Western Australia
Western Australia is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a land area of, and is also the second-largest subdivision of any country on Earth.
Western Australia has a diverse range of climates, including tropical conditions in the Kimberley, deserts in the interior and a Mediterranean climate on the south-west and southern coastal areas. the state has 2.965 million inhabitants—10.9 percent of the national total. Over 90 percent of the state's population live in the south-west corner and around 80 percent live in the state capital Perth, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated. The Trans-Australian Railway and the Eyre Highway traverse the Nullarbor Plain in the state's south-east, providing the principal connection between Western Australia and the population centres in the eastern states.
Western Australia's Indigenous peoples have been present for tens of thousands of years. Dutch explorers visited Western Australia from the 17th century, with Dirk Hartog's 1616 expedition the first Europeans to make landfall. The British claimed Western Australia in 1827 and established the Swan River Colony with Perth as its capital in 1829. The Western Australian gold rushes of the late 19th century resulted in a significant population influx. The colony was granted responsible government in 1890, the last of the Australian colonies to become self-governing, and federated with the other colonies in 1901.
Western Australia's mining sector is a key driver of the state economy. The late 20th century saw the development of the state's significant iron ore mining industry – the world's largest – as well as primarily offshore petroleum and natural gas resources. Gold mining retains a significant presence and many other mineral commodities are mined, with Perth being a major centre for associated services. Outside of mining, primary industry is the other significant contributor to the state's economy, including agriculture in the Wheatbelt and temperate southern coastal regions, pastoralism in marginal grassland areas, forestry in the south-west and fishing.
History
Western Australia has a geological history dating back to 4.4 billion years ago when Hadean zircons were formed. The earliest direct known life on land, known as stromatolites, started to be created by microbes at around 3.48 billion years ago.The first human inhabitants of Australia arrived from the north "over 50,000 years ago and possibly as much as 70,000 years ago". Over thousands of years they eventually spread across the whole landmass. These Indigenous Australians were long established throughout Western Australia by the time European explorers began to arrive in the early 17th century.
File:Hessel Gerritsz - Malay Archipelago and Australia.jpg|thumb|right|Map first drawn in 1618 by Hessel Gerritsz, 12 years after Europeans first encountered the Australian mainland, showing the charted coast of Australia. Chartings after 1618, for example by François Thijssen in 1627, were added to the engraved plate between 1628 and 1632.
The first Europeans to visit Western Australia were those of the Dutch Dirk Hartog expedition, who on 25 October 1616 landed at what is now known as Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog Island. For the rest of the 17th century, other Dutch and British navigators encountered the coast of what Abel Tasman named New Holland in 1644, usually unintentionally as demonstrated by the many shipwrecks along the coast of ships that deviated from the Brouwer Route. By the late 18th century, British and French sailors had begun to explore the Western Australian coast. The Baudin expedition of 1800–03 included the coast of Western Australia and resulted in the Freycinet Map of 1811, the first published map featuring the full outline of Australia. The name New Holland remained in popular and semi-official use until at least the mid-1850s; that is, it was in use for about years in comparison to the name Australia which to date has been in use for about years.
File:Thevenot - Hollandia Nova detecta 1644.png|thumb |left |Melchisédech Thévenot's Hollandia Nova—Terre Australe in his travel anthology published in 1664, and which seems to be a copy of Archipelagus Orientalis sive Asiaticus by Joan Blaeu in the Atlas of the Great Elector from 1659. The latitude staff depicted by Thévenot falls along the Zaragoza antimeridian from the Treaty of Zaragoza of 1529 between Castile and Portugal, and which complemented the Tordesillas meridian from the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494.
The origins of the present state began with the establishment by Lockyer of a convict-supported settlement from New South Wales at King George III Sound. The settlement was formally annexed on 21 January 1827 by Lockyer when he commanded the Union Jack be raised and a feu de joie fired by the troops. The settlement was founded in response to British concerns about the possibility of a French colony being established on the coast of Western Australia. On 7 March 1831 it was transferred to the control of the Swan River Colony, and named Albany in 1832.
