A Brief History of Perth and Western Australia

Western Australia (WA) is the largest state of any country in the world with an area of 7,682,300 square kilometres.

It has a population of just 2 million people with 1.6 million living in the Perth metropolitan area. In common with the rest of Australia, most people live on the coast. The coastline of Western Australia is an astounding 12,500 kilometres long and the whole of Europe could fit into the state of Western Australia with room to spare.

The state is so vast that, while the south of the state is an area of temperate to Mediterranean climate, with tall trees and lush vegetation in the extreme south and the night temperatures may at time drop to zero degrees celsius, the far north of the state is well within the tropics and experiences wet and dry seasons. In addition, the deserts and areas of very low annual rainfall are to be found in the east of the state and in the north-east, daytime temperatures may at times exceed 50 degrees celsius.

Perth overlooks the Swan River which flows through the Darling Ranges from the east. The Darling Ranges were once a very high range of mountains that are now no more than a range of rolling hills thanks to Australia, and Western Australia, in particular being so ancient.

The city of Perth, once called the Swan River Colony, is acknowledged as the most remote city in the world and it is interesting to note that Jakarta in Indonesia is actually closer to Perth than Sydney in New South Wales.

Perth was founded by a Major Edmund Lockyer who was sent from Sydney to establish a small military outpost in 1826. Three years later, the Swan River Colony was claimed for Britain and James Stirling became the first Governor. In 1850 the first group of convicts transported to WA arrived at Fremantle and were set to work constructing public buildings and roads in Perth and Fremantle, some of which can still be seen. The transportation of convicts ended in 1868, by that time more than 9600 convicts had been sent to WA and their labour was to prove vital to the development of the colony.

Compared with the colonies in the east, WA was very poor but that did not deter explorers from heading off into the unknown. As new regions were discovered, roads, railways and telegraph lines were established to link communities. Perth was connected to the Overland Telegraph Line in 1877 which provided communication with London and Adelaide. 

The discovery of gold was to turn around the regions fortunes with the first nuggets discovered in Halls Creek in the north's remote Kimberley in 1885 followed by discoveries in the Pilbara. WA profited from the gold boom for the rest of the century and it put WA on the national map and finally gave it the population to make it a viable state in it's own right rather than just a distant off shoot from the eastern colonies.

During WWII many military bases were established in the west with Fremantle becoming an important naval base for Allied operations in the Indian Ocean and Exmouth in the north was the centre of operation Potshot, an advance US submarine refuelling base.

After WWII the west began to prosper again mainly thanks to the expolitation of the state's vast mineral wealth which has now made it one of the world's main exporters of iron ore.