Although Western Australia covers nearly one-third of the entire Australian continent (it is 2 525 500 square kilometres) most of it is harsh, uninhabitable desert. In spite of its vast size Western Australia has a population of only 1 662 777 of whom 1.2 million live in Perth [the remotest Capital in the world]. Its economy is driven by mining, wool and wheat and yet only 15 per cent of the state's population live in rural areas.
The history of the state which, in many ways, has been a continuous battle against the harshness of the vast deserts. So harsh is life beyond the narrow southern coastal strip that, in recent times, both Aborigines and white Australians have died of dehydration and exhaustion when they have lost their way or when their cars have broken down.
It is likely that Australia's first inhabitants arrived on the coast of northwest "Western Australia" some 55 000 years ago. Over the next 20 000 years they slowly moved southward and eastward across the landmass. Certainly Aborigines were well established throughout Western Australia by the time the Dutch ships started bumping into the coast in the early seventeenth century. In fact there is considerable evidence that the obvious poverty of the coastal Aborigines, who were trying to eke out a living from near-desert, did much to discourage serious exploration of the coast.
It was the Dutch sailor
Henderik Brouwer who, in 1610, discovered that the best route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia was via the Roaring Forties. The idea was head east for a few thousand kilometres then turn left. Brouwer achieved the crossing of the Indian Ocean and turned left before reaching Western Australia. Six years later
Dirk Hartog sailed too far and landed at Cape Inscription on 26 October 1616. It was here that Hartog left his famous pewter plate inscribed (in Dutch):
"1616. On 25th October there arrived here the ship Eendraght of Amsterdam. Supercargo Gilles Miebais of Liege; skipper Dirck Hatichs of Amsterdam. On 27th do. she set sail again for Bantam. Subcargo Jan Stins; upper steersman Pieter Doores of Bil. In the year 1616." It hardly makes gripping reading but it is firm evidence of Europeans landing on mainland Australia.
In 1697 the Dutch sailor
Willem de Vlamingh reached the island and, finding Hartog's pewter plate still in its original position he removed it and replaced it with another plate. The original was returned to Holland where it still is kept in the Rijksmuseum. De Vlaminghıs replacement plate had an even less interesting inscription on it. After getting the date wrong he listed all the important sailors on the voyage and concluded with
Our fleet set sail from here to continue exploring the Southern Land, on the way to Batavia.
In 1818 the French explorer Louis de Freycinet, while exploring the coast, came across de Vlamingh's plate and removed it to France. The plate was eventually returned to Australia in 1947 and is currently housed in the Maritime Museum in Fremantle.
Further better known voyages include the
Leeuwin (hence the name Cape Leeuwin on the SouthWest Coast) in 1622 and the
Gulden Zeepaerdt in 1627 making the first known running survey and later chart of the South coast (hence the name
Nuytsland, for a hight official on board "
Pieter Nuyts").
When, in 1699,
William Dampier sailed down the coast of Western Australia, he noted the lack of water. The description of Shark Bay in his account
A Voyage to New Holland expresses his frustration:
Twas the 7th of August when we came into Shark's Bay; in which we Anchored at three several Places, and stay'd at the first of them (on the W. side of the Bay) till the 11th. During which time we searched about, as I said, for fresh Water, digging Wells, but to no purpose.
A settlement by the Dutch East India was proposed in 1717 - by
Johan Purry
What we now know as Western Australia was however first claimed for France by
St Allouarn in 1772.
The first claim of possession for Britain was made by Commander
George Vancouver RN (later captain) formally and ceremoniously on
29 September 1791 on the spot he named
Possession Point, at the tip of the peninsula between the waters he also named --
King George III Sound and
Princess Royal Harbour. The "third' (III) was dropped later.
In the early nineteenth century the British became concerned about the possibility of a French colony being established on the coast of Western Australia and thus, in 1826, the New South Wales governor
Ralph Darling instructed Major Edmund Lockyer to establish a settlement at
King George Sound. A penal settlement in the area was considered but not decided. The 23 convicts (detachment with 18 soldiers one captain, one doctor and one storekeeper under Lockyer) were sent as a labour force. After the formal declaration of the
Swan River Colony (some 410km to the North West ) and it's boundaries, control of King George Sound was transferred from NSW to WA and continued under a Government Resident. Captain J. Stirling decreed that the settlement would be named '
Albany' from the new year of 1832.
The founding father of modern Western Australia was
Captain James Stirling who, in 1827, explored the Swan River area. He (and his crew) arrived in the HMS Success which first anchored off Rottnest, next off South Head and finally in Cockburn Sound. Exploration began on the 8. March in a cutter and gig with parties continueing on foot from the 13.March. The HMS Success moved in late March to reach Sydney on the 15. April. As a result of his explorations attempts to establish a new colony in the west were renewed and on 2 May 1829 Captain Charles Fremantle declared the
Swan River Colony (Western Australia) for Britain. A month later a party of free settlers, accompanied by free workers (the plan was to establish the colony without convict labour) arrived under the control of Captain Stirling and a colony was established near the mouth of the Swan River.
