Western Australia Tourism

Western Australia is one of the oldest lands on Earth, and boasts an Aboriginal history that dates back more than 40,000 years.

Australian Aboriginals were the original inhabitants of Australia. They lived a nomadic existence, moving within fairly well-defined geographic regions, as they followed the seasons and food sources.

Indigenous Australians survived in harsh climatic and environmental conditions which ranged from cold temperate to hot tropical, coping with arid conditions and torrential rains. They have dwelt for many thousands of years in ways that sustained their societies while conserving resources, protecting fragile soils and leaving a light footprint on the environment.

European explorers came much later, and while it is widely believed that Portuguese sailors plied the waters off Western Australian as early as the 1500s, the first recorded European visitors were the Dutch in the 1600s.

Many of these visitors were sailors, employed by the Dutch East India Company, who regularly used the strong westerly winds to power their boats across the Indian Ocean to Dutch-colonised Indonesian ports, such as Batavia (now Jakarta).

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Western Australia Tourism