History of Western Australia

The human history of Western Australia commenced "over 50,000 years ago and possibly as much as 70,000 years ago" with the arrival of Aboriginal Australians on the northwest coast. The first inhabitants expanded across the east and south of the continent.

The first recorded European contact was in 1616, when Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog landed on the west coast, having been blown off course while en route to Batavia, current day Jakarta.

Although many expeditions visited the coast during the next 200 years, there was no lasting attempt at establishing a permanent settlement until December 1826. An expedition on behalf of the New South Wales colonial government, led by Major Edmund Lockyer,

Aboriginal settlement

When Australia's first inhabitants arrived on the northwest coast 50,000 to 70,000 years ago the sea levels were much lower. The Kimberley coast at one time was only about from Timor, which itself was the last in a line of closely spaced islands for humans to travel across. Therefore, this was a possible (even probable) location for which Australia's first peoples could arrive via boat. Other possible immigration routes were via islands further north and then through New Guinea.

In 1999 Charles Dortch identified chert and calcrete flake stone tools, found at Rottnest Island, as possibly dating to at least 50,000 years ago. A 2018 study using archaeobotany dated evidence of continuous human habitation at Karnatukul (Serpent's Glen) in the Carnarvon Range in the Little Sandy Desert from around 50,000 years ago.

Over the next tens of thousands of years various groups of Indigenous Australians slowly moved southward and eastward across the landmass. Aboriginal people were well established throughout Western Australia by the time European ships started accidentally arriving en route to Batavia (now Jakarta) in the early 17th century.

Early visits by Europeans

The first European to sight Western Australia was the Dutch explorer, Dirk Hartog, the first European to suggest to have found a continent there, who on 26 October 1616 landed at what is now known as Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog Island. Before departing, Hartog left behind an inscribed pewter plate affixed to a post. In 1696 the plate was discovered and replaced by Willem de Vlamingh and repatriated to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. A multitude of Dutch visits followed during that century, charting virtually the whole of the west coast, the Western Australian south coast and Australia's northern coast.

The first English vessel to visit, when attempting to sail the Dutch-established Brouwer Route to the Indies, was Tryall, an East India Company-owned East Indiaman under the command of John Brookes who in 1622 sighted Point Cloates before later on 25 May wrecking on Tryal Rocks, off the northwest coast of Australia. Some of the 143 crew remained on the Monte Bello Islands for 7 days, during that time sighting Barrow Island, before sailing to Batavia in a longboat. A second boat brought some more crew to Batavia, so just over 40 people survived, including Brookes. Almost one hundred crew apparently perished in the wreck. Tryall became Australia's oldest known shipwreck.

A later English visitor was William Dampier, who in 1699 sailed down some of the western coast of Australia. He noted the lack of water and in his description of Shark Bay in his account "A Voyage to New Holland", he expressed his frustration:

A number of sections of the Western Australian coastline were given names which did not last past the exploratory era in names of features – such as Eendrachtsland. However some names, such as t Landt van de Leeuwin (Leeuwin's Land), materialised at a later date as Cape Leeuwin.

Timeline of European discovery and exploration

thumb|upright=1.4|1672 reprint of the [[Melchisédech Thévenot map, which added an eastern boundary to Abel Tasman's 1644 chart of Dutch claims to New Holland 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]]

thumb|upright=1.4|[[Willem de Vlamingh's ships at the entrance to the Swan River, 1697]]

thumb|upright=1.4|Crew of the French ship [[French ship Astrolabe (1811)|L'Astrolabe make contact with Aboriginal people at King George Sound, 1826]]

Below is a timeline of significant events from the 1616 landfall of Dirk Hartog until the eventual settlement of the Swan River Colony in 1829: