Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Exploration & Gold
Meanwhile, several explorers undertook journeys into the remote Aboriginal territories,
drawn in by dreams of mighty rivers and rolling plains of grass 'further out'. Mostly their
thirsty ordeals ended in disappointment. But the pastoralists did expand through much of
the southwestern corner of WA, while others took up runs on the rivers of the northwest
and in the Kimberley.
Perhaps the most staggering journey of exploration was undertaken by an Aboriginal
man called Wylie and the explorer Edward Eyre, who travelled from South Australia,
across the vast, dry Nullarbor Plain, to Albany.
By the 1880s, the entire European population of this sleepy western third of Australia
was not much more than 40,000 people. In the absence of democ racy, a network of city
merchants and large squatters exercised political and economic control over the colony.
The great agent of change was gold. The first discoveries were made in the 1880s in the
Kimberley and the Pilbara, followed by huge finds in the 1890s at Coolgardie and Kal-
goorlie, in hot, dry country 600km inland from Perth. So many people were lured by the
promise of gold that the population of the colony doubled and redoubled in a single decade.
But the easy gold was soon exhausted, and most independent prospectors gave way to min-
ing companies who had the capital to sink deep shafts. Soon the miners were working not
for nuggets of gold but for wages. Toiling in hot, dangerous conditions, these men banded
together to form trade unions, which remained a potent force in the life of WA throughout
the following century.
Largely set in WA,
Gallipoli
(1981, directed by Peter Weir, screenplay by David Williamson) is an iconic Aus-
tralian movie exploring naivety, social pressure to enlist and, ultimately, the utter futility of this campaign.
