Perth Western Australia

City of Perth is in Australia's largest state, (Western Australia) covering the westernmost third of the mainland, bordering South Australia and the Northern Territory.

The state capital city is the city of Perth on the south-western coastline; the centre of a metropolitan area which is home to almost three quarters of the state's residents. The Perth metropolitan area has grown to include the port of Fremantle and the towns of Rockingham and Mandurah.

Other important or well-known centres include Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Albany, Geraldton, Port Hedland and Broome, but these are all small cities or towns. The south-west coastal area is relatively temperate and forested, while much of the rest of the state is hot and semi-arid or desert, and is lightly inhabited. An exception to this is the northern tropical regions, especially the Kimberley.

Although Western Australia has been occupied by the Aboriginal people for many thousands of years, the present state has its origins in the British settlement known as the Swan River Colony, founded at Perth in 1829 (although the first British settlement occurred in Albany in 1826).

Since that time, many immigrants have continued to be of British origin, outnumbered only by arrivals from other Australian states. There has also been significant immigration from New Zealand.

Small numbers of Southeast Asian (especially ethnic Chinese) immigrants began to arrive in Western Australia in the mid 19th century. Immigration restrictions (the "White Australia Policy") caused "non-white" immigration to cease in the 1890s.

Following World War II, immigration from Europe increased, especially from Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece. In the 1970s, a new wave of Asian immigrants, mostly ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese began to arrive in Western Australia. Perth, in particular, paralleled the multicultural experience of other large Australian cities and has become home to people from most of the countries in the world.

Presently, 11.9% of Western Australian residents were born in the United Kingdom or Ireland, while 5.3% were born in Asia. In recent years, Western Australia has had the highest overseas migration rates in the nation.


Perth is set on the Swan River, so named because of the native black swans. It is a sprawling city, extending to Joondalup in the north, Mandurah in the south and Mundaring in the east. The coastal suburbs take advantage of Perth's oceanside location and clean beaches. To the east, the city is bordered by a low escarpment called the Darling Scarp. Perth is on generally flat, rolling land - largely due to the high amount of sandy soils and deep bedrock.

The Perth city skyline displays the economic prosperity the state has enjoyed in the past 20 years. The city's tallest building, Central Park, is the fifth tallest skyscraper in Australia (not measuring spires).

The Perth metropolitan area includes over thirty local governments (cities, towns and shires). These include Fremantle, Bayswater, Canning, Stirling, Gosnells, Nedlands, Peppermint Grove, Claremont, Victoria Park and Armadale. See the list of Perth suburbs and the Local Government Areas of Western Australia for a comprehensive list Although the British Army had established a base at King George Sound (later Albany) on the south coast of Western Australia in 1826 — to forestall rumoured annexation by France — Perth was the first full scale settlement by Europeans in the "western third" of the continent. The town was established in 1829, as the capital of the Swan River Colony, a free settler colony. In 1850, as Western Australia, it became as a convict colony, at the request of farming and business people who wanted cheap labour.

The name Perth was chosen in 1829 by James Stirling. Stirling, a Scot, implemented the wish of Sir George Murray, Secretary for the Colonies, that the settlement be named after Perthshire, which was his birthplace as well as his parliamentary seat in the British House of Commons. On August 12 that year, Mrs Helen Dance cut down a tree to mark the day of the founding of the town.

In 1901, the colony joined the Federation of Australia. The city has prospered as a result of repeated mining booms, especially for gold, iron ore, nickel, and alumina: Western Australia is rich with mineral resources. Many Perth residents consider their city to be egalitarian and relaxed, with a relatively large middle class and a suburban lifestyle; however, as with all large cities, Perth does have pockets of extreme wealth and poverty. The population is easy-going and friendly, but can be parochial, especially towards the "Eastern States" which are often viewed with deep, but usually jocular, suspicion. This attitude is fuelled by the Eastern States' view of Perth as a "backward" civilisation, but can be mainly attributed to Perth's isolation — reflected in the widely-held belief that Perth is "the world's most isolated capital city". (There is some truth in this: for example, travelling to the closest major capital to Perth (Adelaide), represents a travel time of three hours by commercial flight. There are, however, other candidates for the title, including Honolulu.)

Because Fremantle was the first landfall in Australia for migrant ships coming from Europe in the 1950s and '60s, Perth experienced an influx of British, Italian and Greek migrants. More recently, large-scale immigration to Perth by air from Britain has continued, giving Perth the highest-proportion of British-born residents of any Australian city. Some suburbs in southern Perth are up to 20% British by birthplace. There has also been a substantial settlement from South Africa, mainly of European-descended South Africans. Perth also has substantial immigrant communities from China and India. The Indian community includes a substantial number of Parsees who emigrated from Bombay. Western Australia's economy has been largely based on the extraction and export of mining and petroleum commodities, especially iron ore, natural gas, nickel and gold. Western Australia is also a leading alumina extractor, producing more than 20% of the world's aluminium.

Agricultural exports are also important, especially wheat, barley and sheep products such as wool and meat. In recent years, tourism has grown in importance, with the majority of visitors coming from the United Kingdom and Ireland, Singapore, Japan and Malaysia.

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