Esperance Housing CBD and Services WA WESTERN AUSTRALIA

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 at the 2006 census was 14,450 and its major industries are tourism, agriculture, and fishing.

[edit] History

Esperance location in Western AustraliaEuropean 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,[2] 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.[3] 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. [4]

In January 2007, Esperance experienced a torrential storm with wind gusts of up to 110km/h and 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 25,000 sheep were killed in the storm.[5][6]

DON PUGH CARAVAN TRIP 2008

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