In 1829 the Swan River Colony was established on the Swan River by Captain James Stirling. By 1832, the British settler population of the colony had reached around 1,500, and the official name of the colony was changed to Western Australia on 6 February that year. The two separate townsites of the colony developed slowly into the port city of Fremantle and the state's capital, Perth. York was the first inland settlement in Western Australia, situated east of Perth and settled on 16 September 1831. York was the staging point for early explorers who discovered the rich gold reserves of Kalgoorlie.
Population growth was very slow until significant discoveries of gold were made in the 1890s around Kalgoorlie.
In 1887, a new constitution was drafted, providing for the right of self-governance of European Australians, and in 1890, the act granting self-government to the colony was passed by the British Parliament. John Forrest became the first Premier of Western Australia.
In 1896, after discoveries of gold at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, the Western Australian Parliament authorised the raising of a loan to construct a pipeline to transport of water per day to the burgeoning population on the goldfields. The pipeline, known as the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, was completed in 1903. O'Connor, Western Australia's first engineer-in-chief, designed and oversaw the construction of the pipeline. It carries water from Perth to Kalgoorlie, and is attributed by historians as an important factor driving the state's population and economic growth.
Following a campaign led by Forrest, electors of the colony of Western Australia voted in favour of federation with the five other Australian colonies, resulting in Western Australia officially becoming a state on 1 January 1901.
"West Australia"
"West Australia" and its related demonym "West Australian" are occasionally used, including in the names of the main daily newspaper, The West Australian, and the state-based West Australian Football League, but are rarely used in an official sense. The terms "Westralia" and "Westralian" were regularly used in the 19th and 20th century. The terms are still found in the names of certain companies and buildings, e.g. Westralia House in Perth, the skyscraper Westralia Square on St Georges Terrace, and Westralia Airports Corporation, which operates Perth Airport, as well as in the names of several ships.Geography
Western Australia is bounded to the east nominally by longitude 129°E, the meridian 129 degrees east of Greenwich, although the actual border with South Australia and the Northern Territory deviates from 129° east and is not a single straight line, and bounded by the Indian Ocean to the west and north. The International Hydrographic Organization designates the body of water south of the continent as part of the Indian Ocean; in Australia it is officially gazetted as the Southern Ocean.The total length of the state's eastern border is. There are of coastline, including of island coastline. The total land area occupied by the state is.
Geology
The bulk of Western Australia consists of the extremely old Yilgarn craton and Pilbara craton which merged with the Deccan Plateau of India, Madagascar and the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons of Southern Africa, in the Archean Eon to form Ur, one of the oldest supercontinents on Earth. In May 2017, evidence of the earliest known life on land may have been found in 3.48-billion-year-old geyserite and other related mineral deposits uncovered in the Pilbara craton.Because the only mountain-building since then has been of the Stirling Range with the rifting from Antarctica, the land is extremely eroded and ancient, with no part of the state above 1,249 metres AHD. Most of the state is a low plateau with an average elevation of about 400 metres, very low relief, and no surface runoff. This descends relatively sharply to the coastal plains, in some cases forming a sharp escarpment.
The extreme age of the landscape has meant that the soils are remarkably infertile and frequently laterised. Even soils derived from granitic bedrock contain an order of magnitude less available phosphorus and only half as much nitrogen as soils in comparable climates in other continents. Soils derived from extensive sandplains or ironstone are even less fertile, nearly devoid of soluble phosphate and deficient in zinc, copper, molybdenum and sometimes potassium and calcium.
The infertility of most of the soils has required heavy application by farmers of fertilisers. These have resulted in damage to invertebrate and bacterial populations. The grazing and use of hoofed mammals and, later, heavy machinery through the years have resulted in compaction of soils and great damage to the fragile soils.
Large-scale land clearing for agriculture has damaged habitats for native flora and fauna. As a result, the South West region of the state has a higher concentration of rare, threatened or endangered flora and fauna than many areas of Australia, making it one of the world's biodiversity "hot spots". Large areas of the state's wheatbelt region have problems with dryland salinity and the loss of fresh water.