The human History of Western Australia started when Australia's first inhabitants arrived on the northwest coast about 55,000 years ago. Over the next 20,000 years they slowly moved southward and eastward across the landmass. Aboriginess were well established throughout Western Australia by the time European ships started accidently arriving en-route to Batavia in the early seventeenth century.
On 26 October 1616 a Dutch explorer, Dirk Hartog landed at Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog Island. Hartog left a pewter plate inscribed (in Dutch):
Pre-European settlement
Europeans arrive
In 1697 another Dutch sailor Willem de Vlamingh also 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 Amsterdam Museum. de Vlamingh's plate listed all the important sailors on the voyage and concluded with
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", he expresses his frustration:
The first formal claim of possession for Britain was made by Commander George Vancouver RN (later captain) 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 at Albany. The "third" (III) was dropped later.
In the early 1800s 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 established a settlement at King George Sound. A penal settlement in the area was considered but rejected. Instead, a small detachment headed by Edmund Lockyer with 18 soldiers, one captain, one doctor, one storekeeper and 23 convicts were sent as a labour force.
After the formal declaration in 1829 of the Swan River Colony (some 410km to the North West) (see below), control of King George Sound was transferred from New South Wales to Western Australia and continued under a Government Resident. Captain James Stirling decreed that the settlement would be named "Albany" from 1832.
The founding father of modern Western Australia was James Stirling who, in 1827, explored the Swan River area in HMS Success which first anchored off Rottnest, and later in Cockburn Sound. He was accompanied by Charles Frazer, the New South Wales botanist.
Their initial exploration began on the 8 March in a cutter and gig with parties continuing on foot from the 13 March. In late March, the HMS Success moved to Sydney, arriving there on 15 April. Stirling arrived back in England in July 1828, promoting in glowing terms the agricultural potential of the area. His lobbying was for the establishment of a "free" (unlike the now well established penal settlements at New South Wales, Port Arthur and Norfolk Island) colony in the Swan River area with himself as its governor. As a result of these reports, and a rumour in London that the French were about to establish a penal colony in the western part of Australia, possibly at Shark Bay, the Colonial Office assented to the proposal in mid-October 1828.
A set of regulations for allocating land was worked out, between Stirling, the Colonial Office and a consortium of four gentlemen headed by Potter McQueen, a member of Parliament who had already acquired a large tract of land in New South Wales. McQueen's consortium ultimately dissolved, and the remaining member Thomas Peel continued negotiations on its behalf. Peel was allocated 500,000 acres, conditional on his arrival at the colony before November 1 1829 with 400 settlers. Peel departed from Portsmouth on the Parmelia on February 5 1829.
The first ship to reach the Swan River was the HMS Challenger. After anchoring off Garden Island on April 25 1929, its Captain Charles Fremantle declared the Swan River Colony for Britain on 2 May 1829.
The Parmelia arrived on June 1, HMS Sulphur on June 8. Three merchant ships arrived shorty after: the Calista on August 5, the St Leonard on August 6 and the Marquis of Anglesey on August 23.
A series of accidents followed the arrivals which probably nearly caused the abandonment of the expedition. The Challenger and Sulphur both struck rocks while entering Cockburn Sound and were fortunate to escape with only minor damage. The Parmelia however, under Stirlings "over confident pilotage", also ran aground, lost her rudder and damaged her keel, which neccesitated extensive repairs. With winter now set in, the settlers were obliged to land on Garden Island. Bad weather and the required repairs to Parmelia meant that the settlers did not manage to move to the mainland until early August. In early September a major disaster occurred: the
Marquis of Anglesey was driven ashore during a gale and wrecked beyond repair.
The first reports of the new colony arrived back in England in late January 1830. They described the poor conditions and the land as being totally unfit for agriculture. They went on to say the the settlers were in a state of near starvation and (incorrectly) said the the colony had been abandoned. As a result of these reports, many people cancelled their migration plans or diverted to Cape Town or New South Wales.
Nevertheless a few settlers arrived and additional stores were despatched. By 1832 the population of the colony had reached about 1,500, but the difficulty of clearing land to grow crops were so great that by 1850 the population had only increased to 5,886. This population had settled mainly around the southwestern coastline at Bunbury, Augusta and Albany.
Due to the slow growth, which in turn was felt to be due to the lack of manpower in establishing critical infrastructure, the colony finally agreed to receiving convict labour and on 1 June 1850 the first boatload of convicts arrived. Interestingly, Western Australia was becoming a convict state at a time when the eastern states, largely due to goldrushes, were abandoning convict labour. Between 1850 and 1868, when transportation stopped, a total of 9,718 convicts arrived. Their effect on the colony's economy was considerable and by 1869 the population had increased to 22,915.
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. Notable explorers of the interior were:
A major 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. However, 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.
British settlements
Swan River Colony
Gold Discovered
Chronology of European Discovery and Exploration
See also
External link