Australian Natural Resources Atlas

Natural Resource Topics

Agriculture - Statistics - Western Australia

Western Australia

Introduction

Western Australia covers an area of 2,525,500 sq. km, has a coastline of 12,500 km, and is 32.88% of the total Australian area. It stretches about 2,400 km in a north-south direction and about 1,600 km in a west-east direction. A little more than one third of the state lies within the Tropics, while the remainder extends southwards to the temperate zone.

Climatically, Western Australia has three areas; a predominantly summer rainfall pattern in the north, a characteristically Mediterranean-type winter rainfall pattern in the south, and between these a large region where there is an extreme variation of rainfall both annually and seasonally. The average annual rainfall of Western Australia is 310 mm compared with an Australian average of 420 mm.

Most of the State is a plateau between 300 metres and 600 metres above mean sea level and is one of the oldest known land areas. It goes back 2600 million years and has remained virtually unchanged for 1100 million years.

Colonisation of Western Australia began in earnest in 1826, when the British landed in Albany because of fears of French possession. Three years later Perth was founded by Captain James Stirling. In 1856 the arrival of convicts gave the economy and population a much needed lift. One of their most important tasks was the building of roads, which accelerated development inland. A total of 9668 convicts were transported between 1850 and 1868. Gold was discovered at Halls Creek in 1885, and a chain of finds south through the Ashburton and Murchison fields ended with the bonanzas at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. In the mid-1960's, huge iron-ore deposits were opened up in the Pilbara and this has led to another mining boom. The export-oriented mining industry is one of the most significant contributors to the State's economy

Western Australia has approximately 22,000 sq. km protected as national park. The largest is the 590,000 ha of the Hamersley Range park in the Pilbara, 1000 km north of Perth.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data has been analysed by the Bureau of Rural Sciences using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available from the Australian Spatial Data Directory

Select one of the following Statistical Divisions to view information for that region:

The figures and text are reproduced with permission of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, © Commonwealth of Australia, 2000.

Statistics

Area of region (ha): 252,598,913.50

Area

Agroforestry

Apples

Berry Fruit

Cattle and Calves

Cereals excluding Rice

Citrus

Cotton

Grapes

Legumes

Oilseeds

Other Livestock

Other Non-Cereal Crops

Other Vegetables

Pastures

Pears

Pigs

Plantation Fruit

Potatoes

Poultry

Sales of Livestock

Sheep and Lambs

Stone Fruit

Sugar Cane

Further information

Please Note: Not all the selected data items are available for every year or for every statistical region.

The figures reported here are a subset of the Agricultural Census data from 1982/1983 to 1996/1997 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, AgStats). The data have been analysed by Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia to report them using a consistent geographic base. Further information about the data is available through the Australian Spatial Data Directory.

The subset includes 436 data items for plant production and 40 data items for livestock which were commonly available in the AgStats database over the 15 year period and each year for respondents having an Estimated Value of Agricultural Operations (EVAO) above the cut-off of $22,500.

The data have been concorded by bringing data collected using different geographies to a consistent geographic base, being Version 2.6 Statistical Local Area (SLA) boundaries (ABS, 1996) and using the non-agricultural lands mask from the National Land and Water Resources Audit's National Landuse Map (1996/1997).

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