Towns in Australia

Exploring Australia, town by town

Eneabba WA

Eneabba

Postcode: 6518

Eneabba is a town on the Brand Highway located 278 km north of Perth, Western Australia. The population was 286 in 2000.

The area is famous for its spectacular display of wildflowers in the spring. It is also home to the Iluka Resources mineral sands facility.

The town itself is, to be fair, a real non-event with dreary modern housing (with more than a hint of construction town design), a small shopping centre and a service station all of which look as though they have sprung up in the last 20-30 years.

The wealth of the area is based on the rutile sands which lie to the south of the town as well as farming, particularly cattle grazing. With an estimated 80 per cent of the world’s known rutile supplies the town can boast that it has the biggest deposits of rutile in both Australia and the world.

The major mining company in the area is Iluka Resources Ltd. Eneabba is basically a service town for the mines but some of the miners, realising that Eneabba is hardly a paradise, have opted for commuting and live on the coast at Leeman and drive to work preferring the beach to the dry inland.