WESTERN AUSTRALIA, FLAG OF

Australian flag consisting of a blue field (background) with the Union Jack in the canton and, at the fly end, a yellow disk bearing a black swan. The flag is sometimes described as a defaced Blue Ensign. The Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh noted black swans living in the estuary of the Swan River in January 1697, and the first English settlement in the area, established in June 1829, was referred to as the Swan River Colony. Its bank notes, issued in the early 1830s, showed a swan, as did the first newspaper, the Swan River Guardian, in 1836. In the same year, the first issue of the Western Australian Government Gazette used the swan emblem. When governors of British colonies were required to display the British Blue Ensign with the badge of the colony, Governor Frederick Aloysius Weld, in his letter of January 3, 1870, indicated that a black swan on a yellow background was the local badge of Western Australia. The flag continued to be used by the state of Western Australia after the formation of the Australian Commonwealth. There was discussion about the design, however; the Western Australian badge approved in 1870 showed the swan facing the observer's right, but in heraldry the observer's left is considered the point of honour toward which all emblems should face. In 1936 College of Arms officials indicated that the swan was improper, but nothing was done about the matter. Finally, in anticipation of a 1954 royal tour, the question was raised in the state parliament, and on November 3, 1953, the swan was changed to face the observer's left. Variations of the state flag have been used by shipping companies, port authorities, and other organizations. Whitney Smith History Human occupation of the southwest part of Western Australia goes back at least 40,000 years. Spasmodic contact with visiting Southeast Asian crews led to the introduction of the dingo, the native dog, about 5,000 years ago and possibly to the practice of circumcision at some later date. Otherwise the routine of Aboriginal hunter-gatherer society was largely undisturbed until European contact. Recent conjecture puts the Aboriginal population on the eve of contact at between 50,000 and 100,000. European exploration and settlement The Portuguese probably sighted the Western Australian coast during the 1520s, but authenticated European discovery followed the Dutch East India Company's move into the Indian Ocean in the early 17th century. Between the landfall of Dirck Hartog in 1616 and Abel Tasman's reconnoitering voyages of 1642 and 1644, the outline of Australia's western coast was filled in, but it remained a hazard to shipping. The loss in 1629 of the pride of the company's fleet, Francisco Pelsaert's Batavia, with its bloody sequel of mutiny and reprisal, was the first of several shipwrecks. Seeing no scope for trade or colonization, the Dutch took no further interest in Western Australia. Their poor opinion was confirmed by the English navigator William Dampier in 1688 and 1699. Consequently, when the British annexed New South Wales in 1770 and settled it in 1788, Western Australia remained unoccupied. A French claim of 1772 was unenforced despite several later voyages. Not until 1826 did Governor Ralph Darling of New South Wales, perturbed by reports of French interest and American whaling, dispatch Major Edmund Lockyer with a small party of soldiers and convicts to stake a claim by garrisoning King George's Sound (now Albany) on the south coast. This prompted Captain James Stirling and the botanist Charles Frazer to examine the reaches of the Swan River. A mild summer and tall jarrah timber led them to exaggerate the fertility of the coastal sand plain, and Stirling went to England to lobby for the establishment of Australia's first nonconvict colony with himself as governor. The resulting Swan River mania brought nearly 4,000 settlers to Western Australia in 182930. Stirling arrived with the first party on the Parmelia in June 1829 at the port of Fremantle and founded the town of Perth 12 miles inland. As elsewhere in Australia, Aboriginal landrights were ignored. Aboriginal resistance in the Perth region was quelled after the battle of Pinjarra in 1834. Underprepared, the settlers suffered great privations. Only 1,500 remained in 1832. Although the colony could feed itself by 1835 and began exporting wool in 1836, the main industry, whaling, remained in American hands. London investors in 184041 planned another settlement 100 miles south of Perth, to be called Australind in hope of trade with India. Although they brought several hundred immigrants, by 1843 their venture also failed. Western Australia was too isolated and had too small an infrastructure of investment and population for rapid growth. But during the 1840s a bank was established, a tiny export trade began in sandalwood and horses, Spanish Benedictines established a monastery at New Norcia, and a pastoral settlement opened up the Geraldton district, 300 miles north of Perth. Landowners called for cheap convict labour, which was falling out of favour in the eastern colonies at that time. The British authorities responded by sending nearly 10,000 male convicts to Western Australia between 1850 and 1868. Social problems resulted, but so did signs of economic progress such as road work and public buildings. In the 1860s pastoralists expanded north into the Pilbara and Gascoyne districts. The northern Aborigines fought back unavailingly against invasion. From 1868 pastoralism was underpinned by a pearling industry that used Aboriginal women as divers. No gold or minerals were found, and so Western Australia lagged behind its eastern neighbours as the Cinderella colony.