Western Australia travel guide

Diamond, Jared Guns, Germs and Steel. A fascinating explanation of why it is that the British invaded Australia in 1788, rather than an Aboriginal fleet that sailed up the Thames, wide-ranging, a global look at the trends of human development and history.

Flannery, Tim, editor The Explorers. An amazing insight into the minds of the early European pioneers is given in these eyewitness accounts.

Macintyre, Stuart A Concise History of Australia. A general history.

Books detailing the impact of the British invasion on the indigenous peoples include:

Broome, Richard Aboriginal Australians. A good general history of what has happened to Aboriginal people since 1788 and how they have responded to their situation.

McGrath, Ann, editor Contested Ground. The Aboriginal voice itself is starting to be heard in books such as this.

Reynolds, Henry The Other Side of the Frontier or An Indelible Stain. Very fine work, utilizes a lot of compelling primary sources.

Boyce, JamesVan Diemen’s Land. A significant new work that suggests white Tasmanian settlers were ‘indigenised’ as much as black Tasmanians were ‘colonised’.

Berndt, Ronald and Catherine The World of the First Australians. The classic work on Aboriginal culture.

Flood, Josephine Riches of Ancient Australia. A superb look at archaeological and art sites by region. Archaeology of the Dreamtime. An account of how people first came to Australia and how they lived. Rock Art of the Dreamtime. For those interested in rock art.

Knightley, Phillip Australia: A Biography of a Nation. Short but snappy, this is in essence a modern history, but also goes a long way to getting inside the minds of today’s Australians.

McCulloch, Alan and Susan The Encyclopedia of Australian Art. The major reference book at a hefty 800 pages.

Morphy, Howard Aboriginal Art. An excellent overview of its subject.

Sayers, Andrew Australian Art. A new history of all Australian art forms from 1788 to the present.

Penguin Good Australian Wine Guide. Those intending to drink a lot of Australian wine may find this annual useful.

Absalom, Jack Safe Outback Travel. A trusted manual of driving and camping advice if getting right off the beaten track.

Flannery, Tim Future Eaters. A fantastic ecological history of the continent, focusing on its fauna, flora and people, and how they have shaped, and been shaped by the environment.

Hiddin, Les Bush Tucker Field Guide. For those worried about getting lost in the bush who may want to brush up on bush tucker.

Low, Tim Feral Future. An interesting and alarming study of the current biological invasion of Australia.

Zborowski, Paul Australia’s most dangerous spiders, snakes and marine creatures: Identification and First Aid. Those who are a little nervous of getting close to Australia’s wildlife may be soothed (or terrified) by this useful field guide.

Good generalist wildlife books include:

Menkhorst, Peter Field Guide to Mammals of Australia. Another fine field guide et al.

Simpson, Ken Birds of Australia. A new and comprehensive guide that is on a par with Slater.

Slater, Peter Slater Field Guide-Australian Birds. Tried and trusted guide.

de Bernières, Louis Red Dog. English novelist who couldn’t resist the tales he heard of an independent kelpie in the Pilbara who hitched rides with mine workers, and so turned them into a novella.

Bryson, Bill, Down Under. Written by an American, this is probably the best-selling account of a journey around Australia, and certainly one of the funniest.

Connolly, Billy World Tour of Australia. It goes without saying that this book is also very funny.

Davidson, Robyn Tracks. A moving and honest account of the author’s solo camel trip across central and western Australia.

Jacobson, Howard In the Land of Oz. Written in the 1980s by this Englishman, but is an amusing, perceptive and thoughtful account, and still pertinent.

Morgan, Sally My Place. Her autobiographical classic account of growing up in Perth in the 1950s and 1960s and exploring her Aboriginal heritage.

Winton, Tim Land’s Edge. A powerfully evocative account of his love of the Western Australian coast.

One of the best ways of getting a flavour of Western Australian history and culture is to dive into a great novel. If you only read one Western Australian novelist it should be the incomparable Tim Winton.

Jolley, Elizabeth Another well known WA novelist who writes about the lonely and invisible in a darkly comic and unsettling way.

Drewe, Robert The Drowner. A meditative piece centred on the son of a water diviner working to bring water to the WA goldfields at the turn of the century. Shark Net. A gripping memoir about a series of murders in Perth in the 60s.

Scott, Kim Benang. An award-winning fictional account of a man of Nyoongar and European heritage trying to cope with being bred as his family’s ‘first white man born’.

Winton, Tim Cloudstreet. Describes growing up in a ramshackle family house in suburban Perth. Dirt Music tells of love between 2 drifters amid a passionate evocation of the West Australian coastline.

When Europeans arrived in Australia there were about 250 Aboriginal languages and many more dialects. These were as different from each other as English and Bengali. Most Aboriginal people spoke three or four languages: including those of neighbouring groups, kin or birth place. Because Aboriginal languages were oral they were easily lost. About 100 languages have disappeared since 1788, another 100 or so are used only by older people and will die out within 10-20 years. Only about 20 languages are commonly spoken today. Many Aboriginal people still speak several languages, of which English may be their second or third language. Aboriginal English is widely spoken; this is a form of English with the structure of Aboriginal languages or English words that do not correspond to the English meaning.

English is the official language of Australia, and it has developed a rich vocabulary all its own in its two centuries of linguistic experimentation. The words and terms listed in the Glossary are mostly unique to Australia. American visitors will also find a lot of unfamiliar British terms and slang words in use. Unfortunately many colourful Australian phrases are gradually disappearing under the dominant influence of American television and film.

Australia has a rich literary culture and an admirable body of national literature. Until recently this reflected only the European experience of the country, but increasingly includes Aboriginal voices and those of migrants. Awareness and exploration of the Asia-Pacific cultures of the region is also a new theme. It is not surprising that the main concern for Europeans has been the alien nature of the country they had so recently arrived in; to examine how it was different from their own country and to find both meaning and their own place within it. As in so many cultural fields it has taken a long time for an Australian identity to develop and in literature it has been primarily within the last 50 years. As questions of national identity are resolved Australian writers move towards regional and local identity. One of the features of contemporary Australian literature is the strong sense of place it conveys. The writers and poets discussed below are significant figures of Australian literature who have built up a substantial collection of work but of course there are many more fine writers.

Australia was colonized during the century of Romanticism in Western Europe when interest in the natural world was at its height. Much of the earliest colonial art came from scientific expeditions and their specimen drawings. Most of these early images look slightly odd as if even the best draughtsman found himself unable to capture the impossibly strange forms of unique Australian species such as the kangaroo. Indeed art from the whole of the first colonial century portrays Australia in a soft northern hemisphere light and in the rich colours of European landscapes. In these finely detailed landscapes the countryside was presented as romantically gothic or neatly tamed, even bucolic with the addition of cattle or a farmer at work, as seen in the work of John Glover, Louis Buvelot and Eugene von Guérard. In some there would also be quaint representations of a bark hut or black figure belonging to the peaceful ‘children of nature’. Given the violence of what was happening to Aboriginal people at the time and the British impression that the new colony was a nasty, brutish place full of convicts, these paintings can be seen as an attempt to portray Australia as peaceful, beautiful and civilized. Things began to change in the 1880s and 1890s, by which time a majority of colonists had been born in Australia.

Evidence is also mounting that the coming of humanity had an extraordinarily profound effect on Australian flora. First indirectly and then, in the face of calamity, purposefully. Core samples from around Australia, but particularly in the east, seem to indicate that the now dominant eucalypts were surprisingly rare prior to around 60,000 years ago. These cores also sometimes show high concentrations of carbon – ash – at the point at which the gums began their ascendancy. Could this be another climate-driven coincidence? Again, some researchers think not.

A powerful, and frightening scenario may well have followed the local demise of the large grazers. With very little to eat it the forest undergrowth and plains brush would have proliferated, in wet times an impenetrable green morass, in the dry a huge store of kindling. Forest fires are natural, lightening-ignited phenomena on every continent, and especially common in hot, dry Australia. Massive build-ups of combustible fuel would have resulted in equally massive, and quite catastrophic forest and bushfires, deadly to the native flora and fauna, and humans alike.

In the face of this crisis the early peoples of Australia would have realized they had to keep the brush low artificially. They would have been forced to fight fire with fire, continuously lighting small scale blazes to prevent large scale conflagrations. Whatever the cause, the adoption of fire for more than just cooking, heating and protection was to have many and widespread consequences.

Most important for the pioneering Australians was the realization that fire could have multiple uses. Not only did it prevent large-scale, life-threatening bushfires, but it was also discovered that controlled blazes had a multiplicity of uses. They could be used for offence or defense against antagonistic neighbours, or to signal distant groups or relations. They could also be used to drive and herd game to favoured trapping areas, and burn-offs encouraged new growth with many of the succulent shoots favoured by many of the Aboriginals’ prey. It would also not have been lost on them how much more easily they could navigate, travel and hunt.

A more-or-less constant regime of small-scale bushfires had other less useful consequences. Crucially for the future development of Australian flora, it naturally favoured fire-resistant and fire-promoting species. Foremost amongst these are the eucalypts, the ubiquitous gum trees that once were minor players in the ecology of the continent, but are now almost all-pervading. Dry and wet rainforests have been driven back to relatively tiny refuges around Australia’s eastern periphery, while the great gum woodlands have marched on triumphantly.

The Catch-22 of the Aboriginal fire-regime may have helped to lock Australia yet further into another ecological cul-de-sac. The total number of animals a landmass can support, its faunal biomass, depends on a number of factors. Two of these Australia already had a paucity of: water and nutrients. The fire regime would have accelerated erosion, further depleting soil nutrient levels, and would also have significantly lowered the amount of water and nutrients locked up within the plants themselves. Most obviously of all, the potential number of animals is crucially constrained by the sheer biomass of plant material available for feed. With much of this being continually burned off, the amount of prey available to both humans and their competitors would have had a much reduced upper limit.

<p>There was a flip-side to post-war optimism. Although the Japanese had failed to establish a modern Asian Empire the ‘western’ world became convinced that either China or the Soviets might succeed, and many Australians believed that their beloved homeland would be firmly in the sights of any nation with such ambitions.</p><p>This fear of communism had two profound effects, which between them later engendered a counter consequence of equal, if not greater importance. Anti-communist hysteria goes a long way to explaining the firm grip that conservative governments were to have on Australian politics for a quarter of a century, with Labor Party members and supporters frequently suspected of being communist sympathizers and even spies. In 1950 Robert Menzies held a national referendum on whether the Communist Party should be banned outright and its members jailed. To the nation’s credit the result was a comfortable ‘no’. The other major effect of the national mood was an enthusiastic willingness to back up any Asian military efforts against the ‘red tide’ with practical support. The same year as the referendum saw Australian troops join those from the USA and their other allies in fighting the ‘commies’ in Korea. A little later, in the year of the Melbourne Olympics, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary and anti-communist fears in Australia were bolstered further by a stream of frightened refugees.</p><p>The conservative cauldron simmered on through the height of the Cold War in late 1950s and early 1960s, thus ensuring that Australia, unlike Britain, was ready to send troops in support of another Asian crusade, this time in Vietnam. The Australian commitment was never huge in military terms, committing some 8000 people, but Prime Minister Harold Holt’s famous statement, “all the way with LBJ”, neatly illustrates the depth of conservative political support. It was also an indication that Australia was shifting from British influence to follow an American lead. Although only a few troops made the journey, some of them were conscripts. This sat uneasily with much of the general public, and when conscripts started getting killed unease turned to anger.</p><p>The nation became embroiled, for the first time in decades, in serious discussions about the direction and fitness of the national government and its policies. Demonstrations against the war were organized and some marches became violent. Governments frequently clamped down hard, prompting further discussion and protests on the subject of civil liberties. Some people demonstrated simply to express their view that they had a right to demonstrate. A heady brew of general anti-establishment feeling began to ferment, particularly amongst the youth of the day, inspired by their cousins in Europe and the US who were discovering a new independence from their ‘elders and betters’.</p><p>Aboriginal people were also part of the protest movement and increasingly demanded change. In the early 1960s new legislation appeared in all states that largely removed the paternalistic and restrictive laws relating to Aboriginal people. The federal government enfranchised Aborigines of the Northern Territory (the only region under their control) and WA followed the federal lead. Previously citizenship had only been available to those who applied for it and was subject to certain conditions: in Western Australia that meant not keeping company with any Aboriginal people except the applicant’s immediate family for two years before applying and after being granted citizenship.</p>The granting of rights such as equal wages had to be fought for in some cases, even when the legislation existed, and this could be the catalyst for further activism. When the Gurindji people failed to obtain equal wages from the powerful Lord Vestey of Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory they walked off the land, led by stockman Vincent Lingiari, and decided to make a land rights claim for some of Vestey-owned land. As one of his people later said, “We were treated just like dogs. We were lucky to get paid the fifty quid a month we were due, and we lived in tin humpies you had to crawl in and out on your knees. There was no running water. The food was bad – just flour, tea, sugar and bits of beef like the head or feet of a bullock. The Vesteys were hard men. They didn’t care about blackfellas.” Just ten years earlier Lingiari and his Gurindji people would probably have been ignominiously, forcefully and quietly evicted, but this was 1966 and sections of society were prepared to listen and help. The ruling conservative Liberal-Country Party rejected the Aboriginals’ claim, wary of their own land-owning voters and perhaps of the effects a positive outcome might have on future mineral exploitation. The political wind was, however, changing. The Australian people had soon had enough of the conservatives and were ready for a new broom. In 1972 they finally elected the Labor Party back into power, and with it the charismatic and energetic Gough Whitlam.

