Esperance, Western Australia
Encyclopedia
Esperance is a large town in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia
, located on the Southern Ocean
coastline approximately 720 kilometres (447.4 mi) east-southeast of the state capital, Perth
. The shire of Esperance is home to 9,536 people as of the 2006 census, its major industries are tourism
, agriculture
, and fishing
. It is connected by public transport to Perth via Transwa
coach service GE1, GE2, GE3 and GE4.
vessel Gulden Zeepaert, skippered by François Thijssen
, passed through the blue waters off the Esperance coast.
French explorers are credited with making the first landfall near the present day town, naming it and other local landmarks whilst sheltering from a storm in this area in 1792. The town itself was named after a French ship, the Espérance
, commanded by Bruni d'Entrecasteaux
. Esperance, roughly translated, is French for 'hope'.
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 area of the Esperance townsite was first settled by the Dempsters, a pioneer family of Scottish
descent, in the 1870s. 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. The mallee area approximately 100 km north of the town began grain production in the 1920s and by 1935 the construction of a second jetty, tankers jetty, was completed.
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 element
s 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 lands were cleared during this time.
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. The fine was paid in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners, and paid the fine on behalf of NASA. Skylab's demise was an international media event, with merchandising, wagering on time and place of re-entry and nightly news reports. The San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 prize for the first piece of Skylab to be delivered to their offices. 17-year-old Stan Thornton scooped a few pieces of Skylab off the roof of his home in Esperance, Western Australia and caught the first flight to San Francisco, where he collected his prize.
In January 2007, Esperance experienced, as the national media claimed, "the perfect storm" with wind gusts of up to 110 km/h and brought 155mm of rainfall within 24 hours, causing significant flooding. More than 100 homes were damaged, several boats were destroyed, trees were felled and 35m of bridge on the South Coast Highway
, the main road linking Esperance to Perth
, was washed away and power was cut from thousands of homes. The Western Australian Government declared the area a "natural disaster zone". Over 25,000 sheep were killed in the storm.
and Esperance Anglican Community School. The Anglican school won an appeal in December 2009 against a State Government condition which limited it to grades 8–10; the school can now educate years 8–12.
Curtin TAFE also has a campus in the town.
, scuba diving
, and swimming. Also nearby are a number of salt lakes, including Pink Lake
, which gains its rosy hue from red algae
living within its waters. Esperance is most noted for its coastline and has been voted Australia's best beaches, Australia's whitest sand and Western Australia's most popular beach. Esperance is also home to the Cyclops wave, said to be the worlds heaviest wave with massive amounts of water unloading on shallow reef. Cyclops is featured in the surfing films Billabong
Odyssey, and the Bra Boys
documentary.
There are five major national park
s near the town. A major nearby tourist attraction, 20 minutes away from the town centre, is the Cape Le Grand National Park
, which offers a picturesque coast of largely granite
terrain and sheltered white sand beaches. The park is a popular spot for recreational fishing, as well as four wheel drive
enthusiasts and hikers
. Esperance also has a number of wind turbine
s supplying electricity to the town which is an amassing site. Late 2007 a television
advertisement promoting one of the newer Ferrari
cars was filmed on Esperance's foreshore, to be shown overseas.
(Köppen climate classification
Csb) with warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters. It is subject to wide variations in the weather, from hot summer days when northerly winds arrive from the interior of the state, to cold, wet winter days with southerly winds from the Great Southern Ocean.
$54-million-dollar upgrade in 2002. The upgrade made the port one of the deepest in southern Australia, capable of handling Cape-class
vessels (up to 180,000 tonnes) and fully loaded Panamax
-class vessels (up to 75,000 tonnes).
Exports for the year ending June 2005 were 7,694,155 tonnes, including 1.8 million tonnes of grain, and 5.5 million tonnes of iron ore which is railed from Koolyanobbing
.
for export by ship. When elevated levels of lead were measured in a number of adults and children as well as in water tanks, a multi-million-dollar cleanup was paid for by the state government. The miner, Magellan Metals
, was banned from exporting lead through the port.
A parliamentary inquiry presented its report in November 2007. Before long, additional concerns were raised about pollution caused by nickel dust escaping from exported ore. In October 2008 the Esperance Port Authority banned the export of nickel after emission targets were exceeded twice, but the ban, which threatened WA’s $8 billion nickel industry, was overturned by the newly elected Premier of Western Australia
, Colin Barnett
.
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...
, located on the Southern Ocean
Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60°S latitude and encircling Antarctica. It is usually regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions...
coastline approximately 720 kilometres (447.4 mi) east-southeast of the state capital, Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
. The shire of Esperance is home to 9,536 people as of the 2006 census, its major industries are tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
, agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, and fishing
Fishing industry
The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products....
. It is connected by public transport to Perth via Transwa
Transwa
Transwa is Western Australia's regional public transport provider, linking 275 destinations within Western Australia, from Kalbarri in the north to Augusta in the south to Esperance in the east along with the regional centres of Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Northam, Geraldton and Albany.Transwa is...
coach service GE1, GE2, GE3 and GE4.
History
European history dates back to 1627 when the DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
vessel Gulden Zeepaert, skippered by François Thijssen
François Thijssen
François Thijssen or Frans Thijsz was a Dutch explorer who explored the southern coast of Australia.He was the captain of the ship t Gulden Zeepaerdt when sailing from Cape of Good Hope to Batavia...
, passed through the blue waters off the Esperance coast.
French explorers are credited with making the first landfall near the present day town, naming it and other local landmarks whilst sheltering from a storm in this area in 1792. The town itself was named after a French ship, the Espérance
French ship Espérance (1781)
The Espérance was a Rhône class scow of the French Navy, later reclassified as a frigate. She earned fame as one of the ships of Bruni d'Entrecasteaux' expedition, along with Recherche...
, commanded by Bruni d'Entrecasteaux
Bruni d'Entrecasteaux
Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was a French navigator who explored the Australian coast in 1792 while seeking traces of the lost expedition of La Pérouse....
. Esperance, roughly translated, is French for 'hope'.
In 1802, British navigator Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders
Captain Matthew Flinders RN was one of the most successful navigators and cartographers of his age. In a career that spanned just over twenty years, he sailed with Captain William Bligh, circumnavigated Australia and encouraged the use of that name for the continent, which had previously been...
sailed the Bay of Isles, discovering and naming places such as Lucky Bay and Thistle Cove. Whalers
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
, sealers and pirates followed, as did pastoralists
Pastoralism
Pastoralism or pastoral farming is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep. It may have a mobile aspect, moving the herds in search of fresh pasture and...
and miners, keen to exploit the free land and cash in on the gold boom in the gold fields to the north.
The area of the Esperance townsite was first settled by the Dempsters, a pioneer family of Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
descent, in the 1870s. 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
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
in the eastern goldfields region. The mallee area approximately 100 km north of the town began grain production in the 1920s and by 1935 the construction of a second jetty, tankers jetty, was completed.
Agriculture was introduced to the Esperance sand plain by an American syndicate in partnership with the state government
Government of Western Australia
The formation of the Government of Western Australia is prescribed in its Constitution, which dates from 1890, although it has been amended many times since then...
in the 1960s following the discovery that adding superphosphate fertilisers containing trace element
Trace element
In analytical chemistry, a trace element is an element in a sample that has an average concentration of less than 100 parts per million measured in atomic count, or less than 100 micrograms per gram....
s 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 lands were cleared during this time.
In 1979, pieces of the space station
Space station
A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a crew which is designed to remain in space for an extended period of time, and to which other spacecraft can dock. A space station is distinguished from other spacecraft used for human spaceflight by its lack of major propulsion or landing...
Skylab
Skylab
Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA, the space agency of the United States. Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a mass of...
crashed onto Esperance after the craft broke up over the Indian Ocean. The municipality fined the United States $400 for littering. The fine was paid in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners, and paid the fine on behalf of NASA. Skylab's demise was an international media event, with merchandising, wagering on time and place of re-entry and nightly news reports. The San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 prize for the first piece of Skylab to be delivered to their offices. 17-year-old Stan Thornton scooped a few pieces of Skylab off the roof of his home in Esperance, Western Australia and caught the first flight to San Francisco, where he collected his prize.
In January 2007, Esperance experienced, as the national media claimed, "the perfect storm" with wind gusts of up to 110 km/h and brought 155mm of rainfall within 24 hours, causing significant flooding. More than 100 homes were damaged, several boats were destroyed, trees were felled and 35m of bridge on the South Coast Highway
South Coast Highway
South Coast Highway is a Western Australia highway. It is a part of the Highway 1 network.With a length of , it runs from Esperance to Walpole roughly in parallel to the Western Australia's south coast...
, the main road linking Esperance to Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, was washed away and power was cut from thousands of homes. The Western Australian Government declared the area a "natural disaster zone". Over 25,000 sheep were killed in the storm.
Facilities
There are five primary schools in the region: Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Primary School, Castletown Primary School, Esperance Primary School, Nulsen Primary School and Esperance Christian Primary School. There are also two secondary schools: Esperance Senior High SchoolEsperance Senior High School
Esperance Senior High School is a comprehensive public high school located in Esperance, a regional centre southeast of Perth, Western Australia.-History:...
and Esperance Anglican Community School. The Anglican school won an appeal in December 2009 against a State Government condition which limited it to grades 8–10; the school can now educate years 8–12.
Curtin TAFE also has a campus in the town.
Tourism
Near the town itself are numerous beaches, offering surfingSurfing
Surfing' is a surface water sport in which the surfer rides a surfboard on the crest and face of a wave which is carrying the surfer towards the shore...
, scuba diving
Scuba diving
Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....
, and swimming. Also nearby are a number of salt lakes, including Pink Lake
Pink Lake (Western Australia)
Pink Lake is a salt lake in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. It lies about west of Esperance and is bounded to the East by the South Coast Highway.-Description:...
, which gains its rosy hue from red algae
Red algae
The red algae are one of the oldest groups of eukaryotic algae, and also one of the largest, with about 5,000–6,000 species of mostly multicellular, marine algae, including many notable seaweeds...
living within its waters. Esperance is most noted for its coastline and has been voted Australia's best beaches, Australia's whitest sand and Western Australia's most popular beach. Esperance is also home to the Cyclops wave, said to be the worlds heaviest wave with massive amounts of water unloading on shallow reef. Cyclops is featured in the surfing films Billabong
Billabong
Billabong is an Australian English word meaning a small lake, specifically an oxbow lake, a section of still water adjacent to a river, cut off by a change in the watercourse. Billabongs are usually formed when the path of a creek or river changes, leaving the former branch with a dead end...
Odyssey, and the Bra Boys
Bra Boys
The Bra Boys is an Australian surf gang founded and based in Maroubra, an eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. Dating back to the 1990s, the gang has gained notoriety through violent clashes with members of the public and police...
documentary.
There are five major national park
National park
A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...
s near the town. A major nearby tourist attraction, 20 minutes away from the town centre, is the Cape Le Grand National Park
Cape Le Grand National Park
Cape Le Grand National Park is a national park in Western Australia, south-east of Perth and east of Esperance. The park covers an area of The area is an ancient landscape has above sea level for well over 200 million years and remained unglaciated...
, which offers a picturesque coast of largely 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...
terrain and sheltered white sand beaches. The park is a popular spot for recreational fishing, as well as four wheel drive
Four Wheel Drive
The Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, more often known as Four Wheel Drive or just FWD, was founded in 1909 in Clintonville, Wisconsin, as the Badger Four-Wheel Drive Auto Company by Otto Zachow and William Besserdich.-History:...
enthusiasts and hikers
Hiking
Hiking is an outdoor activity which consists of walking in natural environments, often in mountainous or other scenic terrain. People often hike on hiking trails. It is such a popular activity that there are numerous hiking organizations worldwide. The health benefits of different types of hiking...
. Esperance also has a number of wind turbine
Wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or...
s supplying electricity to the town which is an amassing site. Late 2007 a television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
advertisement promoting one of the newer Ferrari
Ferrari
Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, as Scuderia Ferrari, the company sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street-legal vehicles as Ferrari S.p.A. in 1947...
cars was filmed on Esperance's foreshore, to be shown overseas.
Climate
Esperance experiences a mediterranean climateMediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate is the climate typical of most of the lands in the Mediterranean Basin, and is a particular variety of subtropical climate...
(Köppen climate classification
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by Crimea German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen himself, notably in 1918 and 1936...
Csb) with warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters. It is subject to wide variations in the weather, from hot summer days when northerly winds arrive from the interior of the state, to cold, wet winter days with southerly winds from the Great Southern Ocean.
