, Warburton had a population of 576.
History
The settlement was established as an Aboriginal mission under the auspices of the UAM (United Aborigines Mission) in 1934 by Will Wade, his wife and his children. It was named after explorer Peter Warburton, the first European to cross the Great Sandy Desert.
The Ngaanyatjarra people of the Western Desert cultural bloc were nomadic people, but with the arrival of missionaries in 1933, they were drawn to the mission. By 1954, around 500 to 700 Aboriginal people lived at the mission. There was a school where they were taught in English, and traditional culture discouraged. Domestic skills were taught to women and girls, and the men collected dingo or became shearers or builders.
More people were attracted to work at the copper mine which opened nearby, and by the 1970s there were few Aboriginal people living as nomads in the bush. In 1973, the UAM handed control of the settlement to the Aboriginal people represented by the Ngaanyatjarra Council, while the Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority of the Government of Western Australia became responsible for economic development.
The public source identifies “Warburton, Western Australia” as community in Western Australia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Warburton, Western and Australia.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2549019. Authority coordinates are -26.133, 126.583. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 1934, 1933 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Warburton, 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.