Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Eucla, Western Australia

Encyclopedia : E : EU : EUC : Eucla, Western Australia


colspan="2" class="hiddenStructure" | colspan="2" style="line-height: 1.2; border-bottom: 1px solid #CEDEFF;" |
Location of Eucla in Western Australia (red)
|- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Postcode || 6443 |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | State || Western Australia, Australia |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Latitude and Longitude || [31°43′S 128°53′E] |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Local Government Area || Dundas |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | State Electorate || Goldfields-Esperance |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Federal Electorate || Western Australia |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | First explored || 1841 |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | First surveyed || 1870 |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Proclaimed or gazetted as a town|| 1877 |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Proclaimed a municipality|| |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Declared a city|| |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Historic population counts || |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Population 2001 census || |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | '''Population – current estimate|| 50 |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Highway(s) || |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | River(s) || |- class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top;" | Railway link (date) || |}
Road Sign
Enlarge
Road Sign

Eucla is the easternmost town in Western Australia, and is the largest settlement on the Nullarbor Plain. It is located at [31°43′S 128°53′E], on the Great Australian Bight approximately 13 kilometres (8 miles) west of the South Australian border. It is in the Shire of Dundas in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. It has a population of about 50 people.

Eucla's climate is dry and usually mild, though very hot days can occur accompanied by hot northerly winds from the Great Victoria Desert. Average maximum temperatures vary from 25–26 °C from December to March, to 18 °C in July. The average annual rainfall of 267 mm is evenly spread through the year, with monthly totals ranging from 14 mm in January to 31 mm in May. The highest temperature was 47.9°c (118.2 °F) on 3 January 1979.

The Eucla area was passed through by the explorer Edward John Eyre in 1841. A port was discovered at Eucla in 1867, and in 1870, John Forrest camped at the location for nearly two weeks. In 1873, work commenced on a telegraph line from Albany to Adelaide. Land was set aside at Eucla for the establishment of a manual repeater station, and when the telegraph line opened in 1877, Eucla was one of the most important telegraph stations on the line. A major function of the station before the introduction of morse code in Australia was as a conversion point between the two telegraphy standards used in Western Australia and South Australia. A jetty and tram line were also constructed for offloading supplies brought in by sea.

In the 1890s a rabbit plague passed through the area and ate much of the Delisser Sandhills' dune vegetation, thus destabilising the dune system and causing large sand drifts to encroach on the townsite. The original town was abandoned, and a new townsite established about five kilometres to the east. The ruins of the telegraph station still stand amongst the dunes, and are a local tourist attraction.

The origin of the name Eucla is uncertain. Eyre did not record any name for the area in 1841, but by the time of Forrest's visit in 1870, Eucla was the accepted name for the area. Probably Eucla is a form of an Aboriginal name for the area.

Telegraph Station
Enlarge
Telegraph Station

See also

External links

 


From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: