Note on the Northern Areas (Kimberley Division).— Mining has proved profitable, but the area has not been thor oughly tested. Pearl-shell fishing centring on Broome is of tried value (1925: 246 boats, employing 1,750 men [largely Asiatics], obtained c. 1,400 tons of pearl-shell [L2io,000] and pearls [L60, 300]). The proposal of the Commonwealth Government that the area should be handed over to Federal control was rejected. The air service (see below) marks an advance.
Towns, Manufacturing Industries, Communications, Trade.—The greater part of the interior of the State is, and will probably remain, apart from relatively impermanent mining centres, sparsely populated by human beings whatever its sheep and cattle population may ultimately be. Most of the increase is taking place around or near the coasts, the south-west corner being chiefly notable. In this zone of coastal, or sub-coastal, settle ment ports naturally play a prominent part. Perth (q.v.), with its port Fremantle, holds a key position upon what is perhaps the most important part of the coast. Commercially if not physically it lies midway between north and south. Convenient to important goldfields and also to the still more important and developing south-west, it lies besides, upon or near a world sea-route and is terminal to the shortest land-route to the eastern States. With its population of c. 192,000 the metropolitan area contains nearly half of the total population of the State. Apart from Perth and some ports—of which Albany, Bunbury, Geraldton (qq.v.) may serve as examples—the towns of Western Australia generally known hitherto have been associated with mining (e.g., Coolgardie Kalgoorlie, q.v.). The settlements of the south-west, destined one day perhaps to become important are as yet mainly small agricul tural and, usually also, railway centres of which in their youth it is perhaps sufficient to remark that they are numerous. Manu factures, in the stage of development indicated, are naturally confined mainly to the metropolitan—and particularly to the Fremantle (q.v.)—area, to the gold-fields, and to the primary producing centres (sawmilling; butter and cheese making; ba con curing; ore crushing and concentrating). Nevertheless, in the relative isolation of the community, industrial activity has made considerable progress in recent years, noteworthy being the manufacture of superphosphates and railway engineering (Midland Junction, etc.), while the supply of electrical power has also assumed large proportions (see Statistical Survey: Manu facturing Industries).
Communications.—Over large parts of the interior camels (1927: 4,837), mules and donkeys (1927: 10,300) still form in dispensable means of transport, and in the northern interior the bullock-waggon has barely begun to yield to the motor-tractor.
Elsewhere, as settlement and roads advance, or even before that stage, the flat terrain en courages motors while the aero plane here, as in north-east Aus tralia, must be looked upon as a pioneering vehicle. The Perth– Derby (1,467 m.) service, call ing at Geraldton, Carnarvon, Onslow, Roebourne, Whim Creek, Port Hedland, Broome "en route," is carried out by West Australian Airways Ltd.
subsidised by the Common wealth Government. This com pany completed in June 1928 its first million miles of com mercial flying and had then carried 1,250,000 letters and 70 tons freight with very little serious mishap but with almost untold benefits—including urgent medical assistance—to the settlers in the far north. In April 1929 will be inaugurated an air-service (by the same company, also with Commonwealth subsidy) from Perth–Adelaide with 4 large machines having a normal cruising speed of 105 miles per hour. Railways were first developed in the coastal lands behind Geraldton (Geraldton Northampton, 1879), Albany–Fremantle to connect various mining, timber and agricultural areas with their ports and one another. Later the great mineral lines were run out far into the almost unknown interior—Perth to Kalgoorlie: 375m., with extension to Laverton, 586 miles; Geraldton to Meekatharra: 334 111.; to Sandstone: 3o9 m. ; Perth to Meekatharra: 600 m., etc. ; and in the north-west an isolated line, Port Hedland–Marble Bar: 114 m. These lines have also proved invaluable in open ing up the pastoral interior. In the railway-system of the south west, with its curious herring-bone pattern, can still be distin guished the timber, the mineral, and the agricultural lines, but the outstanding feature of recent construction is the development of wheat-belt lines reaching out long arms eastwards to draw grain and wool in to the main trunk systems (cf. the similar develop ment in the South Australian Mallee [see SOUTH AUSTRALIA] and the Victorian Wimmera [see VicroRIA]). In the north these debouch upon Geraldton, but by far the greater number upon Fremantle. Of this development the Norseman–Esperance (q.v.; Kalgoorlie–Esperance: 258 m.) line now being completed is a logical continuation, as will be the extension across to it of the existing grid from the present rail-heads on the west (see above re the "3,000 farm scheme"). The Western Australian railways are, somewhat unfortunately, of narrow (3'.6") gauge, and though like most Australian railways they are often built for develop mental purposes (see AUSTRALIA: Railways), recent returns have been encouraging. The railways are mainly State-owned, but there are considerable lengths of private (mineral and timber) lines of semi-permpent nature but mostly open to general traffic. Of the transcontinental (Commonwealth Government, 4'.84") line, 454 m. lies in Western Australia, and, apart from its increasing pas senger and goods services (see below), it will doubtless help to develop considerable areas of pastoral lands provided adequate (non-saline) water-supplies can be uncovered. (See Statistical Survey: Railways.) Trade, the general nature and extent of which can be gauged from the foregoing, and also from the appended statistics (Trade; Shipping; Ports: see also above Pastoral Industries: wool ex ports) has in recent years been increasing in volume and variety, Fremantle taking the lion's share. As an index of growth, there fore, the trade of this port is valuable.