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Tyranny of distance
 Travel
and communication between Western Australia and the eastern States was difficult
and expensive. The transcontinental railway line had been completed and
opened to passengers and freight in 1917, but the steamships which called
at Fremantle were still vital for trade and travel between Western Australia
and the rest of Australia. Although the first airmail service was established
in June 1929, air freight and air travel still remained a hazardous and
expensive business well beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Travelling to and from Perth was a major undertaking, with very few official visitors being present for the 1929 centenary celebrations. As Ralph Doig, a civil servant at the Premier's Department, recalls
"In those days it was a major event to come to Perth from
the Eastern States. This involved a five or six day trip in the train
each way and if you came by boat it could involve anything, so that interstate
visitors to and from Western Australia were a pretty rare occasion, and
it had to be pretty important to bring anybody across. Of course the same
thing applied to overseas. If you wanted to come from England, it was
a matter of a month in an overseas liner. Interstate visitors in those
days, and overseas visitors, were comparatively rare ... "
[Battye Library, OH2144, pp.74-75]
Little wonder that Canberra and the Federal Parliament would seem distant and irrelevant to many Western Australians.
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