November 1918
The Sacred Heart Church was opened in Beagle Bay.
2 September 1918
December 1918
The arrival of the Spanish Flu. Boonah arrived in Gage Roads on December.
Riots in Kalgoorlie between Southern Europeans and Australian miners.
Anzac Day Act was passed by the WA parliament. WA was the first state to make 25th April a public holiday.
Battle of the Barricades on Fremantle waterfront - industrial action.
First trans-continental flight, Melbourne to Perth.
The Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) toured the Southwest and Kalgoorlie to meet families of soldiers killed in the war.
Anzac pensions became the responsibility of the Commonwealth Repatriation Department.
12 March 1921
Edith Cowan elected to the Legislative Assembly, first woman elected to any Australian parliament.
Group settlement scheme begins in Manjimup.
First airmail service in WA.
Perth’s first regular bus service began.
December 1921
First commercial air service, Western Australian Airways, began in WA. The weekly air service was from Geraldton to Derby.
June 1922
Carrolup River Native Settlement is closed.
With the Empire Settlement Act, 1922 agreements were made between the Imperial, Commonwealth and State Governments to encourage British residents to migrate to Australia.
26 September 1923
General Post Office in Forrest Place opened.
Radio station 6WF conducted first WA radio broadcasts.
The Western Australian Airways route was extended from Perth to Derby.
Albany receives the first group settlers.
4 April 1925
May Holman - first Labor woman elected to any Australian parliament.
22 July 1926
Major flooding from the Swan River causes the Fremantle railway bridge to collapse.
Fremantle Bridge Collapse, 1926 ((CC BY 2.0) Donna Barber, flickr)
Cheese factory had been established at Manjimup.
Muresk Agricultural College in Northam opens.
Two detectives from the Kalgoorlie Gold Stealing Detection Unit, Inspector John Pitman and Sergeant Alexander Walsh, are murdered during an investigation into gold theft.
The Metropolitan Omnibus Co was established.
Lemnos Hospital opened in Shenton Park, to support returned servicemen who had mental illnesses.
Aborigines are banned from entering the centre of Perth. Those who worked in Perth were required to carry identification and a pass. (This law remained in force until 1948.) There was also a 6pm curfew, requiring Aboriginal people to have travel permits if they needed to travel after this time. This law remained until 1953.
Woolworths Pty. Ltd. opens the first of its Perth-based stores.
The Hon James T Franklin Franklin became the first Lord Mayor of Perth.
Aero Club of Australia (W.A. Branch) - later Royal Aero Club - is incorporated.
Air services to other Australian states began.
3 June 1929
'Talkies' or movies with sound are seen in Perth for the first time.
24 November 1929
12 August 1929
Perth unemployed and police clash outside the Treasury Building after between 5000 and 7000 people held a protest march.
First interstate phone service opened. Perth is connected to Adelaide (and subsequently the rest of the eastern states) by a telephone line.
Jim Larcombe, aged 17, discovers the Golden Eagle nugget at Larkinville near Widgiemooltha; it weighs 1,135oz (35.325kg).
State lottery introduced into Western Australia.
University of Western Australia moved from Perth to its current location.
Newspaper House was constructed on St George’s Terrace for the West Australian newspaper.
22 March 1933
March 1933
Lottery Commission began and made its first grants distribution.
In an Advisory Referendum in 1933, 68% of voters favoured secession. The Premier, Philip Collier, argued in London for secession but the British decided they could not grant it.
Goldfields race riots between Southern Europeans and Australian miners resulting in one of Australia’s worst race riots.
The Moseley Royal Commission heard evidence about the Moore River Native Settlement.
Flying Doctor service started in WA.
26 June 1935
The Lacepede Islands near Broome were struck by a cyclone, which sank 21 pearling luggers with 141 lives lost. This was Australia's second deadliest cyclone in the 20th century.
Pavlova dessert named in honour of Ballerina Anna Pavlova.
