In 2022 the Shire of Waroona received a Heritage Council grant and used it to assist with a much-needed update to the Local Heritage Survey (LHS). The Shire engaged Element Advisory to review the LHS to bring it into line with the Heritage Act 2018 and Heritage Council guidelines (2019). Element Advisory was also engaged to update the Shire’s thematic history.

Element Advisory visited the Shire to assess the places under review, which included six new nominations in the total 32 places. We worked closely with the Shire officers and a representative from the Waroona Historical Society throughout the life of the project to ensure accurate historical information was included in the LHS, which becomes an important education and research tool for the community.

As part of the heritage service we offer, Element Advisory provided a Gap Analysis to map the Shire’s heritage places within a matrix of themes and time periods. This process has identified places that the Shire can have assessed in the next review; saving time and costs for a future project.

The timing of an update to the Shire’s thematic history allowed for it to be presented in a new framework; one of the first local governments in the State to follow the Heritage Council’s new A Thematic History of Western Australia, published in 2022.