Desert State

Western Australia is Australia’s largest state. Much of it is desert. It receives little rainfall, and the temperature often is higher than 100° F. Most of its people live in Perth,rift gold a coastal city that is the state capital.

The first people to live in Western Australia moved there at least 40,000 years ago. These Aboriginal people probably came from islands in Southeast Asia. As they continued to arrive, they probably introduced to Australia the wild dog called the “dingo.”

The first Europeans to see Western Australia were probably Portuguese sailors in the 1520s. But they didn’t land. The Dutch East India Company, a trading company, sailed into the Indian Ocean in the early 1600s. The Dutch mapped the coastline, but they didn’t stay either.

In 1829 Captain James Stirling of the British Navy started the first permanent European settlement in Australia at what is now Perth. Before then, the only Europeans living in Australia had been British convicts sent there by the British government. About 4,000 settlers joined Captain Stirling in the new colony.

Because of difficult living conditions, many of the settlers died over the next few years. But things gradually improved,rift gold and by 1835 the settlers were able to feed themselves. During the 1850s and 1860s the British forced male convicts to construct many of the colony’s roads and public buildings.

Western Australia became a state in 1901. From the 1940s through the 1960s, its population doubled. Today the state is home to about 2 million people, and Perth has one of the highest populations of Australia’s cities.