The Latest Breaking News from State Library of Western Australia

‘Those kids belong to somebody’: elders demand truth about unmarked Aboriginal graves

Terrible conditions at Western Australia’s missions led to devastating loss and trauma. Calls are growing to investigate hundreds of graves and burial sites

The Guardian - AU · Sep 9, 2023

Does Perth's future hold urban infill and better public transportation or more suburban sprawl?

Stretching 150km along the coast from Two Rocks to Mandurah, Perth has a claim to be the world's longest city. How did it get here and is it sustainable?

ABC News · Mar 27, 2023

This Buddhist sculpture probably won’t ‘rewrite history’ – Western Australia already has a rich Chinese past

Does the discovery of a Ming Dynasty Buddha sculpture found near Shark Bay in remote Western Australia “rewrite history” and suggest the Chinese first visited Australia 600 years ago?

The Conversation · Mar 27, 2023

From 'evil fame' to kite flying bans, WA has seen a lot of very odd laws

From almost as soon as the WA government was formed, it began to pass laws related to the minutiae of how people lived, worked and played.

ABC News · Jul 16, 2022

Kimberley military base, hospital and cinema among old dreams abandoned to the bush

From an abandoned hospital with nothing but the wind for company, to a drive-in cinema swallowed by shrubs, the Australian bush is reclaiming big dreams that saw a bustling town erected in the Western Australian desert.

ABC News · Jun 9, 2022

Life as a secretary at the ABC in the 1950s involved everything from typing to giving out the cricket scores

Noelle Beasley took on a secretarial job at the ABC in Perth in 1950, and quickly found herself asked to do everything from running the concert department to appearing on the cover of a magazine.

ABC News · May 7, 2022

Fremantle Smelter's Camp research uncovers strange, beautiful tales of homeless

Hundreds lived in makeshift homes in the shadow of the Fremantle Smelting Works for decades in the 1900s. Now a researcher has combed the archives to tell the stories of its inhabitants.

ABC News · Apr 9, 2022

WA government bill to close asbestos-riddled town Wittenoom ends 'dark chapter' of state's history

The West Australian government hopes the final closure of an asbestos-riddled town will at last deter social media influencers and 'danger tourists' from visiting.

ABC News · Mar 24, 2022

‘They thought they could hide’: the Aboriginal tracker who brought massacre perpetrators to trial

James Noble’s harrowing discovery on the banks of the Forrest River in 1926 helped uncover a trail of slaughter across WA’s east Kimberley and continues to haunt his descendants

The Guardian - AU · Mar 19, 2022

Never on a Sunday: Western Australia's long history of banning fun

Almost as soon as the Swan River Colony formed, laws were brought in to ban a host of activities on Sundays. Those laws weren't repealed until more than a century later.

ABC News · Mar 19, 2022