Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
At the time Mooro belonged to a Wadjuk leader called Yellagonga and his people,
whose main camp was at Boorloo, near where the colony was founded. Relations were
friendly at first, the Noongar believing the British to be the returned spirits of their dead,
but competition for resources led to conflict. Yellagonga moved his camp first to Lake
Monger and, by the time of his death in 1843, his people had been dispossessed of all of
their lands around Perth's city centre and were forced to camp around the swamps and
lakes to the city's north.
Midgegooroo, an elder from south of the Swan River, along with his son Yagan, led res-
istance to the British settlement. In 1833 Midgegooroo was caught and executed by firing
squad, while Yagan was shot a few months later by teenage settlers whom he had be-
friended. Yagan's head was removed, smoked and sent to London where it was publicly
displayed as an anthropological curiosity.
Life for the settlers was much harder than they had expected it to be. The early settle-
ment grew very slowly until 1850, when convicts alleviated the labour shortage and boos-
ted the population. Convict labour was also responsible for constructing the city's substan-
tial buildings such as Government House and the Town Hall. Even then, Perth's develop-
ment lagged behind that of the cities in the eastern colonies. That is, until the discovery of
gold inland in the 1890s increased Perth's population fourfold in a decade and initiated a
building bonanza.
The mineral wealth of WA has continued to drive Perth's growth. In the 1980s and '90s,
though, the city's clean-cut, nouveau-riche image was tainted by a series of financial and
political scandals. Today Perth is thriving once again, thanks to another mining boom
throughout the state. Rumours of a slowdown by the Chinese and Indian economies con-
tinue to bubble away, but obviously no-one's told more than a few of the fiscally confid-
ent locals.
Largely excluded from this race to riches are the Noongar people. In 2006, the Perth
Federal Court recognised native title over the city of Perth and its surrounds, but this was
appealed by the WA and Commonwealth governments. In December 2009 an agreement
was signed in WA's parliament, setting out a two-year time frame for negotiating settle-
ment of native-title claims across the southwest.
1 Sights
Many of Perth's main attractions are within walking distance of the inner city, several in
the Perth Cultural Centre precinct past the railway station in Northbridge. Most of the
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