Town of Wundowie

Child Places

• 13106 Our Lady Queen of Heaven Church & Presbytery
• 16748 Seabrook Room
• 10922 Wundowie Foundry - Administration Office
• 13525 Anzac Memorial Gardens
• 25098 House, 90 Hovea Crescent, Wundowie
• 17346 Wundowie Police Station
• 14664 Wundowie Fire Station
• 25291 House, 36 Boronia Avenue, Wundowie
• 19838 House, 56 Hovea Crescent
• 11646 St Simon & St Jude Church

Statement of Significance

Wundowie has cultural heritage significance for the following reasons: • The place has aesthetic significance arising from its Garden City design. • The town has high landscape aesthetic significance and the design sits appropriately in a shallow valley. • The residential development within the town is of a consistent vernacular architectural style and is of high aesthetic significance. • The community of residents and workers have initiated public artworks based on town design themes of aesthetic significance. • The success of its design and viability of its economic foundation is a model of achievement and aesthetic significance. The town has aesthetic significance through its intact streetscape values of the original design approach. • The town has historic significance as a wartime initiative to address post war industrial development. • The transfer of Garden City design principles from Britain and the metropolitan area to a rural industrial site is of historic significance. • Wundowie has historical significance through being the first twentieth century purposely dedicated industrial town. • Through the high standard of products and techniques, Wundowie has historical significance. • The town has scientific value due to its potential to demonstrate the history of iron and rare earth materials plus the industrial technology in Western Australia. • The town demonstrates social significance through the vitality of its community organisation. • Wundowie is rare as it retains a cohesive urban form demonstrating life in a Garden City designed rural industrial town. • The town and the industry demonstrates representativeness as a beginning of the iron industry in Western Australia. • Wundowie is a town specifically designed for the iron industry and set the pattern for the later industrial towns in the Pilbara Region and thus demonstrates Representativeness.

Physical Description

Wundowie is located in a shallow valley north of and adjoining the former alignment of the Eastern Railway approximately 70 km east of Perth. The town was designed on “Garden City” principles with the original core taking the form of a hemispherical street arrangement with the civic functions at the centre. The second stage is a northern and more traditional grid pattern extension of the core. The town is surrounded on the west, north and east by jarrah forest mostly Crown reserves. The topography was taken into account when the design was prepared so that the civic core was the central focus with the residential areas on the rising ground of the containing hills and to the south and on the lower ground is the former iron and charcoal producing complex. The buildings of the town are single storey with the housing retaining the essence of postwar public housing form. Some residential lots have been subdivided into “battleaxe configuration but the new housing form is generally complementary to the original forms.

History

Assessment 2011 Construction 1944 - to present The history and establishment of Wundowie is closely linked with the state's first (and only) charcoal iron plant and refinery, a state government funded industry developed during the closing years of WW II. The government had become concerned during the war that Western Australia was comparatively isolated and dependant on supplies of iron and steel from external sources. A panel was formed to investigate the feasibility of constructing a blast furnace and refinery in the state and the decision was made to experiment with a pilot plant that would produce high quality iron using charcoal. The location for the blast furnace was chosen for its close proximity to the Eastern Railway Line, the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme and Great Eastern Highway. Supplies of iron were obtained from Koolyanobbing, near Southern Cross, and the heavily forested area would supply the trees for the charcoal. Construction of the blast furnaces commenced in 1944 and initially housing for the small staff was arranged on the area of land set aside for the smelting works. Plans for Wundowie townsite were completed in 1944 (with some later minor revisions in 1947). The plan followed the Garden City philosophy with a separation of land uses and an allocation of public open space. The original plan had the residential area incorporated into a curvilinear street pattern at the northern end of town with public amenities such as shops, churches, public open space and a school located at the southern end. These amenities separated the residential area from the industrial area to the south of the town. Thirty-six houses had been erected in the residential area by the end of 1947. The houses were initially rented out to employees of the Industry1 1 The name 'Industry' came to be used instead of the full name of the operation: Charcoal Iron and Wood Distillation Industry. It will be used here to refer to the whole industrial process that took place at Wundowie. , however, in 1950 workers were given permission to purchase their own homes. The government continued to be of the Industry. As the Industry expanded and developed, accommodation lagged behind and a temporary tent city sprang up near the industrial site. The original townsite plan was expanded in 1951 with additional streets added to the north. Unlike the original curvilinear from, the new area was based on a standard grid plan. The Wundowie blast furnaces produced a high quality iron that was well received both internationally and at home. However, for a variety of reasons, pig iron production levels always remained just below the threshold of real sustainability and profit for the government. In addition, the refinery side of the business proved to be expensive and was eventually closed down. During 1965 the government investigated selling the whole operation off to Australian National Industries Ltd (ANI) and as an incentive prepared to install foundry equipment. Although ANI became the provisional owners in 1966, they were unable to secure enough funding to secure a loan so the state government again became responsible for a non-profitable business with the additional cost of foundry equipment that had been ordered by ANI. In the end, it was the foundry side of the business that became the most profitable. The government sold Wundowie Charcoal and Iron to Agnew Clough Ltd in 1975. The company closed down the smelting works in 1981; the foundry remained operational. In 2009 the Foundry remains privately owned and continues to operate. note:Detailed history of individual sites are available on NTWA Assessment

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