On the far side of the world, European trading interest in Asia matured in the 15th and 16th centuries, and at last brought Europeans into contact with the only habitable continent they had not yet seen. By the end of the 16th century the published information on the new land was still negligible. Just a few charts that clearly rely more on guesswork than actual knowledge, and a small passage written in 1598 by one Cornelius Wytfliet that begins, “The Australis Terra is the most southern of lands, and is separated from New Guinea by a narrow strait.” The situation was, however, about to change. In 1601 the Dutch ship Duyfken encountered Cape York Peninsula, and in a nearly aborted voyage of discovery in 1606 the Spaniard Luis de Torres negotiated his way through the strait that now bears his name. That the certain knowledge of Torres Strait remained, for whatever reason, unavailable to the other sea-faring nations for over 150 years, had a profound effect on how the exploration of Australian shores proceeded.

This is to jump the gun, however, for we need to look at the first really important date of 1584. In that year the overbearing king of Spain, Phillip II, decided to punish the Dutch for their religious heresies by barring their ships to Lisbon, a port that had latterly come into his control. Hitherto the Dutch had done a roaring trade as the hauliers of Europe, picking up the goods the Portuguese brought back from the far east and transporting them all over western seaboard. Phillip, having failed to subjugate them with the sword, was now trying to cut their economic base from under them. The Dutch were nothing if not wilful, however, and instead they set about fetching the goods from the far east themselves. In 1597 the first fleet returned in triumph and in 1611 Hendrik Brouwer discovered that sailing due east from the Cape of Good Hope for 3000 miles, and then turning north, cut about two months off the Holland-Java journey time. Five years later Dirk Hartog, in the trading ship Eendracht, overshot the mark and found his namesake island off Shark Bay. This is the first time that we know for certain Europeans stepped onto Western Australian soil. He left an inscribed pewter dinner plate nailed to a post, thus setting something of a trend for plate souveniring among early explorers. A visible landmark really opened the route up, and soon the Dutch were establishing a fair picture of the west coast of what came to be called New Holland, wrecking many of their ships on it in the process, including the infamous Batavia.

The next sea captain to purposefully arrive at WA’s shores was William de Vlamingh of the Dutch East India Company, in 1697, who removed Hartog’s plate and nailed up his own. William Dampier had been the first Englishman on the continent in 1688, landing near Broome, and he visited the northwest again in 1699, naming Shark Bay for its abundance of sharks while exploring in the Roebuck. (Despite the name, the sharks in the bay have plenty to eat and a shark attack on humans has never been known in these waters).

In 1772 Francois de St Allouarn landed at Cape Inscription and, ignoring Vlamingh’s plate, claimed the land for France (though Cook had landed at Botany Bay two years earlier). More Frenchmen arrived in 1801 and again in 1803 on Baudin’s voyages of scientific discovery. The Geographe and Naturaliste spent 70 days exploring Shark Bay and named most of its geographical features. Captain Hamelin of the Naturaliste found time to re-erect Vlamingh’s plate, which had slipped into the sand, and added one of his own.

All of these explorers were unimpressed with what seemed to be barren land and had trouble finding freshwater. Their negative reports meant that European settlers stayed away. Of course to the local Aboriginal people the west coast was a cornucopia of seafood and they harvested shellfish, turtles, and dugongs as well as the land mammals.

Two of the pewter dinner plates finally found resting places well away from the harsh sun of Shark Bay. Hartog’s plate of 1616 lives in the Rikjsmuseum of Amsterdam and Vlamingh’s plate of 1697 now belongs to the Maritime Museum in Fremantle. The French government returned it to Australia in 1947. The youngest plate, Hamelin’s of 1801, has never been found.

In 1890 Western Australia finally became self-governing, and as if in celebration (and strangely echoing events in Victoria 40 years before) gold was found near to the modern site of Coolgardie. Other states were experiencing economic chaos, but thanks to the Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie-Boulder gold finds Western Australia finally made the big leap forward in the 1890s that it had witnessed the other colonies make in the 1850s and 1860s. Within months tens of thousands of people had made their way over from the eastern states, from even as far as Britain, China and the United States. One of those from the US was a young Herbert Hoover. They camped in canvas cities, all desperately seeking the big find that would make them their fortune. The gold was there in prodigious quantities, and many did indeed become rich. Many more, however, died of disease or accident and a stroll around the cemetery at Coolgardie is a sobering experience – only a handful of the hundreds interred between 1890 and 1920 were over 35.

As well as experiencing gold fever in the 1890s, WA politicians kept a wary eye on the debate over whether Australia should federate or not. Up to about 1890 the six Australian colonies and New Zealand had jealously guarded their independence from each other. Proud of their differences they each operated their own institutions, governments, services and military forces, united only by currency, the environment and a shared heritage. Their military forces were scant, however, and the colonies still relied heavily on the navy of the British Empire for defence. During the late 1800s other nations such as France, Germany, Japan and Russia were becoming powerful, challenging the Empire for hegemony over maritime and continental trade routes. In Australia there were very real fears that some of these powers might have designs on Australian territory, and in the late 1880s Britain pointed out that the colonies’ military forces were hugely inadequate and would be far more effective if united under a single command structure.

In 1889 the Prime Minister of New South Wales made a bold step. He suggested that the proposed federation of armed forces be given far greater scope, that it should be widened to a political federation of the colonies. The Commonwealth officially came into existence on 1 January 1901 and it effectively ushered in nationhood. Colonies became states, and the relationship with the ‘mother country’ became more complex. On the one hand ties had never been stronger. Many who held high office were British born, Britain was still Australia’s biggest market for most of its exports, and British rather than Australian history was still considered more important in schools. On the other hand a British visitor to the new nation had to be careful not to offend local sensibilities. He or she would perhaps be called a ‘pommy’ (suspected to be a cockney derivative of ‘immigrant’ from ‘pomegranate’) instead of the warmer ‘new chum’ that had been in vogue since the eastern goldrushes of the 1850s. They would also have noticed signs encouraging people to ‘buy Australian’ and shun imported goods from the Empire and elsewhere. That they could be encouraged so was a sign of Australia’s growing self-sufficiency and a surge of confidence.

Federation also ushered in a raft of legislation that smoothed out policy across the nation. Paramount amongst these was that which gave women the vote in 1902. Another was the formal introduction of a ‘White Australia’ policy which, although in line with many nations of the day, seems shocking now and also jars given that the island continent was so manifestly ‘Non-White Australia’ just 125 years before. Immigration restarted in earnest in the mid-1900s, an integral part of the process being a dictation test in the European language of the immigration official’s choice! In the northern regions of Australia where the colonial frontier was still advancing, Aboriginal people were increasingly devastated by violence, disease, starvation and exploitation. The colonial governments had begun to worry that they were witnessing the destruction of Aboriginal people and introduced a raft of legislation to ‘protect’ them by confining them to certain areas away from Europeans. Additional legislation meant that Aboriginal people could be forced to move to a reserve, were denied citizenship and the vote, and were prohibited sexual relations with ‘Europeans’.

Between 1890 and 1910 a lot of the remaining land in WA that could be useful to the colonists was utilized, in the south for wheat and wool, in the north for cattle. Pearl shell began to be harvested in massive quantities off the northern coast and a string of small ports was established both for the lugger fleets and to ship cattle. By 1912 WA’s population had increased sharply to over 300,000 ‘whites’ plus an uncounted and declining number of Aboriginal people no longer seen as significant.

The early pioneers into each part of the continent would have had a relatively easy time of it, but once the honeymoon was over the challenges that faced the first Australians were immense. The extinction of the large herbivores and the bushfire crisis were huge blows to an already very specialized, and hence vulnerable ecology. Without human intervention, massive bushfires could have decreased the viability of many other animal species. As it was, the introduction of the fire regime seems to have stabilized the situation and prevented further degradation of the environment. It was a fix, but a fix that stood the test of time.

As well as coping with a damaged environment and a much reduced quantity of game, most Aboriginal peoples faced challenges rarely faced by humanity. Paramount amongst these was the scarcity and unpredictably of water supply, and the consequent boom-and-bust fluctuations of many of the species of animals hunted for food. Almost against logic this actually seems to have resulted in a better standard of diet than that experienced by many peoples in more stable environments.

That they did so has two chief causes. The relative scarcity of food resulted in the early Australians becoming experts in everything that could possibly have nutritional value, from plant roots to roos, and moths to mussels. In most parts of the continent people could draw on a variety of in-season fruits and animals, more than sufficient to sustain them. In the process they also discovered an extensive natural medicine chest that helped keep them healthy. That this natural larder was not over-stretched is paradoxically because of the boom-and-bust ecology. In many environments the really bad times are rare. Humans, though slow breeders, can build populations that make the most of relatively long periods of prosperity. The ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) driven Australian climate dictated the reverse pattern, with Aboriginal populations kept at the low levels possible in the periods of drought. In times of plenty there was more than enough to go around.

This pegging of population and resultant ‘abundance’ of food is perhaps one of the reasons why farming was rarely employed by Aboriginal peoples, even though the seeds of agriculture were probably in their cultural baggage. ENSO also makes farming extremely difficult, with attempts at planting crops frequently foiled by drought conditions, but one of the key factors that mitigated against Aboriginal agriculture was the lack of suitable species. It is now becoming accepted that under the experimental conditions of our early ancestors only a handful of plants and animals would have had exactly the right characteristics for domestication. In Australia all the large herbivores that may have been suitable quickly disappeared and to this day only one indigenous crop has been cultivated to any extent by Europeans: the macadamia nut. The unrelated factors of no domesticated animals and continental isolation were to later combine to make the Aboriginals horrifically susceptible to European diseases.

As is now widely appreciated, it is agriculture that has eventually provided any human culture with the excess labour required to build the urban trappings of civilization. Leading a nomadic or semi nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle with little incentive or opportunity for farming, the Australian peoples rarely created permanent settlements. Over most of the continent not even clothes, let alone buildings were required for warmth. Buildings were also unnecessary for either safety, keeping animals or the storage of foodstuffs. Only in the colder south were some of these trappings adopted. Here some peoples sewed together blankets and clothes from skins and embarked on intensive aquaculture, building sophisticated canals and traps to catch fish and eels.

With strong parallels with the peoples in North America, the Aboriginal peoples came to place a great value on their relationship with the land. Disturbances to their environment, or deviation from the fire regime (sometimes called ‘fire-stick farming’), were recognized as threats to survival, and this relationship came to be regarded as a sacred stewardship. Nomadic peoples rarely develop the concept of land ownership, but the peoples of Australia did maintain strict ‘territories’, each carefully tended and managed by its resident people. Embarking on a journey through another people’s land involved careful negotiation, but even so this was not a rare event.

In environments as difficult as most that Australia has to offer, isolation can be lethal. Regional contact was maintained through constant trading, mostly for ochre or precious materials used in the making of jewellery. These were mined in a large number of sites across Australia. There were also great regional meetings, social corroborees that usually coincided with an abundant, seasonal food source. Over tens of thousands of years this helped maintain a remarkable consistency of culture across such a vast area.

Given such a prodigious tenure it is hardly surprising that a folk memory of their ancestors’ coming to Australia has been lost. Aboriginal history is passed from generation to generation in the form of oral stories, part of the all-pervasive culture of ‘dreaming’ that also encompasses law, religion, customs and knowledge. These stories talk of a period when powerful ancestors, both human and animal, strode the land, creating natural features, plants, animals and peoples alike. Parts of the dreaming were also immortalized, and illustrated to younger generations through songs and dances, rock art and carvings. It is probable that Australia now has the oldest such art on the planet.

Aboriginal culture is the longest uninterrupted culture the modern world has witnessed. Over tens of thousands of years the first peoples of Australia developed unique strategies to ensure their survival in the face of some of the world’s most difficult environments. They built a rich cultural heritage, a phenomenal knowledge of their land and its natural resources, prodigious internal trade routes, a carefully managed environment, and a stable population in harmony with that environment rather than stressing it.

Prime Minister Ben Chifley’s Australia of the late 1940s was a careful nation. Although beaten by the bomb, it was felt that Japan still had considerable potential for aggression and Australia played a leading role in garrisoning the defeated country and prosecuting its war leaders. There was a deep feeling that peace could not last. Russia and China were deemed the major new threats and it was universally felt that a large population would be the best disincentive to invasion, and defence against any such attempt.

The old ‘White Australia’ policy was energized once more. Chifley’s chief minister for immigration, Arthur Calwell, instigated and pursued the most vigorous such programme Australia has ever seen. The nation must ‘populate or perish’. It was originally thought that the Brits, still seen as the best ‘stock’, could make up 90% of the numbers but this proved over-ambitious – they eventually made up around a quarter of the immigrants of the period, and some of those were unwittingly expatriated orphans. Calwell had to relax his criteria and was soon fishing in the vast refugee camp that central and southern Europe had become. The net would be thrown no wider: those of African or Asian origin were definitely not welcome.

Non-British immigrants had to put up with a fair amount of social antagonism. ‘Refos’ (refugees), ‘DPs’ (displaced persons) and ‘dagos’ were taunts frequently slung at the newcomers. The few non-European immigrants and descendants of the earlier Chinese gold-miners fared much worse, suffering at times outright racial vilification. The non-British were, however, to form the foundation of a vibrant and successful urban multi-cultural society.

