History of West Australia

Due to its age, all of the material in the book is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced.

Kimberly, an American, came to Australia from Chicago in the mid-1880s and edited commemorative histories of the gold mining towns of Ballarat and Bendigo, both published by F. W. Niven & Co. in Melbourne.

In late 1895 he approached John Forrest with a proposal for a similar project if the Government of Western Australia would make a £2,000, equivalent to A$363,000 in 2022, subsidy grant.

Kimberly accepted and with assistant and Melbourne journalist J. J. Pascoe completed the 340,000 word project in 18 months.

[1]: 679 The book consists of two parts: The first (and larger) section up to page 348 deals with the history of Western Australia from the earliest European hypotheses of the country's existence in the 14th century through to May of the year of publication (1897), including extensive detail on European exploration across the state from 1829.