Esperance, Western Australia

Esperance Western Australia
West Beach
Population:	14650
Established:	1896
Postcode:	6450
Mayor:	Ian Mickel
LGA:	Shire of Esperance
State District:	Eyre
Federal Division:	Kalgoorlie
Mean Max Temp Mean Min Temp Annual Rainfall 21.3 °C 70 °F 11.5 °C 53 °F 676.2 mm 26.6 in

Esperance is a town in Western Australia, located on the south coast around half-way between Albany and the South Australian border; 7 hours drive and 1 hour flight from the capital, Perth. Its population is almost 15,000 people, and its major industries are tourism, agriculture, and fishing.

Contents 1 History 2 Facilities 3 Tourism 4 Climate 5 Esperance Port 6 Notable residents 7 Twin town 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

History

European history dates back to 1627 when the Dutch 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 the French ship, the L'Espérance,^[1] 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.^[2] A telegraph station was opened in 1876, although the formal gazettal of the townsite did not occur until 1893.

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 never paid. 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. ^[3]

In January 2007, Esperance was rocked by two major events.

First, a torrential storm with wind gusts of up to 110km/h 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. The Western Australian Government declared the area a "natural disaster zone". Over 37,000 sheep were killed in the storm.^[4][5]

Secondly, commencing just before the storm, thousands of birds (including wattlebirds, yellow-throated miners, New Holland honeyeaters and singing honeyeaters, and some crows, hawks and pigeons) fell dead from the skies.^[6] Subsequent tests on bird samples collected from the Esperance townsite revealed the deaths had been caused by lead poisoning from dust escaping during loading of Magellan Metals product at the Esperance Port Authority.^[7] Tests on the town's population showed elevated lead levels among some residents, leading to a major clean-up operation. A Western Australian state parliamentary inquiry found the mining company Magellan Metals, several government departments and the Esperance Port Authority responsible for the lead pollution in the town.^[8]

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 Seventh Day Adventist Primary School. There are also two secondary schools: Esperance Senior High School and Esperance Anglican College which opened at the start of 2008. Curtin TAFE also has a campus in the town.

Tourism

Near the town itself are numerous beaches, offering surfing, scuba diving, and swimming. Also nearby are a number of salt lakes, including the Pink Lake, which gains its rosey 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, extremely heavy 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 parks near the town. A major nearby tourist attraction, 56 km 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 turbines supplying electricity to the town.^[9] Late 2007 a television advertisement promoting one of the newer Ferrari cars was filmed on Esperance's foreshore, to be shown overseas.

Climate

Esperance has a Mediterranean-type climate 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 A$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 7,394,155 tonnes, including 1.7 million tonnes of grain, and 5.3 million tonnes of iron ore which is railed from Koolyanobbing.

Notable residents

• Beatles guitarist, George Harrison owned a property in a farming region of Esperance, Condingup,
• West Coast Eagles star forward, Quinten Lynch, calls Grass Patch, a farming region of Esperance home
• Neighbours ex-star Dan Paris was raised in Esperance and works as a photographer and helps with the harvest season in surrounding farms.

Twin town

• Saint-Martin-de-Ré

See also

• Esperance Airport
• Archipelago of the Recherche

References

External links

• Shire of Esperance
• Esperance Visitor Centre
• esperance.yourguide
• Esperance Port Authority
• Court case begins over lead contamination