In 1949 the giant of 20th-century Australian politics, Robert Menzies, strode back into the limelight, leading his new national Liberal party to election victory. A staunch monarchist, he welcomed Queen Elizabeth II to Australia in 1954, the first reigning monarch to make the trip. In 1962 she came to Perth to open the Commonwealth Games which the city was proudly hosting. The games were a huge success, televised all over the world, and proved a showcase for WA.

Post-war migration helped swell the population of WA to over 700,000 by 1960. The wheat-belt became vast, producing huge quantities of grain for export and an even more valuable amount of wool. Gold production stuttered occasionally but reached its peak in 1961, and the Kimberley and Pilbara cattle runs matured and prospered. Pastoralism struggled with water shortages, disease, cyclones and isolation but remained the major industry in the north until the 1960s. Then minerals other than gold, but almost as valuable, began turning up in the north. Amongst them nickel, iron-ore, bauxite and oil were found in massive quantities, and today they have been joined by the discovery of almost indecent numbers of premium grade diamonds in the eastern Kimberley. The government lifted an embargo on the export of iron ore in 1960 and scientists confirmed that the Pilbara contained massive quantities of high grade ore. Mining companies quickly established new mines, ports, railways and towns to exploit these resources. Dampier, Karratha, Wickham and the inland mining towns of Newman, Tom Price and Paraburdoo were all developed during the 1960-1970s. The Pilbara is now responsible for 40% of Australia’s mineral exports, and the Kimberley for 30% of the world’s diamonds.

The impact on the culture and environment that existed prior to 1829 cannot be understated. Entire peoples had vanished over much of this sub-continent. Huge tracts of land were cleared of native vegetation to make way for wheat and wool, and much of this has resulted in a rising water table, bringing with it enough salt to ruin huge areas of land for anything, let alone agriculture. Species loss amongst both plant and animal life, particularly in the southwest, will never be accurately known but was certainly substantial. Immediate prosperity also had a radical impact on WA’s colonial cultural heritage when much of historic central Perth was bulldozed in the 1960-1970s to make way for modern office blocks.

The life of the remaining Aboriginal people also changed greatly during this period. Since the 1860s many Aboriginal people had lived and worked on pastoral stations, maintaining links with their traditional lands. However pastoralists’ exploitation of Aboriginal workers led to resentment and in 1946 Aboriginal pastoral station workers went on strike for equal wages and conditions. They finally got them in 1968 but this meant that station owners simply couldn’t or wouldn’t employ as many workers. The result was an urban Aboriginal population who had little contact with their own country and the further breakdown of their culture and identity.

Meganesia, the then-joined landmass of Australia and New Guinea, was undoubtedly the first landmass to be reached by humans using boats. From their evolution in Africa Homo erectus, and then Homo sapiens walked into Asia but the latter’s expansion from these strongholds to the ‘new worlds’ was barred by either water or ice for hundreds of thousands of years. It is true that parts of New Guinea and northwest Australia are tantalizingly close to the islands of south east Asia, but even during the severest of ice ages there have always been deep channels between them: it has never been possible to walk from Asia to Meganesia.

The Aboriginal ancestors’ certain passage by boat is one of three relatively new pieces of key information that have jarred the traditional picture of Aboriginal history. The second is when this happened. There are no dates, not even any folk memories of the first coming of humanity to Meganesia, and that’s probably because the time of first migration has been pushed back by slowly accumulating evidence to over 45,000 and possibly as much as 60,000 years ago. Finally it is also now certain that Australian Aboriginals and the original New Guineans are one and the same people, separated by just a few thousand years of cultural divergence, and New Guineans were amongst the earliest and most intensive farmers on the planet.

There is little doubt that the peoples who finally crossed from Asia to Meganesia around 55,000 years ago carried with them one of the most, if not the most, technologically advanced cultures of the time. That they already had a grasp of the potential of agriculture seems likely, as some of those that settled in the northern highlands, later to become isolated as island New Guinea, had developed intensive farming systems by as much as 10,000 years ago. Population expansion amongst the early settlers in the new fertile New Guinean lands would have been exponential, and it cannot have been long before groups were heading south in search of new land. It is quite possible that people had reached the very southern tip of WA within a thousand years of their ancestors reaching the northern coasts.

The early Aborigines carried with them a notable firepower. Stone, bone and wooden weapons honed to perfection during the many generations of island-hopping from Asia. These hunter-gatherers had encountered, for the first time in human history, lands where they were the undisputed top predator. One of their new weapons would have been psychological, a new feeling of unbridled power, a sense of their own dominance. The Australian animals they met would have been woefully ill-prepared for such an encounter.

The few, relatively small mammalian predators could not hope to compete with such a powerful new force, either in direct confrontation or for prey as the human population increased. As for the giant reptiles, the awesome Megalania (imagine a Komodo Dragon weighing in at about a tonne) and the giant snake Wonambi (6 m long with a head the size of a serving tray) were ambush predators, strictly territorial. They would have been a serious hazard to the lone hunter, but in the face of collective competition were as doomed as their mammalian counterparts. The only large Australian predator to survive to the present day is the saltwater crocodile, the feared ‘saltie’, probably protected by its primarily aquatic habitat. As for the herbivores, the now-vanished giants of the vast Australian plains, there can surely be little doubt that the coming of humanity was the decisive factor in the extinction of so many.

Following strong urging from some of the few thriving Perth businessmen, who appreciated the possibilities cheap labour would present, the colony accepted its first consignment of convicts in 1850 and 10,000 more over the next 18 years. The convicts were considered a most unsavoury addition by many of the settlers, but undoubtedly did help to open up parts of the immense colony at a time when many were to tempted to abandon it in favour of the new eastern goldfields around Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria. The southwest saw renewed energies with the coming of the convicts, but it was the coastal region between Perth and Shark Bay that was first largely exploited using convict labour. The land known as Greenough Flats proved reasonably fertile, and soon much of this whole stretch of land was being claimed by pastoralists at the expense of the local Aboriginal people. Small ports developed at places like Denison, Geraldton and Gregory, though most swiftly fell into disservice thanks to their relatively poor situations. Mineral prospectors accompanied the pastoralists, and some significant discoveries were made, such as those around Northampton, though gold – the holy grail – eluded them. Later in the 1850s bay islands in the Gascoyne region were mined for guano and the potential of local pearl shell realized. Many pearling settlements sprang up in the north, such as Cossack and Broome, during the 1870s to 1890s. The industry brought many Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese and Malay people and Aboriginal people also worked as pearl divers, although there are reports that some were kidnapped and forced to dive. The pearls were over exploited, however, and the industry crashed during the depression of the 1930s.

The state government encouraged pastoralists to take up land further and further north in the Pilbara and Kimberley regions during the late 1850s and 60s. Most of the land in the more fertile and temperate regions of the south had been claimed and the government knew that the success of the colony depended on further expansion. Surveryor Francis Gregory was sent to explore the Pilbara region in 1861 and established a base camp at Nickol Bay, near the modern town of Karratha. He believed conditions in the Pilbara were suitable for pastoralists and made enthusiastic reports to the government who quickly offered generous leasing terms. The first pastoralist, Walter Padbury, arrived in 1863 and settled on the De Grey River just north of Port Hedland. The Withnell family arrived the following year at the Tien Tsin harbour (later known as Cossack) and settled by a freshwater pool in the Harding River. A settlement grew around their home and became the first town of the northwest in 1866, when it was named Roebourne after the state Surveyor-General, John Septimus Roe. All over the state pastoralists and settlers found conditions tough, however, and supplemented their income by fishing and harvesting native timber. The pastoral industry struggled, particularly in the north, until an artesian basin was discovered in 1900, ensuring a reliable supply of water for stock.

Of course all of this new land for sheep and wheat was far from empty. Aboriginal people are thought to have continuously inhabited Western Australia for the last 20,000 years at least, and as the British settlers moved in to new areas their traditional way of life came under unrelenting pressure. Even in the more remote areas waterholes were ruined by stock, sacred sites destroyed and native animals depleted. Violent conflict persisted and many more Aboriginal people were killed in battle or massacred by terrified European settlers, determined to protect themselves and what they perceived to be their legal property. European diseases also continued to devastate many groups and others moved away from their inland country to the new coastal settlements; the combination of a massively disrupted society and the lure of European goods contributing to the decision (or necessity) to move off their land.

The white population of WA slowly climbed, and as did it so the colony began to prosper, thanks largely to thriving wool and timber industries, and by 1892 there were around 50,000 non-indigenous West Australians thinly spread over the enormous colony. Despite the low population, agricultural progress was matched by important social advances. In 1861 about one in four European Australians were illiterate, a figure reduced to one in 40 by 1892. The unions forced a shorter working day, then a shorter working week, opening up Saturday afternoons for sport and leisure. The outdoor climate, large accessible spaces, and large urban populations contrived to ensure that sport itself became almost a religion, and those competing successfully at international level were the new gods. By 1900 Australians were avid followers of home-grown boxers, skullers, horses, cricketers, athletes and footballers. With the rise in sport came a rise in gambling, a habit Australia has never lost. At the same time there was a growing appreciation of indigenous flora and fauna. Bushwalking societies formed and there were moves to declare reserves around outstandingly beautiful natural landmarks. These forerunners of the National Parks began to be established in the 1870s and 1880s.

Societies very much at odds with the natural environment were also formed. A nostalgia for ‘home’ led groups of misguided amateur naturalists to import countless species of plants and animals in the hope that the alien landscape of Australia could be transformed into one huge English garden. Other animals were brought over as pets or for stock, and these too often escaped into the wild. Foxes were introduced, for example, so that people could participate in an authentic hunt. Today dozens of these species have gone feral, each one disturbing the native ecology to a greater or lesser degree.

That much of this progress was at the expense of the traumatized indigenous peoples and the environment they had so carefully managed went largely unnoticed and unremarked. Their cultures were almost fatally fractured and reservoirs of knowledge were disappearing fast. They were rarely actively hunted down any more, though cold-blooded massacres allegedly occurred well into the 1900s, but a decline in aggression did not mean an increase in acceptance. That they would themselves soon disappear entirely still seemed entirely likely to the white population, so there was little need to include them in the colony’s future.

European designs on Australia only became serious after Captain James Cook was sent by the English government to observe a transit of Venus in Tahiti in 1770. By now the English were very much caught up in the European exploratory spirit and he was instructed, while in the area, to check out New Zealand and, if possible, chart the hitherto unexplored eastern coast of New Holland. In all this he was completely successful, spending six months charting New Zealand and then sailing west as planned. This east coast was sufficiently far from the western coasts that it was entirely possible the two were actually unconnected, and he named the ‘new’ territory New South Wales. He must have seen the Australian environment at its best and gave glowing descriptions of it in his reports to his government. His positive, though fateful and misinformed opinions were summarized in The Voyages of Captain Cook:

“The industry of man has had nothing to do with any part of it, and yet we find all such things as nature hath bestowed upon it in a flourishing state. In this extensive country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of grain, fruit, roots, etc, of every kind, would flourish were they brought hither, planted and cultivated by the hands of industry; and here is provender for more cattle, at all seasons of the year, than can ever be brought into the country.”

Two of the most different cultures imaginable were now on an inevitable collision course. No sooner had the British Empire nonchalantly claimed a large new territory than it was ignominiously turfed out of an old one. In 1782 the American colonies successfully gained independence by prosecuting a war against the empire, carving a new future for themselves and creating all sorts of problems for the aghast British government. Not least amongst these issues was what to do with tens of thousands of convicts, who continued to be sentenced to ‘transportation’, now that the traditional dumping ground was off limits. The other colonies swiftly declined to accept them, and the practice of dropping them off in West Africa was given up on the grounds that this simply meant a nastier death for the transportees than they could have otherwise enjoyed at the end of a noose back home.

Sir Joseph Banks, Cook’s wealthy and influential botanist on the Endeavour, had suggested New South Wales as early as 1779, but it wasn’t until 1786 that Prime Minister William Pitt agreed to the suggestion, then formally put forward by Lord Sydney, the minister responsible for felons. The following year Arthur Phillip’s ‘first fleet’ set out for Botany Bay, less a grand colonial voyage than a handy solution to a pressing problem.

Some forty years later the British, partly scouting for a penal settlement for re-offenders and partly to counter perceived French ambitions, finally made a small encampment in the western half of the continent, at King William Sound (now Albany) in 1826. In 1828 they dispatched a warship to the Swan River to formally claim western New Holland as a colonial territory, and Captain James Stirling, after much persistent lobbying and government vacillation, was finally sent to found the Swan River Colony in 1829.

As is not unusual in the history of the British invasions of Australia, Stirling discounted the local Aboriginal peoples, offering no treaty and ignoring them entirely in his planning. It took decades for Europeans to even begin to understand the Aboriginals’ complex relationship with their land. It is ill understood even today. Most did not care and some, particularly the poor or emancipated, were happy that there were people on a rung lower than theirs. It was assumed that as the Aboriginals did not farm they had no concept or right of ownership; that since they were nomadic they could simply move out of the way; that as their technology was relatively simple so was their culture and indeed so were they as people. From the very beginning there were settlers who considered them sub-human, and right up to the 1960s many Aboriginals believed themselves, not unreasonably, regarded as ‘fauna’.

