Perth is the sunny gem of Western Australia: the most isolated capital in the world, stretched along the wide Swan River facing the Indian Ocean, with a relaxed pace of life, almost always blue skies and some of the most beautiful city beaches in the country. Far away from everything — thousands of kilometres from Sydney or Melbourne — Perth has an identity all its own, a mix of modern metropolis, beach culture and nature right on the doorstep.
The city boasts one of the largest urban parks in the world, Kings Park, a huge green space on a hill with eucalyptus bushland, a botanic garden of WA flora and panoramic views of the skyline and the river. Below it, the revamped Elizabeth Quay waterfront connects the city centre with the water, and ferries cross to South Perth and the zoo. At sunset, the golden beaches of Cottesloe and Scarborough fill with people watching the sun sink into the Indian Ocean, and the cool afternoon breeze — the famous "Fremantle Doctor" — brings relief in summer.
This guide covers the essentials of Perth with a practical eye: how to get around with Transperth's new flat fare and the free CAT buses, what to see in the city and on its beaches, how to escape to Fremantle or Rottnest Island, and when to go (wildflower season in spring is magnificent). It's a city to take slowly, enjoy the sun and use as a base for exploring the treasures of south-western Western Australia.
Perth stands on Boorloo, the heart of the country of the Whadjuk Noongar people, who have lived in the south-west of Australia for tens of thousands of years and for whom the Kings Park hill (Kaarta Gar-up) and the Swan River (Derbarl Yerrigan) are places of deep significance. In 1829, Captain James Stirling founded Perth there as the capital of the Swan River Colony, Australia's first colony of free settlers, on Noongar land occupied without a treaty. The city grew slowly until the gold rush of the 1890s sent it soaring, and in the 20th century WA's mining booms turned it into a prosperous metropolis. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Australia's largest state, covering almost a third of the continent: the ancestral land of the Noongar people and dozens of desert nations, colonised from the Swan River Colony in 1829, transformed by Kalgoorlie gold and today a global iron ore powerhouse. Its capital, Perth, is the most isolated major city on the planet.
Read the history of Western Australia →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 13 activities in Perth. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Three are below so you get the idea: tap any of them and they all open.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the word "Perth" existed, the place where its skyscrapers now stand was called Boorloo, and it was (and for its people still is) Whadjuk Noongar country. The Noongar are the Aboriginal nation of south-western Australia, one of the largest cultural groups on the continent, and they have lived in this region for tens of thousands of years. Boorloo was part of Mooro, the tribal lands of the leader Yellagonga, one of several Whadjuk groups settled around the Swan River.
For the Whadjuk, Perth's landscape is full of sacred meaning. The Swan River is called Derbarl Yerrigan, and in their Dreaming tradition it was created by the Waugal, the great rainbow serpent that wound across the land, shaping the rivers, wetlands and hills. The hill where Kings Park stands today, Kaarta Gar-up or Mooro Katta, was a ceremonial site and an important lookout. The wetlands of Matagarup (today's Heirisson Island, in the river) were a rich fishing ground. The modern city sits, quite literally, on a sacred geography.
The Whadjuk managed their territory with deep seasonal knowledge. They divided the year into six Noongar seasons according to changes in the weather, plants and animals, and they used fire to care for the land. When Europeans arrived in 1829, they found a country that was lived in and looked after, not an empty land. An estimated 6,000 to 10,000 Noongar lived in the region. That ancient presence, long ignored by colonial history, is now recognised in the very name of the great state museum, Boola Bardip ("many stories"), and in the Welcome to Country ceremonies that open public events in the city.
Perth's colonial history began in 1829, when Captain James Stirling founded the Swan River Colony on behalf of the British Crown. Sydney and Hobart began as penal colonies for convicts. The Swan River settlement was different: it was planned as Australia's first colony of free settlers, funded with private capital and meant to attract emigrants, who would receive land in return for bringing capital and workers. The colonisation of Whadjuk country formally began on 18 June 1829, when a proclamation naming Stirling lieutenant governor was read on Garden Island.
Stirling decided to found two settlements. One was a trading port at the river mouth, Fremantle. The other was an inland capital about 19 kilometres upstream, which he named Perth after the Scottish city (home of the British Secretary of State at the time). On 12 August 1829, a party laid Perth's foundation stone. Noongar land was taken without a treaty, without consent and without compensation, under the legal fiction of terra nullius ("nobody's land").
