Glen Davis: A Shale Oil Ghost Town and its People 1938-1954: Hardcover NO DUST JACKET ? 22 September 2014. An illustrated history of the bright hopes and dismal failure that sparked and doused a nation's pioneering effort to produce its own petrol.hardcover, with illustrated boards and endpaper maps; 270pp., with full-colour and monochrome photographic illustrations. USED The town of Glen Davis nowadays is a ruin, a ghost town nestled and forgotten within the remote Capertee Valley. However, 60 years ago it was a bustling hive of activity, the home and livelihood of thousands of miners, industrial chemists, engineers and their families, and the businesses which supported their lifestyle. Built upon one of the richest oil-shale deposits in the world, Glen Davis was, at one time, the backbone of Australia's pioneering industrial infrastructure. Over time though, federal policy shifted and pushed the town into the shadows; wartime restrictions and rationing brought the death knell and the settlement was abandoned by those who felt that they had been as equally abandoned by the economic counsellors of their day. This is the complete history - social, industrial and political - of this lost town by someone who knew the place and grew up there as one of its citizens.