Today it is vigorously debated how much the early authorities were guided by the policy of terra nullius, the idea that Australia was an empty land, free for the taking. Terra nullius was a legal fiction based on the premise that land ownership was only proved by land cultivation. The colonial authorities did not think that Australia was empty, but that Aboriginal people had no legal claim upon it. At the time it seems likely that whatever angst was occurring in the minds of liberal societies and authorities in England or urban Australia, the reality on the crucial frontier was promoted by the pioneering settler, over which the authorities had little control. For many that reality was one of conflict. Terra nullius was immaterial, there was a future to secure and it was ‘either us or them’.

Disease did a lot of the damage, with thousands of Aboriginals undoubtedly dying of smallpox and flu, syphilis and typhoid. The Europeans’ long association with domestic animals had fermented a rich brew of the beasties and, like the native Americans before them, the native Australians had little defense. Sometimes, however, there were survivors, and some of these could not be persuaded to join a Christian mission or work as a farm hand or join the native police. Then some of the of the most intense confrontations took place. Some Aboriginals fought back, spearing settlers and attempting to drive them back from whence they had come. The response, both official and not, was often savage. There are known instances of whole groups being rounded up and shot wholesale as retribution for something as trivial as the death of a bullock. On the other hand some groups simply tried to maintain their existence, living off the land as their ancestors had done. Here less brutal tactics were sometimes employed by the Europeans, such as the poisoning of their waterholes.

By the late 1860s it was all over bar the shouting. Aboriginal peoples reached some of their lowest populations ever, driven almost entirely from the southwest and with only fragmented peoples clinging to existence on the fringes of European society over much of the rest of the state. Only deep in the northwest deserts and in the Kimberley did their traditional way of life persist relatively untarnished into the 20th century, in parts as late as the 1950s. When in the late 19th century Charles Darwin’s theories gained widespread notice, it was widely expected that Aboriginals would become extinct. Their perceived inferiority meant they could not survive in the face of a more ‘advanced’ people. It was simply a case of the ‘survival of the fittest’.

Captain Stirling also committed the usual Australian mistake of grossly exaggerating the excellence of the potential port facilities and the suitability of the local land for agriculture. Partly as a result of these misplaced notions, the early settlements of Fremantle and Perth got off to a very slow start, despite considerable private backing from English speculators. The finding of the relatively fertile Avon Valley in 1830 and the decisive crushing of Aboriginal opposition at the ‘battle’ of Pinjarra in 1834 did open doors for some settlers, leading to the establishment of a reasonable wool industry, but a generation later in 1850 the entire colony could still only boast a population of 5500 Europeans and the addition of just a couple of other industries including the cutting and export of local sandalwood to China.

Aboriginal people have lived in the southwest, a rich source of vegetation and wildlife, for many thousands of years and a lot of local landscape features are still known by the names given by Nyoongar people. The region was the first of any distance from Perth’s Swan River Colony to be prospected by pastoralists and woodsmen, the earliest in the 1830s. In the decades until the turn of the century settlements gradually developed and wool, timber and horses which were all exported from Koombana Bay.

The still very British people of WA rallied to the standard of the Empire during the First World War like almost no other former colony. The state provided nearly four times as many soldiers and auxiliary workers as its agreed share, and those that went suffered higher casualty rates than any other soldiers in the British Empire. It has been said that because of their extreme courage and resilience they were commonly used as front-line ‘shock troops’. Significant monuments in Kings Park, Perth, honour their sacrifice and there is also an avenue of gum trees there, each marked by a plaque commemorating one of the dead.

The Australian Imperial Force (AIF) were all either regular army or volunteers, but had still mustered 300,000 by the end of the First World War. They figured in many theatres of the war, the most celebrated of which has come to be known as Gallipoli. On 25 April 1915 the Anzacs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) constituted a large part of a force sent to win control of the banks of the Dardanelles, the narrow channel that connects the Aegean and Marmara seas. The expedition’s success would open the allies’ supply line through the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and so to Russia.

Though finally forced to retreat, the chief legacy of the campaign was profound for Australians. The Anzacs were seen to display a degree of bravery, mateship and humour not expected in such an untried force. In a seminal moment for the nation, its unbloodied and untested soldiers had faced the fire for the first time and not been found wanting. It is sometimes thought that these expressions of national character were forged on the beaches of Gallipoli, but it is truer to say that it is during the campaign that foreign journalists first saw and publicized these traits that had been slowly maturing for decades. Unseen by the rest of the world, and even by many urban Australians, Australian toughness, independence and cooperation had been won on the pastoral and mining frontiers over the previous century. Of the 300,000 Australians who went to war over 50,000 were killed, a greater number than was lost by America. Many of these were the bravest, most resourceful, most inspiring men of their time. Their loss was profoundly felt, eliciting a huge outpouring of national pride and grief, given substance by literally thousands of memorials erected all over the country.

After the war, returned servicemen and post-war immigrants from Britain and parts of western Europe had to be quickly and efficiently housed and found work. One obvious solution was to grant settlements of bush for clearing and cultivation. In WA’s southwest region the timber was largely gone by the end of the First World War and in one scheme the government decided to try to use the region for dairy farming. The Minister for Lands proposed the Group Settlement Scheme in 1921 and 3391 hungry migrants from post-war Britain arrived, keen to have their own piece of earth. Few realized how tough it would be and there are reports of tears when they saw the rough huts and dirt floors they had to live in. They cleared some land, built fences and houses and tried to make a go of it, but by 1924 a third of the ‘groupies’ had walked off their land with nothing. The depression finished off many of those who stayed on into the 1930s.

There was a significant expansion of the burgeoning ‘wheat-belt’ throughout the 1920s, though, with new machinery and technology enabling the clearing and farming of huge tracts of land with comparatively few workers. Cattle and sheep farming in the north also boomed with high prices commanded on the world’s markets. The good times were not set to last, however, as the global depression of the 1930s certainly did not spare WA. Up to a third of the state’s workforce was laid off during the decade, and considerable government assistance was required to stave off actual starvation. The only industry that benefited was Kalgoorlie’s gold-mining, which was able to hire labour very cheaply and increase production when every other industry saw output collapse.

The 1930s were also marked by increased misery for many Aboriginal people. Influenced by popular notions of eugenics and racial purity in Europe, Australian state governments thought that ‘full bloods’ would eventually die out and ‘half castes’ could be bred out. It was thought that if a woman of both Aboriginal and European descent took a European partner, and her children did the same, then the ‘Aboriginal blood’ would eventually become so diluted as to be invisible. It was also thought that if children of mixed descent with fairly pale skin could be taken from their Aboriginal mothers at an early age and raised within the white community it would give the child every material advantage and help ‘half-castes’ to be absorbed into the community. Thus in the Western Australian Aboriginal Act (1936) provisions relating to permission to marry and sexual relations between Aboriginal people and Europeans were strengthened. The state’s powers of guardianship were increasingly used to remove children of mixed descent from their mothers and rear them in missions, orphanages or foster homes. This process and some of its consequences are movingly and powerfully portrayed in the film Rabbit Proof Fence. In 1937 a conference of the state government Protectors decided ‘the destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that end.’ However, anthropologists working with Aboriginal people in the 1930s did begin to try to educate the rest of society about their culture, and various humanitarian groups and Aboriginal protest groups also began to agitate for a change in attitudes.

The advent of world war in 1939 again proved a huge draw to young men of WA, though this time Australia itself was to become geographically involved. Japanese bomber aircraft repeatedly attacked some of the northern towns during 1942-1943, including Broome, and there was widespread belief that an invasion was imminent. This sharp recognition of vulnerability had a deep impression on the Australian psyche and is an aspect of national psychology to this day. The Second World War also marked a reversal in the state’s financial fortunes. Wool and wheat prices climbed steadily, and continued to do so after 1945. Returning soldiers who moved onto the land in the late 1940s and 1950s had a much better time of it than their predecessors 30 years before.

The isolation, age, and position of Australia have had a tremendous impact on the flora and fauna that have evolved. Until Australia started heading north 40 million years ago, much of it lay within the Antarctic circle and had done so for hundreds of millions of years before that. The Antarctic was not glaciated at this warmer time, but was still very cold with average temperatures of no more than 10°C, and a long dark polar winter. Thus, although animals and plants could in theory migrate from South America to Australia and vice-versa until about 70 million years ago, any such migration would have been extremely slow compared to movements on other landmasses. Hence for many types of plants and animals the effective isolation has been far longer than is immediately apparent.

There have been three particularly decisive factors in the subsequent history of life on the landmass. The first is the relative degradation and leaching of the soils compared with all the other continents. Nutrient rich soils are formed through three primary agents: mountain-building, volcanic activity and glaciation. Western Australia particularly has seen very little of these for hundreds of millions of years. At the same time the constant weathering and extraction of nutrients by plants and animals has steadily leached nutrients from the soils. In short, there is little goodness to go around.

The second major effect on the evolution of Australian life is the long-term climatic stability of the continent. The world has gradually cooled over the last 40 million years. On most continents this has resulted in successive waves of appropriately evolved creatures and plants. Australia, however, has been drifting north toward the equator, more-or-less counterbalancing the cooling. Just one of the results of these first two factors is the diversity of flora in the south of Western Australia. The paucity of nutrients encourages intense specialization, for example some plants settle for more saline soils, others for sandier soils. The long-term climate stability has allowed evolution to experiment to an astounding degree, creating thousands of different species. It may be counter-intuitive to anyone who visits the area, but there is as much diversity of life in south-western Australia as almost anywhere in the world.

The third major factor is the type of climate the continent experiences. First and foremost it is dry. Even with the monsoonal rains of the far north this is still the world’s driest landmass after Antarctica, and has been for millions of years. During the recent ice-ages it became dryer still, most of the interior becoming one vast dune-covered desert. To make matters worse the short-term climate dances only weakly to a seasonal tune, and is crucially affected by one of the world’s most powerful weather phenomena, ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation). This delivers rain and drought to the continent in unpredictable cycles of two to eight years, though the effects are weaker in the west than the east.

Both plants and animals have had to develop unique strategies to cope with this terrible combination of low nutrient levels and sparse, unpredictable rainfall. Paleontologists have found evidence for both placental and marsupial mammals on the early island continent, and indeed a few placental rats and mice have survived down to the present day, but it is tempting to suspect that Australia’s unique harsh conditions actually favoured the marsupial way of life. Kangaroos and wallabies have a fascinating approach to procreation. As soon as she has given birth a mother will conceive, but the embryo is not necessarily immediately developed. If drought conditions are in play it will be held in a sort of suspended animation until rains come, and only then will it be born and make its way to the pouch.

When it comes to vertebrate creatures Australian conditions actually seem to have favoured reptiles rather than mammals. This is hardly surprising as reptiles live on around 20% of the food required by mammals of a similar size, and can go without food and water for considerable periods when they have to.

If we could have taken a 4WD trip around Western Australia 60,000 years we would have witnessed a fascinating biota. It is thought that dry rainforests were much more in evidence, covering large areas of the sub-continent, but with undergrowth, and hence the fire risk, kept low by huge herds of herbivores. Some of these were species of kangaroos, but the larger ones were of the now extinct Zygomaturus and Diprotodon families which weighed up to 2 tonnes and were very distant relatives of the wombats. Larger wombats there were too, pig-sized creatures that dug the largest burrows the world has ever witnessed, as well as titanic tortoises and behemoth birds. Very few attained anywhere near the size of their ecological counterparts on other continents, though the sight of them would still have been impressive.

Mammalian carnivores have long found the Australian conditions difficult, with prey species following boom-and-bust population cycles, but some evolved, mostly from vegetarian ancestors. Most impressive was the ‘marsupial lion’, Thylacoleo, while one of the most extraordinary in terms of evolutionary convergence was the Thylacine, commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger, which survived on that island until at least the 1930s. However, these would probably have fled at the sight of the average human tourist, and certainly at the approach of the real top dog in the Australian hierarchy. That was Megalania prisca, an awesome relative of the Komodo dragon that could reach 7 m in length and a tonne in weight. It was probably an ambush predator like its cousin, capable of taking practically anything it wanted, and would have made getting out of our 4WD for a stroll a far more hazardous experience than it is today.

There are bits of Western Australia that are staggeringly old. There have been rocks found in the south that date back over four billion years. In fact most of that corner of the continent is made up of something called the Yilgarn Block, a vast chunk of bedrock over two billion years old, and much of Western Australia is nearly as ancient. The coastal areas are younger, and a couple of the deserts are composed of more recent sedimentary rocks, but much of the state is a billion years old or more. The biggest mass of young rock is the great limestone block that we loosely call the Nullarbor. Much of the western coastal areas are also relatively young, formed while India was pulling away from Western Australia, a process that was complete by about 160 million years ago. As well as being old, the region has also been incredibly stable, with no appreciable seismic activity for hundreds of millions of years.

This ancient provenance goes a long way to explaining why Western Australia, compared with other landmasses, and even the east coast, is so flat. Hundreds of millions of years of weathering have steadily taken their toll, relentlessly grinding down mountain ranges and flattening out the plains. This isn’t quite the whole story, however. Australia was once part of the super-continent Gondwana, a huge landmass that broke up between 270 and 40 million years ago to become South America, Antarctica, Africa, India, and the Middle East, as well as the Australasian islands. All this pulling and pushing helped create great vertical movement as well as horizontal. Several eastern and southern parts of the continent sank, creating huge depressions that were periodically inundated. One of these, the Eucla Basin, filled with a sediment that has become the Nullarbor limestone.

A visit to the southwest of Western Australia will reveal one of the richest plant communities in the world with an immense variety of plants growing within a wide range of habitats. The southwest botanical province is approximately bordered by a line drawn between Shark Bay and Cape Arid and it is within this region that well in excess of 8000 native plant species are found, many of them growing nowhere else on earth.

The area enjoys a Mediterranean type climate with winter rainfall and warm dry summers. North of Perth the rainfall gradually decreases and summer temperatures are quite high while the southwest corner to the south of Perth has quite a high rainfall and this is reflected in the vegetation.

The term wildflower is often misunderstood and only applied to members of the everlasting or paper daisy family. These are small annuals with papery petals which have an extremely long life when picked and dried, they come in reds, pinks, white and yellow and flower in spring. But wildflower is more widely accepted as the floral display of any native plant, shrub or tree and the range in colour, shape and size of these is enormous and fascinating. A word of warning: it is an offence in WA to pick wildflowers from any roadside, reserve, national park or other public land, so photograph and enjoy but leave them for others to see.

When planning a trip to view the wildflowers remember the species north of Perth flower first, with peak flowering being August and September; while to the south of Perth September and October is the best time to visit. Having made this comment it is also true to say that whenever or wherever you go in Western Australia there will be some wildflowers in bloom and often spectacular displays occur at the most unexpected times.

Some striking flowers to the north include the Banksias, more than 70 species of which exist and most of them are endemic. They vary from small prostrate plants to tall trees and the large bottle brush shaped flowers may be red, orange or yellow. The flower spikes on some banksia species grow to 12 cm in diameter and 30 cm long. Feather flowers with their brilliant rich colours and soft feathery petals are greatly admired and are among the most beautiful of flowers and are usually small to medium shrubs. The northern inland areas are where the best displays of paper aisies or everlastings are to be found, after a good season they flower profusely and it is common to see hundreds of hectares of them forming solid blocks of colour along the roadsides, a truly captivating spectacle. This is also the habitat of the rare and unusual wreath lechenaultia; this little prostrate plant spreads out evenly from its centre to a diameter of 40 cm or so and the red and yellow flowers form only at the ends of the branchlets. Seeing these beautiful little wreaths growing on the bare red soil at the roadside is a sight you will always remember. The kangaroo paw is another strange-looking plant, long stems emerge from a clump of long green leaves and the flowers at the top of the stems may be green, yellow or red. A red and green flowering kangaroo paw is the Western Australian floral emblem and is the most attractive of the species. The West Australian christmas tree is a sturdy single trunk tree and grows to about 8 m, it is unusual in being a partial parasite, some of its nutrient is obtained by its roots tapping into those of nearby plants and drawing off what it needs. In December masses of large brilliant orange yellow flowers appear and the trees are then a magnificent sight.

South of Perth the karri forests are amongst the most beautiful on earth, the tall straight trees with their patchy pale orange to white bark grow to almost 90 m with very few side branches till the crown is reached. They are a significant timber species which yield longer lengths of hardwood than any other hardwood species. The jarrah forests are also found in this area, another very important timber tree producing an even more durable timber than the karri. They do not grow as tall and straight as the karri and the bark is dark grey and fibrous and held in longitudinal strips. As a change from looking up at the colossal trees try finding some of the tiny orchids on the forest floor, many of them only a few centimetres tall. Over 300 species in all shapes and colours imaginable occur in the southwest. In one of the more bizarre forms the flower imitates the shape of a species of female wasp, the real wasp is fooled and attempts to mate with them so ensuring that pollen is distributed from flower to flower. While at ground level check out the tiny sun dews which trap insects within their dewy tentacles and then digest them for additional nutrient; and around Albany way the pitcher plant which traps insects within special pitcher-shaped leaves and metes out a similar fate to its prey. Adding a wealth of blue to the understorey, blue lechenaultia is a small shrub which displays clusters of sky-blue flowers in spring time. An unusual plant is the grass tree or balga (sometimes still referred to as Blackboys), which have a dense fibrous stem of about 30 cm in diameter and up to 3 m long, often branched. From a dense crown of thin green metre-long leaves the white flowers are carried on a stout spike above the foliage. A skirt effect is achieved by the old dry leaves hanging down from the crown. Mention must be made of the wattles or acacia plants with their masses of beautiful yellow flowers in spring. More than 800 species of them occur in Western Australia varying from small prostrate shrubs to fairly tall trees. Some wattle species were once an important resource for the Aboriginal people, seeds were ground to make a type of flour, the sticky sap was gathered and chewed, bark strips were used for nets and bags and various implements were made from the very hard, dense wood.

Wildlife is inevitably very much a part of the Western Australian holiday experience. There is no doubt that Australia’s rich bio-diversity is among the most remarkable and specialist on the planet. Despite the destructive effects that humans have had on the Australian ecosystem for 40,000 years, in particular the last 200 years since the arrival of the Europeans, much of that unique ecology remains.

Provided you remain observant, cautious and have respect, your Australian wildlife experience can be an extremely positive and pleasant one. A visit to a couple of the many wildlife parks and zoos around the state will familiarize you with what exactly is out there, especially Perth Zoo and Aqwa in Perth and Broome Crocodile Park, but the best way of encountering WA’s wildlife is to get out into the bush. Try to camp in as many National Parks as you can and snorkel wherever the chance arises. This will inevitably result in many unexpected and truly memorable wild encounters. The Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) is an invaluable source of information and has offices in most major towns and cities (listed in the travelling text). Despite the almost unbearable temptation, do not feed any wild animals, since this merely makes them more dependent on humans and indirectly places them under greater threat.

The Olympics went to Sydney in 2000, and must be ranked as one of the greatest games ever. The Aboriginal athlete Kathy Freeman won gold in the women’s 400-m track sprint, sending the nation into a frenzy of joy. Following the reconciliation movement the victory seemed, to many, serendipitous. However, the huge optimism created by the successful staging of the Olympics seemed to fizzle out with the failure of the republic and the failure to achieve any meaningful reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Aboriginal people are still coming to terms with the effects of dispossession and the government policies that have affected their lives from 1788 until the present day. By almost every measure of social welfare they are less well off than non-indigenous Australians, for example, the life expectancy of an indigenous person is 17 years less than other Australians, and rectifying this inequality is the great challenge of the future for all Australians.

In the Federal election of November 2001 the Liberal-National government under John Howard was returned to power despite the unpopularity of the Goods and Services Tax introduced in 2000, and he was returned again in 2004, shortly thereafter becoming Australia’s second-longest serving Prime Minister. The first campaign was run amid the uncertainty caused by the terrorist attacks of September 11 and issues of border protection highlighted by the government’s handling of the Tampa crisis. Border protection and the detention of asylum seekers had become the hot issues and, as in much of the world, Australian political affairs have continued to be largely dominated by the international threat of terrorism and war rather than local issues. In October 2002 terrorism hit very close to home for Australians, and particularly Western Australians, when two nightclubs were bombed in Bali, killing around 200 people. The proportion of Western Australian holidaymakers killed was high, sending shockwaves through the state’s small population. Despite the world climate of fear, the 2004 Federal election was fought rather more on domestic issues with the economy seemingly uppermost in the minds of most voters. The WA government has also been stable – though for Labor not Liberal, and became more responsive to environmental issues. Logging of old-growth forests was stopped by the state government, as was the potential development of a controversial tourist complex near Coral Bay.

Indeed in 2007 the environment became of increasing importance to all Australians, and it was John Howard’s denial of climate change and refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol that played a part in his defeat in the federal election of November 2007. Australians felt it was time for a change and elected a Labor Government led by Kevin Rudd, who campaigned on promises to act on climate change, to bring troops home from Iraq and to promote reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Prime Minister Rudd’s first act in government was to sign the Kyoto Protocol in Bali and his second was to formally apologize to indigenous Australians during the first sitting of parliament in February 2008. Saying, “the time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians,” his words were generally considered to be healing and the apology was welcomed by the Aboriginal community.

The most significant development in Western Australia in recent years has been the incredible growth of the mining sector. Over the last ten years the state resources industry has grown by an average of 14 per cent each year. Sales of West Australian resources (iron ore, nickel, crude oil, condensate, natural gas, gold, alumina and base metals) were worth $70.9 billion in the 09-10 financial year. This is a 42% contribution to the nation’s exports. One liquefied natural gas deal with China will earn $1 billion a year for the next 25 years. Bringing the kind of prosperity last seen in WA in the 1980s, the WA economy is booming. Well-paid jobs in the mining sector are plentiful, and as many workers are employed on a fly-in (to the northern Pilbara region), fly-out basis, the riches are spread throughout the state.

It’s likely that all this money has helped the state take the initiative in water management. Traditionally Perth has relied on its underground aquifer and individual water consumption rates are a third higher here than in Sydney and Melbourne. However, declining rainfall and predictions such as that of environmentalist Tim Flannery, that Perth would become the world’s first ghost metropolis due to lack of water, have forced WA to face up to the issue of water. Australia’s first large scale desalination plant was opened in Kwinana, south of Perth, in April 2007 at a cost $387 million. It supplies 130 million litres of drinking water per day; about 17% of Perth’s water consumption. A second 45-gigalitre desalination plant is being built in the state’s south west, near Binningup, for completion by 2011. Water experts are also exploring new ways of providing water, including recharging the aquifer with treated waste water.

In 2010 the West Australian Liberal government found itself out of step with the federal Labor government policies. Premier Colin Barnett refused to sign up to a heath care reform agreement which makes the commonwealth responsible for 60 per cent of public hospital funding but in return the states and territories surrender about a third of their GST take to Canberra. He also wouldn’t agree to the terms of a mining tax suggested by Kevin Rudd, and modified by Julia Gillard. He continues to fight against WA’s diminishing share of GST revenue and promotes Western Australia’s ‘self-reliance’. As the state governments change over to Liberal (Victoria in late 2010 and NSW likely in 2011) Barnett’s strong position as leader of the nation’s most productive state will be further bolstered by his political allies.

Australian politics is of great importance to many Australians, a conversation topic on a par with the weather or sport. This is partly because of the sheer volume of government the country bears, partly because of the colourful characters and events Australian politics seems to throw up, and partly because everyone, by law, has to vote.

Australia’s head of the state is one and the same as the reigning monarch of England, a throwback to when that monarch was the head of the British Empire, which the historical Australian colonies were very much part of. The Queen’s principle representative in Australia, now usually Australian born, is the Governor-General, appointed by the Australian Prime Minister. His or her role is largely ceremonial though in theory they are invested with considerable powers. In 1975 the serving Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, demonstrated some of these by dismissing the government of Gough Whitlam during an unprecedented political crisis.

In practical terms the business of governing the whole country is undertaken by the Federal (‘Commonwealth’) Parliament based in Canberra. Its ‘lower’ House of Representatives is constituted by members directly elected from electorates with approximately equally sized populations. The electorates range in size from a small city suburb to that of Kalgoorlie which encompasses most of WA and is, in fact, the biggest electorate for any MP in the world. The ‘upper’ house, the Senate, is elected by a form of proportional representation that guarantees each state 12 members, and each territory two. The lower house formulates government policy and the upper house either vetoes or passes it. Both houses are voted for every three years.

There are two major parties, which sit either side of the political fence. The Australian Labor Party (‘ALP’) and the Liberal Party are the two chief protagonists, the ALP being the rough equivalent of the British Labour Party or American Democrats, the Liberals the equivalent of the Conservatives or Republicans. Over the last 70 years the ALP have generally polled slightly higher than the Liberals, but have usually been kept out of office by the latter’s alliance with the smaller National Party. The leader of the majority in the lower house forms the country’s government and is its Prime Minister. In late 2007 Kevin Rudd’s Labor party finally won government from John Howard’s Liberal/National coalition, who had been in power for four terms. Despite coming to power on a wave of popularity, Rudd was the first ever Labor prime minister to be dumped from office during a first term when he was replaced as leader by Julia Gillard in June 2010. However Australia’s first female prime minister only just held onto the position after the extraordinary election of August 2010 when Labor and Liberal won 72 and 73 seats respectively. Labor negotiated an alliance with independents and greens to secure the 76 seats needed to able to form a government.

Most of the nation’s tax dollar ends up in the Commonwealth coffers. About a third of the Federal budget goes in benefit payments, about a fifth on the machinery of government and state institutions, and about a quarter is distributed as payments to individual states. A constant grievance between Federal and state governments is the relative proportion of each state’s Federal income compared to the amount of tax its residents have paid, with bitter (and not untruthful) claims that some states subsidize the others.

In a second tier of government most states also have their own upper and lower houses, and also Governors. These too are elected on a three-year cycle, and much the same political parties vie for election. In Western Australia the current government is Liberal and the Premier is Colin Barnett.

Dengue fever can be contracted throughout Australia. In travellers this can cause a severe flu-like illness, which includes symptoms of fever, lethargy, enlarged lymph glands and muscle pains. It starts suddenly, lasts for 2 to 3 days, seems to get better for 2 to 3 days and then kicks in again for another 2 to 3 days. It is usually all over in an unpleasant week. The local children are prone to the much nastier haemorrhagic form of the disease, which causes them to bleed from internal organs, mucous membranes and often leading to death. The traveller’s version of the disease is self-limiting and forces rest and recuperation on the sufferer. The mosquitoes that carry the dengue virus bite during the day unlike the malaria mosquitoes. Repellent application and covered limbs are a 24-hour issue.

Hepatitis means inflammation of the liver. Viral causes of the disease can be acquired anywhere in Australia. The most obvious symptom is a yellowing of your skin or the whites of your eyes. However, prior to this all that you may notice is itching and tiredness. Early on, depending on the type of hepatitis, a vaccine or immunoglobulin may reduce the duration of the illness. Pre-travel Hepatitis A vaccine is the best prevention. Hepatitis B (for which there is a vaccine) is spread through blood and unprotected sexual intercourse, both of these can be avoided. Unfortunately there is no vaccine for Hepatitis C or the increasing alphabetical list of other Hepatitis viruses.

Snakes and other poisonous things are always a risk in Australia. A bite itself does not mean that anything has been injected in to you. However, a commonsense approach is to clean the area of the bite (never have it sutured early on) and get someone to take you to a medical facility. It is better to be taken because the more energy you expand the faster poisons spread. Do not try to catch the snake or spider. You will only get more bites and faster spread of poison for your troubles. For some snake bites a knowledgeable first aider can provide appropriate bandaging. Specialist anti-venoms will be administered by an experienced doctor.

In terms of sexual health, unprotected sex can obviously spread HIV, Hepatitis B and C, gonorrhea (green discharge), chlamydia (nothing to see but may cause painful urination and later female infertility), painful recurrent herpes, syphilis and warts, just to name a few. You can cut down the risk by using condoms, a femidom or avoiding sex altogether. Commercial sex workers in Australia have high levels of HIV. If you do have sex, consider getting a sexual health check on your return home.

Take care with sun protection. Sunburn is painful and followed by flaking of skin. Aloe vera gel is a good pain reliever. Long-term sun damage leads to a loss of elasticity of skin and the development of pre-cancerous lesions. Many years later a mild or a very malignant form of cancer may develop. The milder basal cell carcinoma, if detected early, can be treated by cutting it out or freezing it. The much nastier malignant melanoma may have already spread to bone and brain at the time that it is first noticed. SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor. The higher the SPF the greater the protection. However, do not use higher factors just to stay out in the sun longer. ‘Flash frying’ (desperate bursts of excessive exposure) is known to increase the risks of skin cancer. Follow the Australians’ with their Slip, Slap, Slop campaign.

Australia has the fourth lowest level in the world for tuberculosis and is well protected by health screens before people can settle there. Symptoms include a cough, tiredness, fever and lethargy. Have a BCG vaccination before you go and see a doctor early if you cough blood or have a persistent cough, fever or unexplained weight loss.

Underwater health – if you go diving make sure that you are fit do so. British Scuba Association (BSAC) in the UK (T01513-506200, http://www.bsac.com) can put you in touch with doctors who do medical examinations. Check that any dive company you use know what they are doing, have appropriate certification from BSAC or PADI, (http://www.padi.com), and that the equipment is well maintained. Protect your feet from cuts, beach dog parasites (larva migrans) and sea urchins. The latter are almost impossible to remove but can be dissolved with lime or vinegar. Keep an eye out for secondary infection.

http://www.btha.org British Travel Health Association (UK). The official website of an organization of travel health professionals.

http://www.cdc.gov US Government site that gives excellent advice on travel health and details of disease outbreaks.

http://www.fitfortravel.scot.nhs.uk A-Z of vaccine/health advice for each country.

http://www.who.int The WHO Blue Book lists the diseases of the world.

The 4 major banks, Westpac, Commonwealth, NAB and ANZ, are usually the best places to change money (and traveller’s cheques), though bureaux de change tend to have slightly longer opening hours and often open at weekends. Bank opening hours are Monday to Friday, from around 0930 to 1630.

Accommodation, particularly outside Perth, is good value, though prices can rise uncomfortably in peak seasons. Eating out can be indecently cheap. Around $175 is enough to cover dinner for 2 at the very best restaurants in Perth and the bill at many still excellent establishments can be half that. Transport varies considerably in price and can be a major factor in your travelling budget. Beer is about $5-8 a throw in pubs and bars, as is a neat spirit or glass of wine. Wine will generally be around 1½ times to double the price in restaurants as it would be from a bottleshop. The general cost of living in Australia is reckoned to be equivalent to the USA and slightly cheaper than the UK.

The minimum budget required, if staying in hostels or campsites, cooking for yourself, not drinking much and travelling relatively slowly is about $90 per person per day, but this isn’t going to be a lot of fun. Going on the odd tour, travelling faster and eating out occasionally will raise this to a more realistic $110-140. Those staying in modest B&Bs, hotels and motels as couples, eating out most nights and taking a few tours will need to reckon on about $200-300 per person per day. Non-hostelling single travellers should budget on spending around 60-70% of what a couple would spend.

You can withdraw cash from ATMs (cashpoints) with a debit or credit card issued by most international banks. Most hotels, shops, tourist operators and restaurants in Australia accept the major credit cards, though some places may charge for using them. When booking always check if an operator accepts them.

If you need money urgently, the quickest way to have it sent is to have it wired to the nearest bank via Western Union, T1800 173833, http://www.westernunion.com. Charges apply but on a sliding scale. Complete online services are available with Travelex, http://www.travelex.com.au. Money can also be wired by Amex or Thomas Cook, though this may take a day or 2, or transferred direct from bank to bank, but this can take several days. Within Australia money orders can be used to send money, http://www.auspost.com.au.

Many forms of transport and most tourist sites and tours will give discounts to all or some of the following: students, backpackers, the unemployed, the aged (all grouped as ‘concessions’ in this guide) and children. Proof will be required, a passport is usually sufficient for children or the aged.

(July 2008): 1 Aus$ = US$0.96, £0.48, E0.61.

All dollars quoted in this guide are Australian unless specified otherwise. The Australian dollar ($) is divided into 100 cents (c). Coins come in denominations of $0.05, $0.10, $0.20, $0.50, $1 and $2. Banknotes come in denominations of $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100.

The safest way to carry money is in traveller’s cheques, though travellers’ dependence on them is fast becoming superseded by the prevalence of ATMs. American Express, Thomas Cook and Visa are the cheques most commonly accepted. Remember to keep a record of the cheque numbers and the cheques you’ve cashed separate from the cheques themselves. Traveller’s cheques are accepted for exchange in banks, large hotels, post offices and large gift shops. Some insist that at least a portion of the amount is in exchange for goods or services. Commission when cashing traveller’s cheques is usually 1% or a flat rate. Hotel rates are often poor.

AAT Kings, http://www.aatkings.com, and APT, http://www.aptouring.com.au, are the main 2 national, coach-based, both offer comparable options.

Active Safaris, T08-9225 6622 or freecall T1800 222848, http://www.activesafaris.com.au, and Aussie Outback Safaris, T08-9593 4464, http://www.aussiesafaris.com, offers camping trips: 15-days in the Kimberley for around $4000.

Avalon Wine Tours, http://www.avalon-tours.com, offers wine-tasting tours.

All Terrain Safaris, T08-9571 3155 or freecall T1800 633456, http://www.allterrainsafaris.com.au, has a range of longer west coast tours, starting with an 8-day trip from Perth to Broome ($1100). Also tours from Broome, Darwin and Kununurra.

Australian Adventure Travel, T08-9248 2355 or freecall T1800 621625, http://www.safaris.net.au, runs 4-9 day tours up the west coast (Perth to Monkey Mia 4 days $535, Perth to Broome including Kalbarri, Ningaloo Reef and Karijini, 9 days $1410), Exmouth to Broome including Karijini (4 days $715) and 5-14 day Kimberley trips, staying in farm stays, cabins or camping.

DEC together with the UWA, see http://www.naturebase.net (under Community/Landscope) and contact T08-6488 2433, extension@uwa.edu.au, organize a number of eco expeditions/ Landscope research expeditions each year where small numbers of the general public are invited to join them. Trips last 6-10 days, cost $300-500 per day, and conditions are usually pretty basic. Locations are, however, incredible and activities usually revolve around turtle-tagging or the identification of many other animal or plant species.

Pinnacle Tours, T08-9417 5555 or freecall T1900 999069, http://www.pinnacletours.com.au, is the most luxurious large local coach operator, with several 1-day options to southwest destinations (around $170), 2- to 5-day tours around the southwest ($200 per day, 2-day Margaret River daily, other tours depart Sun-Tue), and an extensive range of longer tours throughout WA ($150-200 per day).

Planet Perth, T08-9225 6622, www.planet tours.com.au, operates fun and friendly tours for backpackers and travellers, including the southwest for 3 days (Tue, Sat, $435), the west coast (4 days, Thu, Fri, $545) and Perth-Karijini return (Tue, 10 days $1200).

ROC Tours, T08-8357 3935, www.cycletours. com.au, runs a number of 4- to 11-day mostly outback tours that let you cycle the best bits.

STA Travel, T134782, http://www.statravel.com.au, and Travellers Contact Point, T02-9221 8744, http://www.travellers.com.au, specialize in putting together itineraries incorporating bus, plane and train, with a high degree of flexibility.

Venture Winetours Australia, www.venture winetours.com.au, offers wine-tasting tours.

Pedal Oz, T08-9387 7403, www.pedaloz. com.au, offers 1-7 day guided and self-guided cycling trips in Perth and the southwest.

Western Travel Bug, T08-9486 4222, www. travelbug.com.au, make use of budget hotels and motels on their 2- to 6-day southwest tours (around $160-200 per day). Also Midwest and Karijini tours plus local day tours.

Wine Tours Australia/NZ, www.winetours australia-nz.com, offers wine-tasting tours that include regional sightseeing.

Australia Travel Centre, 43-45 Middle Abbey St, Dublin, Ireland, T3531-8047100, http://www.australia.ie. Good source of general advice for those travelling from Ireland.

Contiki, Wells House, 15 Elmfield Rd, Bromley, Kent BR1 1LS, T020-290 6777, www.contiki. com. One of the world’s largest travel companies catering primarily for the 18-35s market with affordable Australian options.

Travelbag, 3-5 High St, Alton GU34 1TL, UK, T0800 804 8911, http://www.travelbag.co.uk. Reputable UK-based firm offering a good range of general and tailormade trips to Australia at reasonable prices.

Wildlife Worldwide, Sutton Manor Farm, Bishops Sutton, Alresford SO24 0AA, T0845 130 6982, http://www.wildlifeworldwide.com. One of the best wildlife-oriented global operators offering tailor-made, mainly small group trips to Australia.

Abercrombie and Kent, 1520 Kensington Rd, Suite 212, Oak Brook, Illinois, T60523-2156, T800 554 7016, http://www.abercrombiekent.com. Well-established US company offering a diverse range of luxury, locally guided global trips to Australia,

Earthwatch Research and Exploration, PO Box 75, Maynard, MA 01754, USA, T978 461 0081, http://www.earthwatch.org. Runs excellent eco-tourism trips to Australia in combination with conservation research on Australian wildlife.

Australian wine is now imported in huge quantities into Europe and the USA. The industry has a creditable history in such a young country, with several wineries boasting a tradition of a century or more, but it is only in the last 25 years that Australia has become one of the major players on the international scene. The price of wine is unexpectedly high given the relatively low cost of food and beer. Even those from Britain will find Australian wines hardly any cheaper at the very cellar door than back home in the supermarket. The joy of Australian wine, however, is in its variety and quality. There are no restrictions, as there are in parts of Europe, on what grape varieties are grown where, when they are harvested and how they are blended. The ‘Mediterranean’ climate of much of the south of the country is very favourable for grape-growing, and the soil is sufficient to produce a high-standard grape.

Wineries range in size from vast concerns to one-person operations producing a few hundred bottles a year. Cellars range from modern marble and glass temples to venerable, century-old former barns of stone and wood. Some will open for a Saturday afternoon, others every day. In some you’ll be lucky to get half a dry cracker to go with a taste, others boast some of the best restaurants in the country. A few are in small town high streets, others are set in hectares of exquisitely designed and maintained gardens. The wonderful thing is that this tremendous mix of styles is found within most of the regions, making a day or two’s tasting expedition a scenic and cultural as well as an Epicurean delight. WA has a handful of wine regions, one as far north as Geraldton and several along the south coast. The biggest are the Swan Valley, just outside Perth, and Margaret River, which is spread over much of the northern half of the Cape-to-Cape region. The latter is one of the most pleasant wine regions in the country.

The big two beer brands of WA are Swan and Emu, both are middle-of-the-road beers available in full and mid-strengths. The state also has a number of small independent brewers, one or two of which are becoming well known even outside the state. These include long-established Matilda Bay, producers of the popular Redback, and Little Creatures who are a little more creative than most of their peers and have a wonderful brewery/bar/restaurant/gallery in Fremantle. Pubs producing their own exceptionally good beers include the Rose & Crown in Guildford, and Matso’s in Broome. Beer is usually served in a 7-oz middy, though you can also ask for a 10-oz pot or in some pubs a regular British-style pint. Beer tends to be around 4-5% alcohol, with the popular and surprisingly pleasant tasting ‘mid’ varieties about 3.5%, and ‘light’ beers about 2-2.5%. Drink-driving laws are strict, and the best bet is to not drink alcohol at all if you are driving. As well as being available on draught in pubs, beer is also available from bottleshops (or ‘bottle-os’) in cases (or ‘slabs’) of 24-36 cans (‘tinnies’ or ‘tubes’) or bottles (‘stubbies’) of 375 ml each. This is by far the cheapest way of buying beer (often under $1.50 per can or bottle).

Restaurants are common even in smaller towns. It is a general, but by no means concrete rule of thumb that the smaller the town the lower the quality, though not usually the price. Chinese and Thai restaurants are very common, with most other cuisines appearing only in the larger towns and cities. In Perth and Fremantle you will find everything from Mexican to Mongolian, Jamaican to Japanese. Corporate hotels and motels almost all have attached restaurants as do traditional pubs who also serve counter meals. Some may have a more imaginative menu or better-quality fare than the local restaurants. Most restaurants are licensed for the consumption of alcohol. Some are BYO only, in which case you provide wine or beer and the restaurant provides glasses. Despite the corkage fee this still makes for a better deal than drinking alcohol in fully licensed premises. European-style cafés are only rarely found in the country, and as in many western countries the distinction between cafés, bistros and restaurants is becoming extremely blurred.

If you can’t do without your burgers or southern-fried chicken or fish and chips then fear not. Australians have taken to fast food as enthusiastically as anywhere else in the world. Alongside these are food courts, found in the shopping malls of cities and larger towns. These have several takeaway options, usually including various Asian cuisines, surrounding a central space equipped with tables and chairs. Also in the budget bracket are the delis and milk bars, also serving hot takeaways, together with sandwiches, cakes and snacks. These make up a fair proportion of the country’s cafés, with a few seats inside and often out on the pavement.

If you cook for yourself you’ll find just about everything in an Aussie supermarket that you would find in Europe or the USA, and at very reasonable prices. An excellent meal for two can easily be put together for under $25.

The quintessential image of Australian cooking may be of throwing some meat on the barbie but Australia actually has a dynamic and vibrant cuisine all its own. Freed from the bland English ‘meat and two veg’ strait-jacket in the 1980s by the skills and cuisines of Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Lebanese and other immigrants, Australia has developed a fusion cuisine that takes elements from their cultures and mixes them into something new and original. Asian ingredients are easily found in major cities because of the country’s high Asian population and might include coriander, lemongrass, chilli, and Thai basil. Australia makes its own dairy products so cheese or cream may come from Tasmania’s King Island or Margaret River. Of course there is also plenty of seafood, including some creatures that will be unfamiliar to most travellers like the delicious crustaceans bugs, yabbies, and crayfish (lobster). Mussels, oysters and abalone are all also harvested locally. The fish is a treat too; try the firm white flesh of snapper, dhufish, coral trout and red emperor. WA’s isolation and clean environment also ensures that all these ingredients taste as good as possible.

Freshness is the other striking quality of this cuisine, dubbed Modern Australian. This is achieved by using produce from the local area, and cooking it in a way that preserves the food’s intrinsic flavour. The food shines for itself without being smothered in heavy or dominating sauces. Native animals are sometimes used, such as kangaroo, emu and crocodile, and native plants that Aboriginal people have been eating for thousands of years such as quandong, wattle seed or lemon myrtle leaf.

While you’re licking your lips with anticipation: a word of warning. This gourmet experience is mostly restricted to Perth and the largest towns. There are pockets of foodie heaven in the southwest, but these are usually associated with wine regions and are the exception rather than the rule.

There are a few special foods that Australians produce and treasure and that can be found pretty much throughout WA. The meat pie is the favourite Australian fast food, about the size of your palm and filled with mince or steak and gravy. Quality can vary from soggy cardboard to something a French pastry chef wouldn’t be ashamed of. If tempted, your best bet is a fresh one from a bakery rather than a mass-produced one (sealed in a little plastic bag) that sits in a shop’s warming oven all day. Fish and chips are also popular and these are often good in Australia because the fish is fresh and only light vegetable oils are used for frying.

Vegemite spread is a dark and sticky yeast extract that looks a bit like axle grease. It’s the Aussie equivalent of British Marmite, though fans of one usually detest the other. Tim Tams are a thick chocolate biscuit, very similar to the Brits’ Penguin and reputedly the country’s best-selling snack. What Brits call crisps, Aussies call chips (‘hot chips’ are fried chips), with Twisties a very Australian favourite.

Damper is bread made of flour, salt and water, best baked out bush in the ashes of a campfire. Nothing beats warm damper slathered with jam and butter. Another Aussie baking favourite is the lamington: a block of sponge that has been dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut. The pavlova is a classic Australian dessert, created for the visit of Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova. The ‘pav’ is like a cake-sized meringue, served topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. It is rarely consumed without an argument about whether it was actually invented in Australia or New Zealand. One great icon associated with the outback campfire is Billy Tea. It is the fiendishly simple concept of putting a few eucalyptus leaves in with the brew to add that distinctive Aussie flavour. To mix the flavour of the tea leaf with the eucalypt the ‘billy can’ is held in the hand and swung a couple of times from the shoulders. This is quite a delicate art and can, for the uninitiated, result in considerable drama when the handle breaks.

As Australia is an island nation, and a considerable distance from anywhere except Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, the vast majority of international visitors arrive by air. There are international flights direct to Perth from many cities around the world as well as interstate ones from most other Australian state capitals. However, it is usually possible to book internal Australian flights when booking your international ticket, at lower prices than on arrival. Some do not even require a stated departure and arrival point. If you have any plans to fly within Australia check this out with your travel agent prior to booking.

There are now enormous numbers of high street, phone and internet outlets for buying your plane ticket. This can make life confusing but the competition does mean that dogged work can be rewarded in a very good deal. Fares will depend on the season, with prices much higher during December-January unless booked well in advance. Mid-year tends to see the cheapest fares. Qantas and Virgin Blue are Australia’s main international airlines and fly from a considerable number of international capitals and major cities. Most other major airlines have flights to Australia from their home countries or Europe.

One-way flight tickets are not necessarily a lot more expensive than half a return fare. If you are contemplating a lengthy trip and are undecided about further plans, or like the idea of being unconstrained, then a single fare could be for you. Australian immigration officials can get very suspicious of visitors arriving on one-way tickets, however, especially on short-term visas. Anyone without long-term residency on a one-way ticket will need to show proof of substantial funds – enough for a stay and onward flight. Discuss your circumstances with your local travel agent or directly with the Australian Embassy or High Commission in your country before committing to a one-way ticket. Round-the-World (RTW) tickets can be a real bargain if you stick to the most popular routes, sometimes working out even cheaper than a return fare. RTWs start at around £950 (€1200 or US$1500), depending on the season. Perth is easy to include on a RTW itinerary. When trying to find the best deal, make sure you check the route, journey duration, stopovers, departure and arrival times, restrictions and cancellation penalties. Many cheap flights are sold by small agencies, most honest and reliable, but there may be some risks involved with buying tickets at rock-bottom prices. Avoid paying too much money in advance and check with the airline directly to ensure you have a reservation.

If travelling by bus around the west coast, always check the journey duration and time of arrival. Some routes can literally take days, each with 24 hours of travel with just a handful of short meal stops. Many coaches are equipped with videos, but you may want a book to hand. It’s also a good idea to take warm clothing, socks, a pillow, toothbrush and ear-plugs. There’s a good chance you will arrive in the late evening or the early hours of the morning. If it is the case, book accommodation ahead and, if possible, transfer transportation. At least ensure you know how to get to your accommodation, and try to avoid walking around alone late at night. Also double-check times of connections: many travel arrangements have been disrupted by the discovery that a bus was on a different day than assumed.

TransWA (T1300 662205, http://www.transwa.wa.gov.au) runs the main train and bus services around the state though their network only extends as far as Kalbarri to the north. If they do operate a route they are likely to be the cheapest option. Integrity (T08-9226 1339, http://www.integritycoachlines.com.au) heads north as far as Port Hedland, while South West Coachlines (T08-9324 2333, www.southwest coachlines.com.au) has the most comprehensive around the southwest. The national coach carrier McCaffertys/Greyhound (T1300 473 946, http://www.greyhound.com.au) plugs some of the gaps with services right through to Broome and beyond. As well as scheduled routes and fares they offer a variety of two jump-on, jump-off passes. The Western Explorer Pass will take you from Perth to Darwin over 183 days (6500 km, $826), while the slightly pricier Kilometre Pass allows travel anywhere on the network over the course of a year. A 2000-km pass is $367, with each extra 1000 km costing around $100.

There is no substitute in Western Australia for having your own transport. As a general rule of thumb consider buying a car if you are travelling for more than three months. If hiring or buying a car, do consider getting a campervan as an alternative. Long-term bicycle hire is rarely available, and touring cyclists should plan to bring their own bike or buy one in Perth.

Traffic congestion is rarely an issue, even Perth has nothing like the traffic of most cities, so driving itineraries can be based on covering a planned distance each day. Up to, say, 100 km for each solid hour’s driving. The key factor in planning transport is distance. Driving or cycling outside of the main cities is pretty stress-free, but the distances can be huge. Drivers can quickly get very bored – and very sleepy. There are a lot of single-vehicle accidents in Australia, and many are a result of driver fatigue.

Watch out for large animals in the country. Kangaroos and emus can appear seemingly out of nowhere, particularly at dawn and dusk, and sheep and cattle frequently stray onto unfenced roads. Collisions with animals are another major cause of single-vehicle accidents. Such collisions are not simply irritations: hitting a kangaroo, emu or sheep can write-off the vehicle and cause injury. Hitting cattle or a camel is considerably worse. Drive only in full daylight if possible.

On country roads you will also meet road trains. These trucks can be over 50 m long including up to four separate trailers strung along behind the main cab. Overtaking them entails great care – wait for a good long stretch before committing. If you are on a single track bitumen road or an unsealed road pull right over and slow considerably when one comes the other way. Not only can dust cause zero visibility, but you will also minimize the possibility of stones pinging up and damaging your windows.

The other major factor when planning is the type of roads you may need to use. All the main highways are ‘sealed’, but many country roads and outback ‘tracks’ are unsealed, usually meaning a stony or sand surface. When recently graded (levelled and compacted) they can be almost as pleasant to drive on as sealed roads, but even then there are reduced levels of handling. After grading, unsealed roads deteriorate over time. Potholes form, they can become impassable when wet, and corrugations usually develop. These are regular ripples in the road surface, perpendicular to the road direction, and can go on for tens of kilometres. Small ones simply cause an irritating judder, large ones can reduce tolerable driving speeds to 10-20 kph. Generally, the bigger the wheel size and the longer the wheel-base, the more comfortable journeys over corrugations will be. Many unsealed roads can be negotiated with a two wheel-drive (2WD), low-clearance vehicle, but the ride will be a lot more comfortable, and safer in a four wheel-drive (4WD) high-clearance one. Most 2WD hire cars are uninsured if driven on unsealed roads. Some unsealed roads are designated as 4WD-only or tracks, though individual definitions of some differ according to the map or authority you consult. In dry weather and after recent grading some can be driven in well-prepared 2WD cars. At other times they cannot without serious risk of accident, vehicle or tyre damage or getting bogged. If in any doubt whatsoever, stick to the roads you are certain are safe for your vehicle, and you are sufficiently prepared for. Always check with the hire company where you can and cannot take your 4WD vehicle (some will not allow them off graded roads), and also what your liability will be in the case of an accident. Of particular note are the roads in the Pilbara. Although generally passable for 2WD, they are notoriously good at causing punctures on all types of vehicles. Experiencing two or three punctures here on a single trip is not uncommon.

Prepare carefully before driving to remote areas. Even if there are regular roadhouses, try to carry essential spares and tools such as fan belts, hoses, gaffer tape, a tyre repair kit, extra car jack, extra spare wheel and tyre, spade, decent tool kit, oil and coolant, and a fuel can. Membership of the RAC is recommended, as is informing someone of your intended itinerary. Above all carry plenty of spare water, at least 10 litres per person, 20 if possible.

Hitchhiking, while not strictly illegal, is not advisable. There will always be the odd twisted soul around who will assault or abduct. This is not to say that hitching is more dangerous in WA than elsewhere else, but simply that bad things happen.

View and print touring and street maps at http://www.whereis.com.au.

Perth Map Centre, 900 Hay St, Perth, T08- 9322 5733, and Chart and Map Shop, 14 Collie St, Fremantle, T08-9335 8665, www. chartandmapshop.com.au. A range of national, state and regional maps, bike maps, Bibbulmun and Cape-to-Cape Track maps.

RAC, 832 Wellington St, West Perth, T08-9436 4444, http://www.rac.com.au. Fold-out maps, only $3 for members.

Streetsmart, series of regional touring maps are produced by the government and are probably the best maps available for drivers as they are very detailed and note points of interest. These can be bought online at http://www.landonline.com.au, from bookshops, VICs or from Landgate, T08-9273 7373, 1 Midland Sq, Midland.

UBD Country Towns and Street Directory: Western Australia has good information on towns (excluding Perth) and includes a road atlas for the whole state. The best street directories available for Perth are also published by UBD.

There are limited local lines operated by TransWA (T1300 662205, www.transwa. wa.gov.au) and integrated into their general schedules. Some journeys alternate between bus and train. Tickets are available at coach and bus stations, and by telephone.