By 1831 the population of the colony had reached 1500 but the difficulties of clearing the land and growing crops were so great that by 1850 the population had only increased to 5 886. This population settled around the southwestern coastline at Bunbury, Augusta and Albany and slowly moved inland looking for pastures for their flocks, cutting down the hardwoods and grubbing out sandalwood for export to Asia.
In spite of this relative success the colony could not resist the temptation of convict labour and on 1 June 1850 the first boatload of convicts arrived. Western Australia was becoming a convict state at a time when the eastern states, largely due to the goldrushes, were abandoning convict labour. Between 1850 and 1868, when transportation stopped, a total of 9718 convicts arrived. Their effect on the colony's economy was considerable and by 1869 the population had increased to 22 915.
The harshness of the climate and the marginal nature of the land ensured that Western Australia would never be densely populated. Even Perth, which was to grow into a particularly beautiful modern city, struggled with its population. By 1849 only 1148 were living in the city and by 1891 this had only grown to 8447. Even in 1911 it was only a medium sized country town with a population of 31 300. The arrival of the Trans-Australian Railway in 1917 and the early success of the gold mining towns pushed the population to 272 528 in 1947. The subsequent immigration from Britain and the European Continent meant that by 1990 1 193 100 people were living in Perth and its suburbs.
In a sense it is probably the only Australian capital city which is almost totally dependent on the economic well being of the state. In his novel
City of Men Gavin Casey astutely observes:
'When the crop fails the city fails. Townies who ask how the wheat-belt is looking aren't just making conversation. They want to know. It's a wheat-growing city, if you can understand the term. It doesn't make anything. It just buys and sells things, and the only places to which it can sell anything except the wheat and wool and gold are the goldfields, the wheat-belt and the grazing areas.'
Until the 1870s the economy of the state was based on wheat, meat and wool. The early explorers opened up the inland but they were not followed by eager developers because all they found was desert. Major Peter Egerton Warburton made the perilous journey from Alice Springs to the Western Australian coast. A.C. and F.T. Gregory in the 1840s and 1850s carried out extensive explorations along the continent's western coastline and hinterland. Ernest Giles twice traversed the Gibson Desert.
The real change in the state's fortunes occurred in the 1880s when gold was discovered and prospectors by the tens of thousands
swarmed across the land in a desperate attempt to discover new goldfields. Paddy Hannan's discovery at Kalgoorlie, and the early discoveries at Coolgardie, sparked true gold fever. In 1891 the rush to the Murchison goldfields began when Tom
Cue discovered gold at the town which now bears his name. In the years
that followed dozens of gold towns - Day Dawn, Meekatharra, Nannine, Peak Hill, Garden Gully, Dead Finish, Pinnicles, Austin Island and Austin Mainland - grew up only to die when the seams were exhausted and the gold fever moved on.
As a result of this sudden influx of miners, and the wealth which they brought with them, the state was granted responsible government in 1890.
The wealth generated from gold soon disappeared and by the
early years of the twentieth century the economy was once again
dependent on wool and wheat. This dependency meant that a dramatic fall
in wool and wheat prices in the late 1920s - early 1930s saw the
state's economy collapse. It was not to recover until after World War II
when the Federal Government's postwar immigration policy saw a huge
influx of migrants, nearly all of them from Britain, in the period 1947 to 1970.
In the early 1980s the state boasted the remarkable population profile of having 1.3 million people of whom 72% were native born Australians and 15% were British born immigrants. Symbolic of these new immigrants was Alan Bond who, along with Robert Holmes a Court, Laurie Connell, Brian Burke, and a large number of high-flying entrepreneurs put Western Australia very firmly back on the Australian map during the 1980s. Bond was symptomatic of the times. He was high profile and he was prepared to do anything to draw attention to the state. His coup was the winning of the elusive America's Cup. He had four attempts at the Cup before he was successful. In 1974 Southern Cross lost 4-0; in 1977 Australia lost 4-0; in 1980 Australia lost again 4-1; and then in 1983 Australia II won 4-3. Bond was matched for audacity by Robert Holmes a Court whose Bell Group made a bid for Australia's biggest company, BHP. The bid was repulsed but not before Holmes a Court made it clear that he had $2.5 billion credit available for future takeovers.
In tandem with these dealings the premier Brian Burke did everything in his power to nurture the entrepreneurs. Such was the government's involvement that the term 'W.A. Inc' was coined to describe its entrepreneurial enthusiasm. By the mid-1980s Western Australia was the land of opportunity. It was the state where everyone could get rich quickly. However, the stockmarket crash of 1987 put an end to all these dreams. Today Western Australia is still a gigantic and hugely successful mineral bin with huge deposits of iron ore, gold and diamonds but the entrepreneurs have all fallen from grace and the state is retreating into a new conservatism and nurturing a sense of separateness which looks with amused disdain on those who "live (with the help of royalties and taxes from hard labour collected by the 'Feds' in the remote "West")" on the continent's east coast.
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