Its the biggest (2.5million sq km), sparsely populated and the most remote state in Australia. Western Australia is so huge that while its southern parts have a Mediterranean type climate, the south is lush, steamy and tropical.

WA (double-u-ay) as the locals call it, was a natural prison, the  perfect place to send away the unwanted dregs of British society. Discovered by the Dutchman Dirk Hartog in 1616, it was left alone in its solitary splendour until 1929, when the first settlers arrived in the Swan Valley (Perth) with the sole intent of thwarting French or other European efforts to gain ground in Australia. From 1850 to 1868, the poor convicts were put to hard labour to establish the colony and build the requisite infrastructure, but it wasn't till the gold rush in the 1890s, that any real progress was made in that direction.

Today, its mineral resources have made it one of the richest states of Australia, but it continues to remain in relative isolation from the rest of Australia owing to the enormous distances. Western Australians have been nicknamed ‘sandgropers’, after the cousins of the grasshoppers who successfully adapted to the sandy soils of the Swan Coastal Plain!