- Auralia
Auralia was a proposed state that would have been formed out of the south eastern portion of the colony of
Western Australia in the early twentieth century [cite web|url=http://www.liswa.wa.gov.au/federation/fed/028_gold.htm|title="Auralia"|work=Library and Information Service of Western Australia|accessdate=2007-06-18] , and would have joined the newly-formedCommonwealth of Australia . The name, meaning 'golden' inLatin , denotes the gold industries that were alive at the time - and which helped fermentsecession .The proposed state would have comprised of the Goldfields, the western portion of the
Nullarbor Plain and the port town ofEsperance . Its capital would have beenKalgoorlie .The push to secession was prompted by perceptions that the remainder of the West Australian colony under Sir
John Forrest was parochial and self-serving, and was dragging his feet towards federating the state with the emerging Commonwealth. A large portion of inhabitants in the goldfields had come to Western Australia from the other states in the past decade when Kalgoorlie experienced agold rush , and their loyalties were thus not usually directed towards Perth. Sir John Forrest was however demurring on federation in order to secure better concessions.Eventually the proposal was dropped when Western Australia joined the federation in 1901. In the 1933 secession referendum, the Goldfields was the only region of Western Australia to be against secession, instead arguing for a constitutional convention. [cite web|url=http://www.liswa.wa.gov.au/federation/sec/063_sece.htm|title="Secession!"|work=Library and Information Service of Western Australia|accessdate=2007-06-18]
ee also
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Secessionism in Western Australia References
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