Esperance Port
The only port in the south-east of Western Australia, the Esperance Port Authority completed an AUDAustralian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
$54-million-dollar upgrade in 2002. The upgrade made the port one of the deepest in southern Australia, capable of handling Cape-class
Capesize
Capesize ships are cargo ships originally too large to transit the Suez Canal . To travel between oceans, such vessels used to have to pass either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. In effect Capesize reads as "unlimited"...
vessels (up to 180,000 tonnes) and fully loaded Panamax
Panamax
Panamax and New Panamax are popular terms for the size limits for ships traveling through the Panama Canal. Formally, the limits and requirements are published by the Panama Canal Authority titled "Vessel Requirements"...
-class vessels (up to 75,000 tonnes).
Exports for the year ending June 2005 were 7,694,155 tonnes, including 1.8 million tonnes of grain, and 5.5 million tonnes of iron ore which is railed from Koolyanobbing
Koolyanobbing, Western Australia
Koolyanobbing is located 54 km NNE of the town of Southern Cross, Western Australia.Iron ore is mined here by a subsidiary of Cliffs Natural Resources of Cleveland, Ohio. Ore is railed to port at Esperance for export...
.
Lead and nickel contamination
In 2007, the deaths of thousands of wild birds alerted residents to a toxic hazard which was found to be the unsafe transport by truck and rail of lead ore from WilunaWiluna, Western Australia
Wiluna is a complex town in the Mid West region of Western Australia. It is situated on the edge of the Western Desert at the gateway to the Canning Stock Route and Gunbarrel Highway. It is the service centre of the local area for the local Aboriginal people, the pastoral industry, mining, and...
for export by ship. When elevated levels of lead were measured in a number of adults and children as well as in water tanks, a multi-million-dollar cleanup was paid for by the state government. The miner, Magellan Metals
Magellan Metals
Magellan Metals operates a lead mine at Wiluna in Western Australia.Magellan Metals is wholly owned by and the principal operating asset of Ivernia Inc., an international base metals mining, exploration and development company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol IVW.The Magellan...
, was banned from exporting lead through the port.
A parliamentary inquiry presented its report in November 2007. Before long, additional concerns were raised about pollution caused by nickel dust escaping from exported ore. In October 2008 the Esperance Port Authority banned the export of nickel after emission targets were exceeded twice, but the ban, which threatened WA’s $8 billion nickel industry, was overturned by the newly elected Premier of Western Australia
Premier of Western Australia
The Premier of Western Australia is the head of the executive government in the Australian State of Western Australia. The Premier has similar functions in Western Australia to those performed by the Prime Minister of Australia at the national level, subject to the different Constitutions...
, Colin Barnett
Colin Barnett
Colin James Barnett , Australian politician, is the leader of the Western Australian Liberal Party, the 29th and current Premier of Western Australia since the 2008 election and served as the Treasurer of Western Australia in 2010. He was sworn into office by Governor Ken Michael on 23 September 2008...
.
Notable residents
- Beatles guitarist, George HarrisonGeorge HarrisonGeorge Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
often visited a property at CondingupCondingupCondingup is a town in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. The town is in the Shire of Esperance local government area, south east of the state capital, Perth. At the 2006 census, Condingup and the surrounding region had a population of 429....
, a farming region near Esperance. - West Coast EaglesWest Coast EaglesThe West Coast Eagles are an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League. The club is based in Perth, Western Australia. The club was founded in 1986 and played its first games in the 1987 season. Its current home ground is Subiaco Oval...
star forward, Quinten LynchQuinten LynchQuinten Peter Lynch is a West Coast Eagles Australian rules footballer. He mainly plays at full forward and centre half forward, and is a regular goal-kicker.-Career:...
, calls Grass PatchGrass Patch, Western AustraliaGrass Patch is a small town in the Mallee region of Western Australia, located 79 km north of Esperance on the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway. The town was named after a nearby farm of the same name that had been settled around 1896 and was renowned for bountiful crops and good grass...
, a farming region of Esperance home. - Former NeighboursNeighboursNeighbours is an Australian television soap opera first broadcast on the Seven Network on 18 March 1985. It was created by TV executive Reg Watson, who proposed the idea of making a show that focused on realistic stories and portrayed adults and teenagers who talk openly and solve their problems...
actor Dan ParisDan ParisDan Paris is an Australian actor. He is best known for playing the role of Drew Kirk in the Australian soap opera Neighbours.Paris was born in Perth, Australia and was raised in Esperance in Western Australia....
was raised in Esperance and works as a photographer and helps with the harvestHarvestHarvest is the process of gathering mature crops from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper...
season in surrounding farms.