From gold and dusted to old and busted: this abandoned gold mine in northeastern Australia is returning its vital elements to the ground from which they came.

Anvil Aurous

We may be in the “Land of Oz” but not all yellow brick roads lead to fame and fortune – Elton John excluded. In fact, about the only thing L. Frank Baum’s well-loved classic and this long-deserted gold mine near Brisbane have in common is rust… ain’t that right, Tin Man?

Cart Blanched

While gold mining is as old as the hills, so to speak, mining the prized heavy metal has become more sophisticated as the easy plays are cleaned out. We’ll assume whomever mined this nameless claim applied the available technology (such as the above ore cart straight outta Temple of Doom) so effectively, modern miners haven’t given the site a second glance.

Boss Moss

To say this old gold mine has been out of commission for a while would be an understatement. If the pervasive rust on any exposed metal doesn’t date it, how ’bout the moss growing on the rust? Think about that for a moment: moss growing on rusted metal gears. Now that’s some badass moss!

Just Ducky

This quartet of rusty rock-crushing heads were duck-faced before it was cool. They still sport the much-maligned selfie pose now, when it’s anything BUT cool. At least they’re not quacked up, which is more than we can say about the gold-bearing rocks they once smashed to gold-bearing sand.

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Gilt Trip An Abandoned Australian Gold Mine

Photographer Reuben Wu continues his stunning “Lux Noctis” series with a new collection of images capturing illuminated drone paths over Bolivia’s eerie salt flat landscape. This time, he got to use some cool new equipment: Phase One’s 150-megapixel XT camera system, which costs $57,000.

Phase One sponsored the project, sending Wu to the extraordinary landscape for a set of photos that look more alien than ever.

“My favorite memory from the trip to Bolivia is shooting the salt flats at sunset. The salt crystallizes into beautiful polygon shapes stretching into the horizon and, as the sun was setting, the shadows cast by the glowing salt ridges became longer and longer, and so the landscape would look different every few seconds. Being there and watching the landscape change as the sunset moved across it, that feeling just stuck with me.”

“A lot of my photos created with drone lights feature circles. To me, this shape represents renewal and perfection. With the image above, I wanted to feature the circle within the landscape of Bolivia’s salt flats. Having the light really low on the salt flats created an interesting mood, with the glow emanating from it and the shadows cast on the ground.”

Another series, Aeroglyphs, takes a more geometric approach with large shapes traced in the sky, contrasting with ethereal settings.

Previously, we covered the UFO-style patterns in the skies Wu created for LUX NOCTIS II. The photographer (who’s also a founding member of the band Ladytron) has traveled the world seeking out the most dramatic, high impact landscapes he could find and flying LED-equipped drones overhead to illuminate them after dark.

“It’s so easy to become numb to conventional depictions of beautiful nature,” he said at the time. “In casting a new, unfamiliar light, I want people to see that while other planets are fascinating and incredible to us through the eyes of spacecraft and rovers, it is our own planet which has so much grandeur and beauty which is both accessible to us and worthy of preservation and protection.”

You can read more about Wu’s work in Bolivia at the Phase One website.

An abandoned factory somewhere in Connecticut epitomizes the sad fate of traditional manufacturing industries once they reach the end of the production line.

Hallgreen’s

Safety glasses may have been required but you’d need a powerful pair of rose-colored specs to perceive the power of this former factory in its green-walled glory days. The actual closing date is unknown, its name is not important, its use to anyone is negligible – unless you’re the graffiti artist who dropped his or her empty cans without a care. Did they at least wear safety glasses?

‘Dis Barred

It’s enough to drive one to drink… well, not literally. OK, literally… the photo above would appear to show a stool-less bar counter though we want to believe the bottles arrived after the business closed (or after the close of business). Photographer and Flickr member Matthew Hester visited this name-withheld-to-protect-the-innocent factory in late October of 2013 and no matter how thirsty he might have been, it’s safe to say NOTHING would have made him sample the contents of those bottles.

