Meekatharra is a town in Western Australia with about 750 inhabitants. Meekatharra is an Aboriginal word and means “place with little water”. The Aborigines make up a significant proportion of the local population.
The place is 764 km northeast of Perth and can be reached via the Great Northern Highway . It is also a sheep and cattle transportation center. From here the cattle and sheep used to be transported to the cities by rail. Today this is done with road trains . There is a 2,181-meter-long aircraft runway that was built by the Americans during World War II . This runway belongs to an important ETOPS airport that serves for transcontinental flights to Australia. There is also a Royal Flying Doctor Service station and a School of the Air in town .
Meekatharra, like so many cities in Western Australia, came into being during the gold rush . The first settlement seems to have been built here in 1894. After gold miners Meehan, Porter and Soich found gold in May 1896, many prospectors moved from the other gold fields in East Murchison to the new settlement of Meekatharra. Soon the gold fields were swarming with people. But luck did not last long: if a second gold deposit had not been discovered in 1899, the city would probably not have survived. On Christmas Day 1903, Meekatharra finally obtained city rights. In 1910 the city received a train station. The station basically guaranteed the continued existence of the city. In the same year, the first shipment of wool was sent to the cities from here. This happened until the station was closed in 1978 and the conversion to road trains . Meekatharra experienced a significant gold rush during the mining boom in the 1980s. As a result, the “St. Barbara Mines's Bluebird open pit mine. After that, many residents of Meekatharra left the city because of the poor economic prospects.
climate
Meekatharra has a hot and dry climate. The annual rainfall is 200 mm to 500 mm per square meter.
