Esperance, Western Australia: History
European history of the region dates back to 1627 when the Dutch vessel Gulden Zeepaert, skippered by François Thijssen, passed through waters off the Esperance coast and continued across the Great Australian Bight.
French explorers are credited with making the first landfall near the present day town, naming it and other local landmarks while sheltering from a storm in this area in 1792.
In 1802, British navigator Matthew Flinders sailed the Bay of Isles, discovering and naming places such as Lucky Bay and Thistle Cove. Whalers, sealers and pirates followed, as did pastoralists and miners, keen to exploit the free land and cash in on the gold boom in the gold fields to the north.
The first European settlement of the Esperance townsite area was by the Dempsters, a pioneer family of Scottish descent, in the 1860s. The Dempster brothers – Charles, Edward, Andrew and James – were granted 123,000 hectares (304,000 acres) of land in the area, first settling in 1864. They initially brought sheep, cattle and horses overland from Northam, but in 1866 they shipped stock to the Esperance area from South Australia. They built Esperance's first landing, but only one ship made the Adelaide to Esperance voyage in the first year.
Once other settlers started taking up land on the Esperance coastal plain, a small settlement developed, serving as an important link in the Overland Telegraph between Albany and Eucla. A telegraph station was opened in 1876, although the formal gazettal of the townsite did not occur until 1893.
The town jetty was also built through the 1890s, following the discovery of gold in the eastern goldfields region. At this point, Esperance became the "gateway to the Goldfields."
The population of the town was 985 (623 males and 362 females) in 1898.
After visiting the town in 1898, Western Australian Premier John Forrest pledged to construct a railway line between Esperance and the Goldfields. However, due to a perceived threat that Adelaide merchants would take Goldfields trade away from Fremantle merchants via the Esperance port, Norseman was connected by rail to the Goldfields and Fremantle, but the line was not extended to Esperance. A railway line between Coolgardie and Esperance was eventually completed in 1927.
The Mallee area approximately 100 km (60 mi) north of the town began grain production in the 1920s, and by 1935 the construction of a second jetty, tankers jetty, was completed. After a rail link had been established between Salmon Gums and the Esperance port in 1925, the wheat harvest rose from 1,495 tonnes (1,471 long tons) that year to 4,446 tonnes (4,376 long tons) in 1929 and more than 15,858 tonnes (15,608 long tons) two years later.
Large-scale agriculture was introduced to the Esperance sand plain by an American syndicate, in partnership with the state government, in the 1960s following the discovery that adding superphosphate fertilisers containing trace elements to the poor soils made them suitable for cropping and pastoral activity. Despite early difficulties, the project eventually became a success and large areas of land were cleared during this time.
The population of the town in 1968 was approximately 2,700.
In 1979, pieces of the space station Skylab crashed onto Esperance after the craft broke up over the Indian Ocean. The municipality fined the United States $400 for littering. …