Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Today Western Australia (WA), the largest state in the country, is also the most
sparsely populated, being home to less than 10% of the population.
Many of the first ships to bring convicts to WA were whalers. Human cargo would be unloaded and then
the ships continued whaling.
The story of Western Australia's history is one of hardship, boom, bust, and boom again.
Human history started some 40,000 years ago, when the first people are thought to have ar-
rived - although some argue that this could have occurred as long as 65,000 years ago.
Dirk Hartog is considered the first European explorer to land on the shores of WA (as a
record of his journey he displayed a pewter plate on an island in Shark Bay in 1616, now
known as Dirk Hartog Island).
The British set up a military base in Albany, in the south of the state, in 1826. Perth was
then founded in 1829, when Captain James Stirling declared all surrounding land property
of King George IV.
In 1829 immigrants led by Stirling arrived in the territory of the Noongar people, spark-
ing controversy between the two groups. Conflict with the indigenous population contin-
ued, notably in the Battle of Pinjarra (1834), when some 25 Aboriginal people and one
European were killed.
WA began its economic transformation with the discovery of gold in the 1880s and the
inception of the nickel boom in the early 1960s, albeit thwarted by the two world wars and
the Depression. Riches from the mines at Mt Newman, Tom Price and Kalgoorlie, among
several others, dovetailed into the economic bubble of the 1980s, which burst when WA Inc
(as the dealings among select businessmen and state politicians came to be known) was dis-
covered to have lost $600 million in public money. Ever enterprising, it was not long,
however, before the state was soon back on its feet, enjoying untrammelled economic min-
ing growth and development by 2010.
