Joadja is a ghost town in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, in Wingecarribee Shire.
It was a thriving mining town between 1870–1911. It was home for approximately 1100 people, many of Scots ancestry, and was connected to the nearby town of Mittagong by a narrow gauge railway that terminated adjacent to the main Southern Railway line in Mittagong. The town existed to mine shale from which kerosene was extracted by the Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Co. The process was superseded by conventional kerosene production from oil and the shale mining technique became uneconomical. By 1911, the town had become deserted as inhabitants relocated in search of work.
Situated in a deep valley, the town had limited access by road but this has improved in the last thirty years although much of the access road is unsealed. There are the remains of the old school, the mine, houses and retorts and several graves.
Local lore is that the old town is haunted by at least two ghosts.
There have been attempts in recent years to establish a tourist facility in the valley along with a boutique distillery. Large parts of the valley have now been sub-divided and sold for hobby farms.
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