The human history of Western Australia commenced "over 50,000 years ago and possibly as much as 70,000 years ago" with the arrival of Aboriginal Australians on the northwest coast. The first inhabitants expanded across the east and south of the continent.
The first recorded European contact was in 1616, when Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog landed on the west coast, having been blown off course while en route to Batavia, current day Jakarta.
Pearling in Western Australia includes the harvesting and farming of both pearls and pearl shells (for mother of pearl) along the north-western coast of Western Australia.
The practice of collecting pearl shells existed well before British settlement. After settlement, Aboriginal people were used as slave labour in the emerging commercial industry, a practice known as blackbirding. After 1886, with the rise of 'hard hat' diving, Asian divers from coastal and island regions became most common, leading to the pearling industry being the sole exception to the White Australia Policy of 1901.
The Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing Australian colonies — New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia (which also governed what is now the Northern Territory), Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia — united to form the Commonwealth of Australia, establishing a system of federalism in Australia. The colonies of Fiji and New Zealand were originally part of this process, but they decided not to join the federation.
Following federation, the six colonies that united to form the Commonwealth of Australia as states kept the systems of government (and the bicameral legislatures) that they had developed as separate colonies, but they also agreed to have a federal government that was responsible for matters concerning the whole nation. When the Constitution of Australia came into force, on 1 January 1901, the colonies collectively became states of the Commonwealth of Australia.
The Swan River Colony, also known as the Swan River Settlement, or just Swan River, was a British colony established in 1829 on the Swan River. This initial settlement place on the Swan River was soon named Perth, and it became the capital city of Western Australia.
The name was a pars pro toto for Western Australia. In 1831, the military outpost Frederick Town was transferred from the Colony of New South Wales to the Swan River Colony and renamed Albany, and on 6 February 1832, the Swan River Colony was renamed the Colony of Western Australia, when the colony's founding lieutenant-governor, Captain James Stirling, belatedly received his commission. However, the name Swan River Colony remained in informal use for many years.