Coolgardie is a small town in Western Australia, 558 kilometres (347 mi) east of the state capital, Perth.

Coolgardie was founded in 1892, when gold was discovered in the area known as Fly Flat by prospectors Arthur Wellesley Bayley and William Ford.

The town also supported a wide variety of businesses and services, including the railway connection between Perth and Kalgoorlie,[7] a swimming pool (first public baths in the state), many hotels and several newspapers.

The value of Coolgardie to the colony in the late 1890s was so very significant that it was used as leverage to force Western Australia to join the Australian federation.

Britain and the eastern colonies threatened to create a new state to be named Auralia around Coolgardie and other regional goldfields, such as Kalgoorlie, if the government in Perth did not agree to hold a referendum on federation.

The Western Australian government reluctantly complied and a referendum was held just in time to become a founding state in the new federation.

The federal electorate was abolished in 1913 due to the diminished population, as many of its residents left for other towns where the gold was still plentiful, and it soon ceased to be a municipality.

In March that year, a caravan of six Afghans, forty-seven camels and eleven calves, set out across the desert from Marree to the goldfield.

All of the Afghan Muslim population eventually relocated from Coolgardie generally to Perth, the new capital of Western Australia.