We Worked

This factory has been closed so long and has been trashed so much, it’s pretty much impossible to discern exactly what products it made, assembled and/or packaged. Not that it matters much: the decline of America’s manufacturing sector was broad and deep, decimating countless businesses and manufacturing concerns across a vast spectrum of market sectors.

Hammered & Nailed

People talk about the “Rust Belt”, often with a “better them than us” aura of schadenfreud, but New England’s boom era of hulking textile mills turned to bust long before the Midwest experienced an eerily similar collapse. Fallout from the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 (aka the Great Recession) effectively kicked the second wave of successor industries when they were down, and hopes for yet one more phoenix rising from the ashes now lay as scattered as the debris on the factory floor above.

Red Brick Dream

The nascent era of cloud computing and globally fragmented product and production sourcing offers few options for bricks & mortar manufacturing dinosaurs like this one. Will some visionary “angel” developer swoop in with bags of dough, eager to turn the former factory into loft studios for niche artists? Would local authorities sweeten the pot with tax breaks and zoning bylaw exemptions? Is the amount of carelessly disposed hazardous waste, not seen as dangerous at all back when it was dumped, put a toxic damper on the site’s future prospects?

Time will only tell, but every former civilization leaves ruins for the next to interpret. Ours is – or will be – no different.

Something’s rotten in Denmark again, and the stench of decay wafting across the otherwise upbeat isle of Funen originates at the abandoned Fun Park Fyn.

The Other Fyn Land

Fun Park Fyn (“Fyns Sommerland”, in Danish) was a small, family-oriented amusement park located on Funen, Denmark’s third-largest island. The park combined some aspects of modern theme parks including Ferris wheels, bumper cars and water slides with more traditional types of outdoor recreation, like scenic cycling paths.

Not Mun-Dane

Fun Park Fyn opened in 1980 as a sort of small-scale smorgasbord of a Six Flags-style theme park and a low-maintenance, no-frills nature park. The park was also appreciated as an affordable option for families. That business plan only works if the park is profitable, however, and Fun Park Fyn just couldn’t take in enough kroner over the long term.

A Fyn-ancial Crisis

The chronic flow of red ink eventually proved to be unsustainable, and in 2006 the park’s owners declared bankruptcy and closed the doors. With the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 looming, perhaps the owners decided that it’d be best to get out while the gettin’ was good. In any case, Fun Park Fyn was er, fyn-nished… or was it?

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A Fyn Mess Denmarks Eerie Abandoned Fun Park Fyn

An abandoned Me Decade-themed home in the Richmond, VA suburb of Bon Air looks as if a low-budget zombie flick was filmed at The Brady Bunch house.

Sure, Zombie Jan

Time was, beautiful Bon Air was The Place To Be for weary Richmonders eager to escape the Virginia capitol’s summer heat, humidity and air pollution. Better Bon Air than bad air, one might say. In fact, the charming resort town situated just a few miles west in the lush hills of Chesterfield County chose its french-ified name to be its enduring claim to fame.

Rooms & Boards

Serviced via three stops on the old Southern Railway, Bon Air blossomed in the pre-automobile era. The town continued to thrive through the 1950s, when suburbanization enhanced the burg’s appeal as a bedroom community for white-collar Richmonders.

Stepping Down

Every boom eventually busts and Bon Air was no different. Bon Air’s population rose by about 50 percent between 1970 and 1980 but then stagnation set in: over the last four decades the number of people calling Bon Air home has barely changed. Other things in Bon Air stagnated as well… some, not so well.

Pink Houses

Take this abandoned home in the decaying heart of Bon Air – seems like no one else will. Photographer and urbex explorer Joel Handwerk of Lithium Photo stopped by recently and snapped some shots of the once-respectable wood framed family house that’s deteriorating with a vengeance, both inside and out.

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Groovy Grimy Abandoned 70s Home In Bon Air