Fitzgerald, Western Australia

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Fitzgerald is a small rural town and locality in Western Australia. It sits in the Shire of Ravensthorpe, in the Goldfields-Esperance region, north of the South Coast Highway. It is about 390 km southeast of Perth, 83 km south of Newdegate, and 58 km west of Ravensthorpe.

The area is traditional land of the Wudjari people of the Noongar nation.

Fitzgerald was officially established in 1967 as a service centre for the surrounding farming area, which was opened up for settlement in the 1950s. The name Fitzgerald comes from the nearby river and land district.

Population and area: Fitzgerald covers about 2.87 square kilometres and had a population of 0 in the 2016 census. The postcode is 6347. It falls under the Shire of Ravensthorpe for local government, the state electorate of Roe, and the federal division of O’Connor.

Education: Fitzgerald had primary schools that were part of the town’s development. The first school opened in February 1966 with 12 pupils and was replaced the next year. The second school building burned down in August 1967 and was replaced by a third building that used gas instead of wood heaters. The school closed later, and the building was relocated to Ravensthorpe in 1997. The Fitzgerald Primary Schools are listed on the Shire of Ravensthorpe’s heritage register.

In short, Fitzgerald is a small, historically farming-focused locality with a notable history of school development, located on traditional Indigenous land in western Australia.