Abandoned towns

I've attempted to do direct posts from Clipmarks but haven't managed to get it to work - yet, so here's an old-fashioned cut-&-paste of a couple of Abandoments I found via Clipmarks.


Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908 people fuelled by diamond fever rushed into the Namib desert hoping to make an easy fortune. Within two years, a town - complete with a casino, school, hospital and exclusive residential buildings - was established in the barren sandy desert. During the 1950's the town was deserted and the dunes began to reclaim the town.

It is reminiscent of the Eucla Telegraph Station on the W.A./S.A. border.


Gunkanjima This island is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture of Japan. It is also known as 'Gunkan-jima' or 'Battleship Island' due to its high sea walls. It began in 1890 when Mitsubishi bought the island and began a project to retrieve coal from the bottom of the sea. In 1959, population had swelled, and boasted a density of 835 people per hectare for the whole island (1,391 per hectare for the residential district) - one of the highest population densities ever recorded. By the 1960s, as petroleum replaced coal in Japan, coal mines began shutting down. In 1974 Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine, and today it is empty and bare, with travel currently prohibited. The island was the location for the 2003 film ‘Battle Royale II’ and inspired the final level of popular Asian videogame 'Killer7'.

Again, the silhouette of this island is reminiscent of Eten island in Truk, which looks like an over-sized aircraft carrier.

Eten Island in 1944