Parkeston, Western Australia

Parkeston is located near the western end of the Trans-Australian Railway. From 1917, the town was the interchange between the Western Australian Government Railways narrow gauge railway from Perth and the Commonwealth Railways' standard gauge railway to Port Augusta – a break of gauge that was not eliminated until 1970.[5]

The elevation at the railway sidings is 375 metres.[6]

During and after World War II, Parkeston was the location of a small prisoner-of-war transit and detention camp. It operated between June 1940 and March 1947 as a transit place for prisoners transiting across the country by rail, having a capacity of 20 internees in small cells.[7]

The Ninga Mia settlement was established in 1983,[8] constructed by Aboriginal Hostels Limited as the Ninga Mia Fringe-Dweller Village.[9] It was created as an Aboriginal Lands Trust Reserve and leased to the Ninga Mia Village Aboriginal Corporation.[10] It was also used by visitors from remote Aboriginal communities in the Western Desert.[11]

Ninga Mia contained around 30 houses as well as a management office, health clinic, communal kitchen and computer room.[12] In 2004, it was described by Guardian writer David Fickling as a shantytown with many houses lacking basic facilities.[8] A state government audit in 2018 found that no major refurbishments had been carried out since the 1980s and recommended that the community be closed; the Aboriginal corporation holding the village lease had been deregistered several years earlier. A number of homes were subsequently demolished and residents relocated.[13] The Department of Communities described Ninga Mia as "a site of continued social dysfunction with no governance, declining, aged and no longer fit for purpose infrastructure, [and] no system of community governance". It reportedly budgeted for the relocation of 56 residents, although some inhabitants were opposed to the closure of the village.[14]