Region · Australia

Abandoned Australia

Asbestos towns, asylums and shale-oil works. Australia's ruins are often isolated, sunburnt and bound up with the country's extractive industries.

3Documented places

3Categories

25Minutes of reading

2026Archive updated

The entries

Every place we've documented in Australia

Each entry explains the history, the present condition, and how to appreciate the place responsibly — without ever encouraging trespassing.

Villages

It mined the most dangerous asbestos on earth. Then the state decided the town should not exist at all.

Australia9 min read

Hospitals

For 130 years it took in the people Victoria could not, or would not, keep. Then it closed, and the corridors went quiet.

Australia8 min read

Factories

A thousand people, a refinery and a railway — all gone back to the forest in the Wolgan Valley.

Australia8 min read

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