When you picture a ghost town, you might conjure an image of tightly packed wooden buildings, a dusty street... maybe a tumbleweed blowing by. In reality, with no trees around, no architects available, and no long-term plans from the start, mining towns like Ballarat were just thrown sloppily together, and just as sloppily exited. The last permanent residents left Ballarat in 1917 when the mines went dry and the post office closed. Well, a few desert rats have always remained, but 1917 was really the "end date".