Portal:Western Australia/Did you know/Archive

The following list is an archive of former entries listed in the Did you know of the Western Australia portal. For queued entries see Portal:Western Australia/Nominate/Did you know.


 * Archived 4 May 2007
 * ...that Hamel, a town located in the South West of Western Australia, owes its name to solicitor and politician Lancel Victor de Hamel, the former owner of the land where the townsite is situated?
 * ...that Tryal Rocks is a reef off Western Australia named after the Tryall, the first shipwreck in Australian history?


 * Archived 11 September 2007
 * ...there are at least twelve large Rottnest Island shipwrecks?
 * ...that one reason why Foundation Day is officially celebrated on June 1 is because it is the anniversary of a famous British naval victory, the Glorious First of June?
 * ...that due to Claude de Bernales marketing of the gold fields of Western Australia in the 1930s, production increased sevenfold and employment in the industry quadrupled?
 * ...that the Concorde visited Perth Airport on four separate occasions including on its 20th anniversary tour in 1989?


 * Archived 17 September 2007
 * ...that Tranby House (pictured) is the oldest surviving brick building in Perth, Western Australia?
 * ...that the endemic Western Australian shrub Stirlingia latifolia is commonly known as "Blueboy" because wall plaster turns blue if made using sand taken from where the plant occurs?
 * ...that East Perth Cemeteries is a now-disused complex of seven independently administered cemeteries in Western Australia where as many as 10,000 people were buried between 1830 and 1919?
 * ...that Rear Admiral Sir Richard Trowbridge was the twenty-fifth Governor of Western Australia and the first officer of the Royal Navy to rise from boy seaman to captain of the Queen's yacht HMY Britannia?


 * Archived 29 April 2008
 * ...that Clontarf Aboriginal College in Western Australia is a former boys orphanage established by the Christian Brothers in 1901?
 * ...that Kingsley Fairbridge established the first child migration scheme for impoverished British children which over 68 years housed and educated 1,195 boys and girls at his farm school in Pinjarra, Western Australia?
 * ...that the Western Australian whaling industry operated for more than 140 years until the last whaling station closed in 1979?


 * Archived 29 May 2008
 * ...that the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme (pictured) which opened in Western Australia in 1903 included what was then the world's longest fresh-water pipeline at 530 km?
 * ...that the Hartog Plate is a pewter plate which was left on remote Dirk Hartog Island off Western Australia in 1616 and is the oldest-known artefact of European exploration in Australia?
 * ... that Calyute was an Indigenous Australian resistance leader who was involved in a series of battles with white settlers in the 1830s in colonial Western Australia?
 * ...that the Dictionary of Western Australians and the related Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australians are two biographical dictionaries which contain biographical details of over 20,000 individuals?


 * Archived 18 July 2008
 * ...that the Black Kangaroo Paw (Macropidia fuliginosa), is a plant native to Western Australia and survives being burned to the ground?
 * ...that the wine-producing region of Blackwood Valley is named after the longest continually flowing river in Western Australia?
 * ...that Belinda Dann, a member of Australia's Stolen Generation, died just months after being reunited with her family, who had been searching for her for over a century?


 * Archived 5 September 2008
 * ...that Australian Bob Marshall won the World Amateur Billiards Championship four times and the Australian championship 21 times in a career spanning 50 years?
 * ...that one egg laid in a clutch of two by the White-breasted Robin of Western Australia is much paler than the other?
 * ...that the Silver Centenary biplane, built in Beverley, Western Australia in 1930, received its airworthiness certificate 77 years after its first flight?


 * Archived 30 November 2008
 * ...that Dumas House, a government office building in Perth, Western Australia, is named in honour of engineer and public servant Sir Russell John Dumas?
 * ...that the New Norcia Cricket Team was a team of mainly indigenous cricketers who played in Western Australia between about 1879 and 1906?
 * ...that the world's most extensive deposits of eolianite, rocks formed by the lithification of sediments deposited by wind, are located on the southern and western coasts of Australia?


 * Archived 29 January 2009
 * ... that the Drummond Nature Reserve named after botanist James Drummond has 439 species of vascular plants?
 * ...that Western Australia's Number 1 sawmill, later called Deanmill, was constructed to provide timber railway sleepers for the Trans-Australian Railway?
 * ...that the Tingari cycle in Australian Aboriginal mythology embodies a vast network of Aboriginal Dreaming songlines that traverse the Western Desert region of Australia, and is frequently the subject of Aboriginal Art?


 * Archived 31 May 2009
 * ...that Cape Leeuwin, the most south-westerly point of the Australian continent, is named after the Dutch galleon Leeuwin?
 * ...that ethnographer Eric Mjöberg, leader of the first Swedish scientific expedition to Western Australia's Kimberley region, smuggled out indigenous human remains and that 90 years later, Sweden returned all 18 boxes of them?
 * ...that garden plant Grevillea 'Peaches and Cream', a hybrid of G. banksii from humid subtropical Queensland and G. bipinnatifida from the Mediterranean climate of Western Australia, tolerates the climates of both its parents?