Burracoppin is a townsite on the Great Eastern Highway

Great Eastern Highway

The Great Eastern Highway is a major road between the Western Australian cities of Perth and Kalgoorlie. It is a key route for vehicles accessing the eastern wheatbelt and the eastern goldfields...

, east of Merredin

Merredin, Western Australia

-Economy:The agricultural land around Merredin produces 40% of Western Australia’s wheat quota. As a focal point for the region, Merredin’s local bulk handling co-operative receives and processes in excess of a million tonnes of grain every year...

 in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

.

The town was gazetted in 1891. It takes its name from Burracoppin Rock, a nearby granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 rock, the name of which was first recorded in 1864 as Burancooping Rock. It was also shown as Lansdowne Hill in 1836. It is an Aboriginal

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

 name said to mean "near a big hill".

It serves as a stop on the Prospector

Transwa Prospector

The Transwa Prospector is a standard-gauge passenger train operated by Transwa that runs between Perth, Western Australia, and the Goldfields town of Kalgoorlie.-History:...

 rural train service.

It is the setting for the novel Mr Jelly's Business by Arthur W. Upfield, one in the series of Napoleon Bonaparte whodunits.

Burracoppin is also the site where the first Rabbit Proof Fence (No. 1) was started in 1901, with construction heading south to Esperance

Esperance

Esperance may refer to:* Esperance , New York* Esperance , New York* Esperance, Washington* Esperance, Western Australia* Exuperantia , French saint* HMS Esperance, two ships of the Royal Navy* The battle cry of Henry Percy...

 and north towards Port Hedland. Burracoppin was the main depot for the Rabbit Proof Fence. All gates through the fence and wells for the fence runners (those who look after the fence) were numbered from this town.
Parts of the original fence are still viewable in Burracoppin along with some of the original gates.