As Australia is an island nation, and a considerable distance from anywhere except Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, the vast majority of international visitors arrive by air. There are international flights direct to Perth from many cities around the world as well as interstate ones from most other Australian state capitals . However, it is usually possible to book internal Australian flights when booking your international ticket, at lower prices than on arrival. Some do not even require a stated departure and arrival point. If you have any plans to fly within Australia check this out with your travel agent prior to booking.

There are now enormous numbers of high street, phone and internet outlets for buying your plane ticket. This can make life confusing but the competition does mean that dogged work can be rewarded in a very good deal. Fares will depend on the season, with prices much higher during December-January unless booked well in advance. Mid-year tends to see the cheapest fares. Qantas and Virgin Blue are Australia’s main international airlines and fly from a considerable number of international capitals and major cities. Most other major airlines have flights to Australia from their home countries or Europe.

One-way flight tickets are not necessarily a lot more expensive than half a return fare. If you are contemplating a lengthy trip and are undecided about further plans, or like the idea of being unconstrained, then a single fare could be for you. Australian immigration officials can get very suspicious of visitors arriving on one-way tickets, however, especially on short-term visas. Anyone without long-term residency on a one-way ticket will need to show proof of substantial funds – enough for a stay and onward flight. Discuss your circumstances with your local travel agent or directly with the Australian Embassy or High Commission in your country before committing to a one-way ticket. Round-the-World (RTW) tickets can be a real bargain if you stick to the most popular routes, sometimes working out even cheaper than a return fare. RTWs start at around £850 (e1075 or US$1676), depending on the season. Perth is easy to include on a RTW itinerary. When trying to find the best deal, make sure you check the route, journey duration, stopovers, departure and arrival times, restrictions and cancellation penalties. Many cheap flights are sold by small agencies, most honest and reliable, but there may be some risks involved with buying tickets at rock-bottom prices. Avoid paying too much money in advance and check with the airline directly to ensure you have a reservation.

McCaffertys/Greyhound (T1300 473 946, http://www.greyhound.com.au) have services throughout Australia and it’s possible to get a direct, if long, ride from most of the mainland state capitals to Perth, Broome and most of the coastal towns in between.

Driving to Western Australia involves a trip of at least 1500 km from anywhere else in the country and conceivably up to about 5000 km. Before deciding and setting out on a self-drive road trip to WA first ensure that the vehicle driver(s) and passengers are all able, willing, well prepared and aware of what the journey involves! Whether coming across the north from NT to the Kimberley and Pilbara, or from the south across the Nullarbor, and especially via the unsealed Outback Highway from Yulara, the journey will involve at least one to two days’ driving across very hot, arid and sparsely populated regions.

Great Southern Rail (T132147 or T8213 4444, http://www.gsr.com.au) operates The Indian Pacific service to Perth from Sydney and Adelaide with connections from Darwin, Alice Springs and Melbourne. An unbroken trip from Sydney takes three days and nights. The Ghan connects Darwin and Alice Springs to Adelaide (46 hours). The Overland connects Melbourne to Adelaide (10 hours). Unless coming from Sydney an overnight stopover in Adelaide may be required. Vehicles can be brought along and sometimes special deals can make this well worth considering.

There are three ticket levels on The Indian Pacific and The Ghan. The ‘Gold Kangaroo’ passenger gets a small sleeping cabin, all meals in the ‘Gold’ dining car, and a lounge. ‘Red Kangaroo’ passengers have separate lounge and dining car (meals not included), and either a cabin or day/nighter seat (an ordeal for some). The seat-only prices are roughly equivalent with interstate buses, with the red cabins about 2½ times the cost and gold cabins 3½ times. Concessions are good value, particularly for the long-distance, ‘red’ seats (Sydney to Perth for as little as $315). Great Southern Rail Explorer Pass ($590) allows unlimited travel in a ‘red’ day/nighter seat on The Ghan, The Indian Pacific and The Overland for six months. Pass holders must be members of a recognized backpacker organization (eg YHA). Upgrades to sleeping berths are allowed, but surcharges apply.

Bed and Breakfast (B&B) is in some ways quite different from the British model. Not expensive, but rarely a budget option, most fall into our $$ ranges. They offer very comfortable accommodation in upmarket houses. Rooms are usually en suite or have access to a private bathroom. Bathrooms shared by more than two rooms are rare. Hosts are usually friendly and informative. Some B&Bs are actually a semi or fully self-contained cottage or cabin with breakfast provisions supplied. Larger ones may have full kitchens. As well as private houses, self-contained, self-catering options are provided by caravan parks and hostels, and some resorts and motels with apartment- style units. Check whether linen is supplied in self-catering accommodation.

There are many spots outside parks where camping is also expressly allowed. On rare occasions there may be basic toilets, water and fireplaces. Out of courtesy and regard for the environment, act as if you were in a national park. Some parking bays allow caravans or campervans to stop overnight. Even if not allowed, stop for a sleep if the choice is between that or driving while very tired. Publications describing free roadside and bush-camping spots are widely available.

A popular choice for many visitors is to hire or buy a vehicle that can be slept in, combining the costs of accommodation and transport (although you will still need to book into caravan parks for power and washing). Ranging from the popular VW Kombi to enormous vans with integral bathrooms, they can be hired from as little as $50 per day to as much as $750. A van for two people at around $100 per day compares well with hiring a car and staying in hostels, and allows greater freedom. High-clearance, 4WD campervans are also available, and increase travel possibilities yet further. Kombis can usually be bought from about $2500. A cheaper though less comfortable alternative is to buy a van or station wagon (estate car) that is big enough to sleep in.

Some national parks allow camping, mostly in designated areas only, with a few allowing limited bush camping. Facilities are usually minimal, with basic toilets, fireplaces and perhaps tank water; a few have BBQs and shower blocks. Enjoyable camping necessitates being well prepared. Payment is often by self-registration (around $10 per person), and BBQs often require $0.20, $0.50 or $1 coins, so have small notes and change ready. In many parks you will need a gas stove. If there are fireplaces you must bring your own wood. Collecting wood within parks is prohibited, as logs and twigs are an important habitat for native animals. No fires may be lit, even stoves, during a Total Fire Ban. Even if water is supposedly available it is not guaranteed so take a supply, as well as your own toilet paper. Bush camping in national parks is strongly regulated. The key rules are to be particularly careful with fire, camp at least 20 m from any water-hole or course, and to disturb the environment as little as possible. Nothing must be left behind, and nothing removed, even rocks. Toilet waste should be carefully buried, at least 100 m from any water-hole or course.

Almost every town will have at least one caravan park with unpowered and powered sites, varying from $10-20 for campers, caravans and campervans, a wash block and usually a camp kitchen or BBQs. Some will have permanently sited caravans (on-site vans) and cabins. On-site vans are usually the cheapest option ($) for families or small groups wanting to self-cater. Cabins are more expensive ($$-$). Some will have televisions, en suite bathrooms, separate bedrooms with linen and well-equipped kitchens. Power is rated at the domestic level (240/250v AC), which is convenient for budget travellers. Joining a park association will get you a discount in all parks that are association members. Associations include: Big 4, T03-9811 9300, www.big4. com.au; Family Parks of Australia, T1300 855 707, www.family parks.com.au; and Top Tourist Parks, T08-8363 1901, http://www.toptourist.contact.com.au.

Western Australia has a large network of good-value hostels ($). They are popular centres for backpackers and provide a great opportunity for meeting fellow travellers. Most will have at least one double room and possibly singles, sometimes with linen. Almost all hostels have kitchen and common room facilities. A few, particularly in cities, will offer freebies including breakfast and pick-ups. Standards vary considerably, and it’s well worth asking other travellers about the hostels at your next ports of call. Most are effectively independent and the best tend to be those that are owner-managed. International visitors can obtain a Hostelling International Card (HIC) from any YHA hostel or travel centre. For this you get a handbook to YHA hostels nationwide and around $3 off every night’s YHA accommodation. The hostel associations NOMADS (T02-9280 4110, http://www.nomadsworld.com, no membership fee) and YHA (http://www.yha.org.au) seem to ensure the best consistency of quality. YMCA (T08-9473 8400, http://www.ymca.org.au) and YWCA (T02-6230 5150, www. ywca.org.au) hostels are usually a clean and quiet choice in the major cities.

At the top end of the scale are some impressive international-standard hotels and resorts, with luxurious surroundings and facilities, attentive service and often outstanding locations. Rooms will typically start in our $$$ range. In the main cities are a few less expensive hotels in the $$ range. Most ‘hotels’ outside the major towns are pubs with upstairs or external accommodation. If upstairs a room is likely to have access to shared bathroom facilities, while external rooms are usually standard en suite motel units. The quality of pub-hotel accommodation varies considerably, but is usually a budget option ($$-$). Linen is almost always supplied.

Motels in Australia are usually anonymous, but dependably clean and safe, and usually offer the cheapest en suite rooms. Most have dining facilities and free, secure parking. Some budget motels will fall into our $ range, most will be $$. Linen is always supplied.

Some National Parks and rural cattle and sheep stations have old settlers or workers’ homes that have been converted into accommodation, usually self-contained. They are often magical places to stay and include many old lighthouse keepers’ cottages and shearers’ quarters. Stations may also invite guests to see or even get involved in the day’s activities. Transport to them can be difficult if you don’t have your own. Linen is often not supplied in this sort of accommodation. See http://www.tacawa.com.au.

Where roads connect towns more than about 100 km apart there will usually be roadhouses on the way. They vary from simple fuel stops and small stores to mini-resorts with accommodation, small supermarkets, post offices, daytime cafés, evening restaurants and bars. They will often have simple single and double rooms in what look for all the world like converted shipping containers (they often are), known as dongas. These usually fall into the $$ range.

Swags are large lined pieces of canvas that enclose a thin mattress and sleeping bag, for outdoor use, placed directly on the ground. They are very much a part of Australian folklore and are still widely used in the country. There’s nothing quite like lying in bed and watching the sun rise in the morning as the cockatoos screech overhead. The main disadvantages to swags are their weight and the space they take up, and also that they are open to the elements and insects.

As this state is the only one that stretches from the bottom of the country to the top, you can visit WA at any time of year. Generally the state has a superb climate and is sunny much of the time. The northern region is mildly tropical and has a build-up of humidity from October to December and occasional monsoonal downpours in January to April, known as the ‘Wet’ (a period characterized by high humidity, heat, tremendous monsoonal rainfall and occasional, powerful cyclones). Many roads and tourist facilities close at this time but if you can stand the heat you might enjoy the drama of it. The ‘Dry’ (May to September) is the best time to visit the Gascoyne and Pilbara as temperatures hover around a delightful 25-30°C (whale sharks swim over the Ningaloo Reef near Exmouth from April to June). As a general rule, the further north you travel, and the further in time from July, the hotter it gets. And hot means very hot: days over 40°C regularly occur in summer in the arid regions, and even Perth averages over 30°C. The central or Midwest region is warm and dry for most of the year with little rain, although spring is the ideal time to visit for the wildflower season. The south, including Perth and the southwest, is sunny throughout spring, summer and autumn and these are the ideal seasons to visit. Perth gets an average of 7½ hours of sunshine a day. The southern winter lasts from June to August and this is when this region receives most of its rainfall and gets fairly cold (5-17°C). If you want to see whales though, it will have to be winter or spring when they migrate past the southwest coasts (June to November).

Australia is the driest inhabited continent, and virtually nowhere further than 250 km inland gets more than an average of 600 mm of rain a year. About half the continent, in a band across the south and west, gets less than 300 mm and much of it is desert. The only area in WA that gets significant rainfall spread over more than 160 days a year is the southwest tip.

WA’s major festival, the Perth Festival, is held annually in January and February, and the start more or less coincides with state’s biggest international sporting event, Tennis’ Hopman Cup.

School holidays are important to keep an eye on as the state’s main holiday areas such as Rottnest, the Margaret River Region, Kalbarri, Monkey Mia and Broome get completely booked out in the appropriate seasons. The main holidays start in mid-December and carry on through to the end of January. Schools also close for the two weeks after Easter, for two weeks in mid-July, and for another two weeks in early October. Backpackers don’t need to be too concerned about visiting at these times as accommodation and tours aimed at that market are less affected.

If you’ve only got a few days on your way through, then Perth or Fremantle make excellent bases and you’ll probably have time for an overnight trip down to the Cape-to-Cape region to explore the wineries, caves and beaches, or over to Rottnest Island to see the quokkas. Interesting day trips from Perth include a quick tour east into the Perth Hills to see Mundaring Weir and York, a circuit north to see New Norcia and Lancelin, and the short journey south to Rockingham to see the penguins and swim with dolphins.

In three weeks you can begin to consider exploring the coast both south and immediately north of Perth, or even the great West Coast trip from Perth to Broome or vice-versa, flying the reverse direction. The latter journey would even allow for a serious side-trip, for instance into the Millstream-Chichester or Karijini National parks. At least a month is required to see a good spread of most of the highlights detailed in this guide, and to journey the full length of the West Coast between Albany and Broome.

In addition to the one-week itinerary, a two-week visit can also allow a longer tour around the south, including a trip along the southern coast to Albany before heading back up to Perth. A fortnight is also long enough for a return trip up the coast to Kalbarri, or even Shark Bay. Alternatively, the more energetic might consider walking parts of the Cape-to-Cape or Bibbulmun Tracks, or learning to dive, sail or surf off the beautiful beaches around the capital.