Western Australia

A third of the continent, governed from a city closer to Jakarta than to Sydney, and periodically inclined to leave. The Swan River Colony was founded in 1829 as a free settlement, failed to attract enough labour, and asked for convicts in 1850 - the reverse of every other colony's trajectory. It was poor and empty until gold was found at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in the 1890s, which quadrupled the population in a decade and brought in eastern diggers who wanted federation. The colony's government did not, and only agreed after the goldfields threatened to separate. Distance has defined it since: a pipeline was built to carry water five hundred kilometres to Kalgoorlie in 1903, and the transcontinental railway promised at federation took until 1917. In 1933 the state voted two to one in a referendum to secede from Australia; the request was sent to London and refused on procedural grounds. The modern economy is iron ore, natural gas, gold and lithium, dug in the Pilbara and shipped to Asia, which makes the state the country's largest export earner and ties it to Chinese demand more tightly than any other. Fly-in fly-out work has replaced permanent mining towns. The region also holds some of the oldest continuous evidence of human occupation on the continent, including rock art in the Burrup Peninsula sitting beside gas plants. Perth is among the most isolated large cities in the world. Perth is the capital and holds most of the state's people. The Nullarbor Plain separates it from the east by road. Broome's pearling industry drew Japanese, Malay and Filipino divers from the 1880s. The state covers a third of the continent.

• Existed: 1829 CE – present
• Type: Entity