Onslow, Western Australia

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Onslow Western Australia
Population:	700
Established:	1880s
Postcode:	6710
Location:	1386 km (861 mi) from Perth 259 km (161 mi) from Karratha
LGA:	Shire of Ashburton
State District:	North West Coastal
Federal Division:	Kalgoorlie

Climate chart for Onslow

temperatures in °C • precipitation totals in mm

Imperial conversion

Onslow is a coastal town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, 1,386 kilometres (861 mi) north of Perth. It currently has a population of around 700 people and is located in the Shire of Ashburton Local Government Area.

Onslow was originally founded in 1883 as a port at the mouth of the Ashburton River for exporting wool from the sheep stations of the Pilbara hinterland. It was named after the then Chief Justice of Western Australia, Sir Alexander Campbell Onslow (1842-1908). Wool continued to be the major industry for the next eighty years of the town's history, in spite of the extraordinary extremes of drought and flood that characterise the region and are related to the passage or absence of cyclones. To be exact, whereas in 1912 Onslow received only 14.8 millimetres (0.58 in) of rainfall and in 1935 and 1936 combined only 120 millimetres (4.7 in), between late January and early March 1961 three cyclones smashed into the town and gave it 900 millimetres (35.4 in) in five weeks.

Although a large jetty was built at the original site of Onslow, repeated damage whenever a cyclone hit or the Ashburton River flooded led government officials in Perth to establish a new town well away from the river after another cyclone in January 1925. The new location for Onslow proved rather better protected from the cyclones' violence. However a major long-term drought between 1935 and 1941, during which time only one cyclone hit (in April 1937) and did not produce rain on the inland sheep stations, led to a decline in Onslow's fortunes.

During World War II, Onslow was the most southerly town in Australia bombed by the Japanese.

Since the war, the declining purchasing power of wool, has, in spite of consistently good rainfall on the inland sheep stations since the late 1960s, led to a change in focus of Onslow's economy from wool to tourism. Onslow is currently the major town of the "Coral Coast" and is a base for such activities as scuba diving on the coral reefs offshore from the town.