Newman is a mining company townsite in the Pilbara region, 1184 kilometres northeast of Perth. The townsite was gazetted in 1972 after the Mount Newman Mining company developed a large iron ore mine at Mount Whaleback. The townsite is named after the nearby Mount Newman, a 1055 meter high mountain in the Ophthalmia Range.
Mount Newman was named by the surveyor W F Rudall in 1896, "in honour of our late leader". Newman was Aubrey Woodward Newman, the original leader of the survey party carrying out surveys in the neighbourhood of the Ophthalmia Range in 1896. He contracted typhoid fever at Peak Hill and, too ill to continue, was later returned to Cue where he died on May 24th, 1896.
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