Perth holds the strange distinction of being one of the most remote large cities in the world. Adelaide, the nearest Australian city of any size, lies more than 2,000 kilometers to the east across the Nullarbor Plain. Until the Trans-Australian Railway was completed in 1917, the only practical connection to the rest of the country was by sea, across the notoriously rough Great Australian Bight. That isolation has shaped the state's character. Western Australians, sometimes called Sandgropers, carry what the rest of Australia recognizes as a more independent spirit. Outside the Perth metropolitan area, fewer than 500,000 people occupy an area roughly the size of Western Europe. Towns like Albany and Broome, the largest beyond Perth, each hold fewer than 30,000 residents depending on the season.

The first European to sight Western Australia was the Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog, blown off course in 1616 while heading for Jakarta. Other Dutch ships followed in the next decade, but finding nothing worth exploiting, they left as quickly as they came. The British and French began exploring the southern coast in the late eighteenth century, and in 1826 the British established a settlement at King George Sound. Three years later, the Swan River Colony was founded, the seed of what would become Perth. Growth was painfully slow. Western Australia is the only state that never formed part of New South Wales, and it was the last colony to import convict labor, needing the workforce long after the eastern colonies had refused it. The discovery of gold at Kalgoorlie in the 1890s transformed everything, triggering a population boom that finally gave the colony enough people and revenue to function as a modern state.

The state spans every Australian climate zone: monsoonal tropics in the Kimberley, Mediterranean warmth around Perth and Margaret River, temperate forests in the southwest, and the vast arid interior that dominates the map. The Kimberley's Bungle Bungle formations in Purnululu National Park are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, their orange-and-black-striped sandstone domes looking like nothing else on the continent. The Ningaloo Reef runs 260 kilometers along the Gascoyne coast, close enough to wade to from the beach. At Shark Bay, living stromatolites offer a glimpse of life forms that helped produce the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere billions of years ago. Farther inland, the Canning Stock Route stretches 1,800 kilometers through some of the most remote terrain on the planet, with no facilities, fuel, or food along its length. Attempting it in summer, locals will tell you, is madness.

Mining is what fuels Western Australia's economy, and mining is what makes the state contentious. Iron ore from the Pilbara, gold from Kalgoorlie, nickel, lithium, and natural gas have generated enormous wealth, transforming Perth into a city of glass towers and waterfront restaurants. But that wealth has come at a cost. In 2020, mining giant Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge, a 46,000-year-old sacred site of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples, to expand an iron ore mine. The destruction shocked the nation and reignited debates about native land title, consultation with Indigenous owners, and the limits of extraction. Western Australia remains a place where the tension between economic ambition and cultural preservation plays out in real time, against a landscape so ancient that the rock beneath your feet was already old when the first corals began building reefs.

There are only two sealed roads into Western Australia. In the south, the Eyre Highway crosses the Nullarbor Plain from Adelaide, a minimum three-day drive through extraordinarily barren country that includes the longest stretch of straight road on the continent. In the north, the Victoria Highway connects the Kimberley with Darwin in the Northern Territory, a journey of at least a week from Perth. The Indian Pacific train offers a more civilized alternative, crossing from Sydney to Perth on one of the world's great rail journeys. For those who venture off the sealed roads, the Gibb River Road cuts through the heart of the Kimberley's majestic gorges, open only in the dry season. The Tanami Track crosses the desert to the Red Centre. The Gunbarrel Highway, despite its name, may not qualify as what most people think of as a road. Preparation is not optional. On some of these remote tracks, it could be weeks before anyone finds you if something goes wrong.