The colony's first years were extremely hard, and it came close to failing. The settlers had been misled by optimistic propaganda, and they found poor soils, huge distances and great difficulty in getting ahead. For the Whadjuk, the settlers' arrival was a catastrophe. The occupation of their land and water sources, European diseases, frontier violence and bloody episodes such as Pinjarra in 1834 devastated and displaced the Aboriginal population. The free-settler colony, the pride of the whole project, was built by dispossessing a people who had cared for that same land for thousands of years.
For its first few decades, the Swan River Colony grew extremely slowly. A shortage of labour and capital held back its development. In the end, the colony that had been founded in rejection of the convict system asked Britain to send it convicts so it would have workers. Between 1850 and 1868, about 10,000 convicts arrived in Western Australia. Their labour built much of the early infrastructure of Perth and Fremantle: roads, bridges and public buildings, including the imposing Fremantle Prison. Even so, the colony remained a remote and modest corner of the empire.
Everything changed in the 1890s with the gold rush. Huge goldfields were discovered in the WA interior, above all at Coolgardie (1892) and Kalgoorlie (1893), and fortune seekers flooded in from all over Australia and the world. The state's population multiplied, money poured in, and Perth, as the capital and gateway, was transformed almost overnight. Grand buildings went up and railways were laid out to the goldfields. A bold water pipeline hundreds of kilometres long was also built to supply Kalgoorlie. At last the city looked like a prosperous capital.
Gold also tipped the political balance. Prosperity and population growth gave WA the weight it needed to join the Australian Federation in 1901, though not without debate. Perth entered the 20th century as the capital of a vast and increasingly wealthy state. Its fortunes would be tied forever to the resources of its huge territory: first gold, and later iron ore, gas and other minerals that would make WA the engine of Australia's exports.
The 20th century established Perth as a modern city, driven by one boom after another in Western Australia's natural resources. Gold was followed, especially from the 1960s, by major booms in iron ore (from the gigantic mines of the Pilbara), nickel, natural gas and other minerals. These turned WA into an export powerhouse, particularly to Asia. Each boom left its mark on Perth: skyscrapers on the skyline, wealth, waves of immigration and urban growth that covered the coastal plain with suburbs.
Perth has always been shaped by its extreme isolation. It is one of the most remote capitals in the world, closer to Jakarta than to Sydney. Over time it developed an identity of its own, relaxed and built around the outdoors, the sun, the beach and the river. Moments such as the Australian yacht Australia II winning the America's Cup in 1983 (with Fremantle hosting the defence in 1987) put the region on the world map. Post-war immigration brought British, Italian and Greek arrivals, and later people from Asia and all over the world. The result is a growing diversity in Perth that you can see today in Northbridge's lively food scene.
The flip side of this prosperity was a long silence about the history and rights of the Noongar, whose land underpinned all that wealth. Only in recent decades has Perth society begun to face its colonial past and recognise the traditional owners of Boorloo. Milestones include the Mabo decision (1992), which overturned the fiction of terra nullius, the recognition of native title rights and a historic settlement with the Noongar of the south-west.
Twenty-first-century Perth is a sunny metropolis of about 2.3 million people: prosperous, modern and proud of its outdoor lifestyle. WA's mining wealth still drives the city, and many of its towers house the headquarters of resource companies. But Perth has broadened its appeal. Projects such as the Elizabeth Quay waterfront redevelopment, Optus Stadium and the Boola Bardip museum have made it more cosmopolitan and enjoyable than ever, and so has a thriving scene of small bars, specialty cafés and restaurants.
The city lives facing its geography: the wide Swan River running through it, the golden Indian Ocean beaches where the sun sets over the sea, the huge Kings Park on the hill, and an enviable climate that makes outdoor living a local religion. On its doorstep you'll find Fremantle, with its port and convict history; Rottnest Island and its quokkas; and the Swan Valley and its wines. Further afield are the natural treasures of the south-west, from the wildflowers to Margaret River.
Perth is also increasingly recognising that all of this sits on Boorloo, Whadjuk Noongar country. The name Derbarl Yerrigan is once again used for the river, and the stories of the Waugal are told alongside those of Captain Stirling. Noongar culture, the oldest on the continent, with its six seasons, its art and its connection to this land, finally has a place in the city's story. Anyone walking through Perth today is in a young capital of skyscrapers built on gold and iron ore. They are also in one of the oldest inhabited landscapes on the planet.