Commissioner for Native Affairs replaces Protector of Aborigines, but the Commissioner continued the legal authority granted by the Aborigines Act 1905.
September 1939
Australia declared war on Germany.
3 May 1940
The town of Northam was declared 'an area in which it shall be unlawful for natives not in lawful employment to be or remain'. The law was revoked in 1954.
Harvey and Rottnest Internment Camps established. Parkeston transit camp established.
29 April 1941
19 November 1941
Battle between HMAS Sydney and the German raiding ship Kormoran off the coast near Carnarvon. Both ships sank, and the entire crew of 645 on board Sydney were lost.
March 1942
Broome was attacked by Japanese planes. Japanese also bombed Kalumburu, Wyndham, Carnot Bay, Port Hedland, Exmouth and Onslow.
1942
March / April 1942
1942
1943
US Navy Catalina flying boat fleet was based at Matilda Bay. The Americans brought sixty to seventy Catalinas, and 1,200 personnel. American, Australian and Dutch pilots and crew used the Swan River for training purposes, and undertook missions that were as far away as Ceylon.
September 1945
Over 800 Aboriginal workers took part in a Pilbara strike for human rights recognition and payment of fair wages and working conditions. This was the first Indigenous strike in Australia.
Western Australia entered the country's domestic cricket competition, the Sheffield Shield. Although Western Australia only entered on a probationary basis, it managed to win the Shield in its first season.
The New Coolbaroo League founded aiming to begin lobbying to allow Aboriginals to legally begin living in Perth once again.
Australian citizenship began. Previously, Australians were regarded as British Subjects. Aboriginal people were included but had to renounce their Aboriginality in order to access Federal rights.
2 July 1949
Douglas DC-3 Fitzroy crashed after take-off from Guildford aerodrome, killing all 18 people on board.
Townsite of Halls Creek moved 12 kilometres (7 mi) west after flooding and regazetted.
26 June 1950
The worst civil aircraft accident in Australian history occurred when all 29 people on board the Douglas DC-4 Amana died after it crashed near York on a flight from Perth to Adelaide.
29 June 1950
1950
1950
9 December 1950
1951
October 1952
1954
First Narrows bridge begins construction.
March 1954
Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh visited WA.
1955
1955
Gordon Stephenson and John Alistair Hepburn prepared a plan for Perth and Fremantle.
Perth, WA ca 1955 (CC BY-SA 3.0 E. W. Digby, wikimedia commons)
1956
19 July 1958
Trams in Hay Street (1949)
(Cliff Bottomley, National Archives of Australia image A1200, L12192)
August 1958
Metropolitan Transport Trust established by the State government.
1959
13 November 1959
Narrows bridge opened to traffic linking north and south of the river. At the time, it was the largest precast prestressed concrete bridge in the world.
7 May 1960
January / February 1961
Bushfires ravaged Western Australia leaving 800 homeless.
1961
1961
March 1961
September 1962
22 November - 1 December 1962
Perth gets the name 'City of Light' as John Glenn passed over the city in his Mercury spacecraft.
The Bendix G15 becomes the first functional computer to be installed in WA. It was second hand and cost 21,000 pounds. It had just 7kb of memory.
1962
The first computers were installed in the Main Roads Department.
November 1962
The Queen and Prince Phillip visit Lake Kununurra, which is then officially opened by Sir Robert Menzies.
January 1963
NASA builds a tracking station at Carnarvon.
Oil was discovered in commercial quantities by West Australian Petroleum Pty Ltd at Barrow island.
26 October 1964
Donald Campbell broke the world water speed record in the Bluebird K7 on Lake Dumbleyung. He reached 442 km/h. Campbell died in the same vehicle in 1967 in a later record attempt in England.
January 1965
1966
17 August 1966
16 September 1966
Western Mining Corporation establishes Australia's first nickel mine at Kambalda.
1966
1966
4 March 1966
Australian Constitution amended to give Federal jurisdiction over Aborigines, and the inclusion of Aborigines in the Census. This brought the end of state-based discrimination.
On 31 December, all 26 people on board MacRobertson Miller Airlines Flight 1750 from Perth to Port Hedland died when the aircraft, a Vickers Viscount, crashed near Port Hedland.
14 October 1968
1969
1969
The last of Perth's trolleybuses were retired from service.
September 1969
A huge nickel deposit is found in the Laverton area, instigating the famous "Poseidon share market bubble".
1969
March 1970
December 1970
1970
1971
August 1971
2 October 1972
Departmental reorganisation resulted in the functions of the then Native Welfare Department being split between two new Departments, the Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority (AAPA) and the Department of Community Welfare. The role of Commissioner ended with the creation of the Department of Community Welfare.
1972
1972
1973
August 1973
17 September 1974
North West Coastal Highway from Geraldton, Western Australia to Port Hedland completely sealed.
March 1975
8 March 1975
1978
December 1978
Townsite of Fitzroy Crossing is gazetted, however town had existed since the 1900s.
2 June 1979
1979
11 July 1979
The NASA space station Skylab crashed in the remote south-eastern part of the state. Places like Rawlinna and Balladonia received international attention.
20 July 1979
1 September 1979
1981
1981
1983
1983
26 September 1983
Death penalty removed from the statute books.
7 April 1984
January 1985
1985
1985
December 1985
1986
1986
Muirhead Royal Commission Inquiry into Deaths in Custody which found Western Australia had the greatest number of cases to be heard, with 36 deaths being reported to the Commission. Of those, 32 were found to be within jurisdiction and reported upon.
1988
January 1989
Kalgoorlie and Boulder amalgamate to become the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
1989
21 December 1989
12 February 1990
19 November 1990
1991
Joondalup railway line is opened, becoming the first new line opened in over 100 years.
4 April 1992
26 September 1992
1994
French Consulate in Perth was firebombed (WA’s only act of political terrorism).
1996
1998
June 2000
August 2001
Census data revealed that 77.5% of Western Australia's population was of European descent: the largest single group was those reporting English ethnicity, accounting for 733,783 responses (32.7%), followed by Australian with 624,259 (27.8%), Irish with 171,667 (7.6%), Italian with 96,721 (4.3%), Scottish with 62,781 (2.8%), German with 51,672 (2.3%), and Chinese with 48,894 responses (2.2%). There were 58,496 Indigenous Australians in Western Australia in 2001, forming 3.1% of the population.
The Western Power Wind Farm is located at Sand Patch, to the west of Albany.
20 February 2005
2006–07 wheat production in WA was nearly 10 million tonnes, accounting for almost half the nation's total and providing $1.7 billion in export income.
The median individual income was A$500 per week in Western Australia (compared to A$466 in Australia as a whole). The median family income was A$1246 per week (compared to A$1171 for Australia).
October 2007
15 October 2007
December 2007
2008
21 and 22 March 2010
2010
February 2011
2011 census data, the most common ancestries in Western Australia were English 29.0% (848,230), Australian 24.8% (724,360), Irish 6.4% (187,038), Scottish 6.4% (186,475) and Italian 3.8% (111,894).33.2 % of Western Australians were born overseas and 3.1% were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.
28 - 30 October 2011
Perth hosted Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting; Queen Elizabeth II visited.
Australian Government added the West Kimberley to its National Heritage List.
Construction of Brookfield Place was completed. Formerly known as City Square tower, the skyscraper is the second tallest in Western Australia and the eighth tallest in Australia.
A Noongar Tent Embassy set up on Heirisson Island to oppose the West Australian government's proposed $1 billion over 10-year deal to extinguish native title of 30,000 southwest Noongar Aborigines. After 3 police raids the tents were removed by WA Police on 22 March.
2015
January 2016
Elizabeth Quay, a mixed-use development project in the Perth central business district opens.
March 2017