Great Southern (Western Australia) in the context of "City of Albany"

The South West Land Division is one of five Land Divisions of Western Australia, a part of the cadastral divisions of Western Australia. It includes the cities of Perth, Albany, Bunbury, Busselton, Geraldton, and Mandurah. It also includes the regions of South West, Great Southern, Peel, most of the Wheatbelt, and the coastal areas of the Mid West.

The population of the division is about 2.2 million people, with 1.8 million living in the state capital, Perth, and a further 400,000 people living in the surrounding regional cities and rural areas. This leaves approx. 200,000 people living in the remainder of the state, most of them residing in the regional centres of Broome, Esperance, Kalgoorlie–Boulder, Karratha, and Port Hedland. Therefore, around 92% of Western Australia's population lives in this division.

Albany (/ˈælbəni/ AL-bən-ee; Nyungar: Kinjarling) is a port city in the Great Southern region in the Australian state of Western Australia, 418 kilometres (260 mi) southeast of Perth, the state capital. The city centre is at the northern edge of Princess Royal Harbour, which is a part of King George Sound. The central business district is bounded by Mount Clarence to the east and Mount Melville to the west. The city is in the local government area of the City of Albany. While it is the oldest colonial, although not European, settlement in Western Australia – predating Perth and Fremantle by over two years – it was a semi-exclave of the Colony of New South Wales for over four years until it was made part of the Swan River Colony.

The settlement was founded on 26 December 1826 as a military outpost of New South Wales for the purpose of forestalling French ambitions in the region. To that end, on 21 January 1827, the commander of the outpost, Major Edmund Lockyer, formally took possession for the British Crown of the portion of New Holland not yet claimed by the Crown; that is, the portion west of the 129th meridian east, with the portion east already being claimed collectively by the Crown as New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. During the last decade of the 19th century, the town served as a gateway to the Eastern Goldfields. For many years, it was the colony's only deep-water port, having a place of eminence on shipping services between Britain and its Australian colonies. The opening of the Fremantle Inner Harbour in 1897, however, saw its importance as a port decline, after which the town's industries turned primarily to agriculture, timber and later, whaling.

Bald Island is an island that is located in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. The island is 1.5 kilometres (1 mi) offshore from Cheynes Beach and is a protected area managed by the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

The island is a World Conservation Union Category IA nature reserve. (A Class A Nature Reserve, No 25869, managed by Parks and Wildlife was created in 1964.) With an area of 8.09 square kilometres (1,999 acres) the island is one of the largest off the South Coast.Composed almost entirely of granite the island rises steeply from the ocean to a maximum height of 310 metres (1,017 ft).The island was isolated around 10,000 years ago by rising sea levels.

The Wheatbelt is one of nine regions of Western Australia defined as administrative areas for the state's regional development, and a vernacular term for the area converted to agriculture during colonisation. It partially surrounds the Perth metropolitan area, extending north from Perth to the Mid West region, and east to the Goldfields–Esperance region. It is bordered to the south by the South West and Great Southern regions, and to the west by the Indian Ocean, the Perth metropolitan area, and the Peel region. Altogether, it has an area of 154,862 square kilometres (59,793 sq mi) (including islands).

The region has 42 local government authorities, with an estimated population of 75,000 residents. The Wheatbelt accounts for approximately three per cent of Western Australia's population.