Western Australia Day

Western Australia Day or simply WA Day (formerly known as Foundation Day) is a public holiday in Western Australia (WA), celebrated on the first Monday in June each year, to commemorate the founding of the Swan River Colony in 1829. Because of the date of the Western Australia Day public holiday, Western Australia does not have the King's Official Birthday public holiday in June, as do most of the other Australian states; it is held in September or October instead.

Background

HMS Challenger, under Captain Charles Fremantle, anchored off Garden Island on 25 April 1829. On 2 May, Fremantle officially claimed for Britain the part of the continent then called New Holland that was not already "included within the territory of New South Wales" which at the time extended to 129th meridian east of Greenwich.^: 11–12 The merchant vessel Parmelia – with the new colony's administrator Lieutenant Governor James Stirling, other officials, and civilian settlers on board – arrived on the night of 31 May and sighted the coast on 1 June. It arrived in Cockburn Sound on 2 June,^: 11 and finally anchored there on 6 June. The warship HMS Sulphur arrived on 8 June, carrying a British Army garrison. The Swan River Colony was officially proclaimed by Stirling on 11 June.

Ships carrying more civilian settlers began arriving in August, and on King George IV's birthday, 12 August, the wife of the captain of Sulphur, Helena Dance, standing in for James Stirling's wife Ellen Stirling, cut down a tree to mark the founding of Perth.

In 1832, Stirling decided that an annual celebration was needed to unite the colony's inhabitants, including settlers and Aboriginal Australians and "masters and servants". He decided that the commemoration would be held on 1 June each year (or if a Sunday, on the following Monday), the date originally planned by Stirling for Parmelia's arrival in recognition of the first and greatest British naval victory over the French in 1794, the "Glorious First of June".

The holiday was celebrated as Foundation Day up until 2011; in 2012, it was renamed Western Australia Day as part of a series of law changes recognising Aboriginal Australians as the original inhabitants of Western Australia.

References