Deakin, Western Australia

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Deakin is a remote locality and is the last railway siding in Western Australia on the Trans-Australian Railway, and the closest to the border of Western Australia and South Australia, which is the 129th meridian east.

Western Australia State in Australia

Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, and the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a total land area of 2,529,875 square kilometres, and the second-largest country subdivision in the world, surpassed only by Russia's Sakha Republic. The state has about 2.6 million inhabitants – around 11 percent of the national total – of whom the vast majority live in the south-west corner, 79 per cent of the population living in the Perth area, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated.

Trans-Australian Railway railway line

The Trans-Australian Railway crosses the Nullarbor Plain of Australia from Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. It includes a 478-kilometre (297 mi) stretch of dead-straight track, the world's longest, between the 797 km (495 mi) post west of Ooldea and the 1,275 km (792 mi) post west of Loongana.

Western Australia border

The Western Australian border was originally designated as 129th meridian east longitude. However, the border marked on the ground is some distance from this line. Kununurra is the Western Australia town closest to the border, being about 25 km west of the border with the Northern Territory. 1,734 km to the south lies Border Village, South Australia on Eyre Highway, which is about 250 m from the border.

Deakin is important in the history of South Australia and Western Australia in the part it has played in the determinations of fixing the Western Australian border with South Australia by marking the border on the ground.

South Australia State of Australia

South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres (379,725 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population. It has a total of 1.7 million people, and its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second largest centre, has a population of 28,684.

Historic sites close to Deakin are the Deakin Pillar (1921), [1] [2] [3] from which the position was determined of the Deakin Obelisk (1926), being about 2.82 km to the east of the Deakin Pillar. [4]

Both sites were used to fix the border, and the Deakin Obelisk is the point on the earth which determines the border with South Australia by a line taken from the centre of a copper plug embedded into the concrete obelisk. Both sites are close to the Trans-Australian Railway. [5]

See also

Notes

  1. "PERTH OBSERVATORY". The West Australian . Perth: National Library of Australia. 18 October 1923. p. 9. Retrieved 11 January 2012.
  2. "STATE BOUNDARIES". The Argus . Melbourne: National Library of Australia. 19 October 1923. p. 14. Retrieved 11 January 2012.
  3. "LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE". The Brisbane Courier . National Library of Australia. 20 October 1923. p. 3. Retrieved 11 January 2012.
  4. "FIXING THE SA—WA BOUNDARY". The Argus . Melbourne: National Library of Australia. 11 October 1941. p. 10 Supplement: The Argus Week-end Magazine. Retrieved 11 January 2012.
  5. "1921 Border Determinations". Kununurra Historical Society Inc. Retrieved 9 January 2012.

Coordinates: 30°46′01″S128°58′12″E / 30.767°S 128.970°E / -30.767; 128.970

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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