Halls Creek

The frontier mining town of Halls Creek, situated on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, was the site of the first payable gold discovery in Western Australia. Halls Creek is named after Charlie Hall who discovered payable gold in the area. Charlie Hall and Jack Slattery made the strike in 1885 and within two years 10 000 miners were in the area living in tents and temporary buildings. The rush was short lived, lasting only four years but the township managed to survive as a tiny outpost in the outback.

Old Halls Creek was located in a very ragged area 19km from where Halls Creek is now. When the Great Northern Highway was completed in the 1950s it became necessary to move the town closer to the new road and the airstrip, which had been built many years before. Now a service centre for pastoralists, mineral exploration and Aboriginal communities, Halls Creek is enjoying a boom from the tourism surrounding Purnululu and Wolfe Creek Crater national parks.

Things to see and do

Local attractions include the Russian Jack Memorial in Thomas Street, a tribute to an early character who pushed his sick friend 300km in a wheelbarrow to seek medical help in Wyndham.

District Attractions

At Old Halls Creek the ruins of the old post office remain and there is a small cemetery. Not far away, Caroline Pool is a waterhole that was once the main social and sporting venue for the old town. In summer it is an ideal swimming spot and becomes a series of small waterholes during winter. There is also a picnic spot on the Black Elvire River, near the old town site. The natural formation of white quartz known as China Wall can be seen on the way to Old Halls Creek, about 6km north of the new town. The quartz vein protrudes above the surrounding rocks and is believed to be part of the largest single fault of its type in the world.

Halls Creek is a base for tours to the ancient landscape of Pumululu (Bungle Bungle) National Park, 200km to the north-east and also to Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater 150km south. Formed more that 50 000 years ago, the crater is the second largest in the world measuring 800m across and 49m deep.