History of and Aboriginal history of WA.

The first inhabitants of Australia arrived from the north approximately 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. Over thousands of years they eventually spread across the whole landmass. These Indigenous Australians were well established throughout WA by the time of European explorers began to arrive in the early seventeenth century.

The first European to visit WA was a Dutch explorer, Dirk Hartog who on 26 October 1616 landed at what is now known as Cape Inscription, Dirk Harthog Island. For the rest of the 17th century, many other Dutch travellers enountered the coast, usually unintentionally. By the late 18th century, British and French sailors had begun to explore the WA coast.

The origins of the present state of WA began with the establishment of a British settlement at King George Sound in 1826 (later named Albany from 1832). The settlement was founded in response to British concerns about the possibility of a French colony being established on the coast of WA.

In 1829, Captain James Stirling established the Swan River Colony, on the Swan River, WA. By 1832, the British settler population of the colony had reached around 1,500. The two separate townsites of the colony developed slowly into the port city of Fremantle and the state's capital, Perth WA.

Population growth was very slow until significant discoveries of gold were made in the 1890s around Kalgoorlie , WA . 
In 1887, a new constitution was drafted, providing for the right of self-governance and in 1890, the act granting self-government to the colony was passed by the British House of Commons. John Forrest became the first Premier of Western Australia. [WA]

In 1896, the WA Parliment authorised the raising of a loan to construct a pipeline to transport five million gallons of water per day to the goldfields of WA. The pipeline, known as the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, was completed in 1903. C.Y. O'Connor, Western Australia 's first engineer-in-chief, designed and oversaw the construction of the pipeline. It carries water 530 km (330 miles) from |Perth to Kalgoorlie , WA and is attributed by historians as an important factor driving the state's population and economic growth.

Following a campaign led by Forrest, residents of the Swan River Colony voted in favour of federation, resulting in WA officially becoming a state on 1 January1901.

Demographics of Western Australia

The first inhabitants of what is now WA were Indigenous Australians, from a wide variety of language and kin groups—for example, the Nyungah in the south west, the Wongai in the central desert, the Malkana in Shark Bay. These groups continue to form the majority of the local population in the remotest parts of the state such as the Kimberley, WA.

Europeans began to settle permanently in 1826 when Albany was claimed by Britain in order to forestall French claims to the western third of the continent. Perth was founded as the Swan River Colony in 1829 by British and Irish settlers, though the outpost languished, eventually requesting convict labour to augment its population. In the 1890s, interstate migration resulting from a mining boom in the Goldfields region resulted in a sharp population increase.

Western Australia did not receive significant flows of migrants from Britain , Ireland or elsewhere in the British Empire until the early 20th century when local projects. Such as the Group Settlement Scheme of the 1920s which encouraged farmers to settle the southwest increased awareness of WA third as a destination for colonists.

Led by migrants from the British Isles , Western Australia 's population developed at a faster rate during the twentieth century it had previously. Along with the eastern states, Western Australia received large numbers of Italians, Croatians and Greeks after World War II. Despite this, Britain has contributed the greatest number of migrants to this day, and [WA] particularly Perth [WA] has the highest proportion of British-born of any state: 10.6% in 2006, compared to a national average of 5.3%. This group is heavily concentrated in certain parts where they account for a quarter of the population. Including Jonathan