Hopetoun is a town on the south coast of
Western Australia
Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...
in the
Shire of Ravensthorpe. Located on Mary Ann Harbour, Hopetoun is south-east from capital city
Perth
Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...
, west of
Esperance and 41 kilometres (25 mi) south of
Ravensthorpe.
History
Mary Ann Harbour was named in November 1865 by the sealer James Sale on the
cutter ''Mary Ann''. ''Mary Ann'' was owned by whaling master John Thomas of
Cheyne's Beach, east of
Albany, who had named it after his eldest daughter.
Hopetoun was established in 1900 as the port servicing the
Phillips River goldfield, named after the first
Governor-General of Australia,
John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun.
The townsite was gazetted on 9 February 1901.
The town became a shipping port for the mining industry, with a jetty built in 1901, the terminus of a
railway line between Hopetoun and
Ravensthorpe that operated from 1909 to 1935. The port was closed in 1937, with the jetty remaining until its destruction in 1983.
Some of the town's electricity is generated by a wind-diesel system. Hopetoun has two 600 kilowatt wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...
s and two low-load diesel generator
A diesel generator (DG) (also known as a diesel genset) is the combination of a diesel engine with an electric generator (often an alternator) to generate electrical energy. This is a specific case of an engine generator. A diesel compress ...
s.
The population in the 2016 census was 871, a 38% fall from 1,398 in 2011
The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...
, due to the closure of the nearby Ravensthorpe Nickel Mine. Hopetoun was a major site of accommodation for the mine, east of the town of Ravensthorpe. There is a primary school, police station and a doctor has clinics in both Hopetoun and Ravensthorpe. Hopetoun also has a hotel, motel, tavern, bakery, IGA supermarket, two cafes, post office/general store, hairdressers, beauty salon, community resource centre, chemist and two real estate agencies.
Geography
Hopetoun is located 9km from the eastern entrance of the Fitzgerald River National Park
Fitzgerald River National Park is a national park in the Shire of Ravensthorpe, Shires of Ravensthorpe and the Shire of Jerramungup in Western Australia, southeast of Perth. The park is recognised on National Heritage List (Australia), Austral ...
, separated by bushland and the Culham Inlet with East Mount Barren overlooking the town. The only sealed road into the park, Hamersley Drive, is located on the outskirts of Hopetoun. The surrounding coastal heathlands and shrublands are part of the globally recognised Fitzgerald Biosphere.
Climate
Hopetoun possesses a warm-summer Mediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate ( ), also called a dry summer climate, described by Köppen and Trewartha as ''Cs'', is a temperate climate type that occurs in the lower mid-latitudes (normally 30 to 44 north and south latitude). Such climates typic ...
( Köppen: Csb) with warm, relatively dry summers and mild, drizzly wet winters. Average maxima vary from in February to in July, while average minima fluctuate between in February and in July. Annual precipitation
In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls from clouds due to gravitational pull. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, rain and snow mixed ("sleet" in Commonwe ...
is rather low, (averaging , but is quite frequent: being spread across 133.4 precipitation days. Extreme temperatures have ranged from on 6 January 2010 to on 4 July 2014.
References
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Coastal towns in Western Australia
Shire of Ravensthorpe