Church Growth Part 3

Continuing with Jesse's masters paper, this next section is a short brief on the General History of Perth.

Perth is located in the Western side of Australia. Originally, the Eastern part of Australia was a penal colony for Great Britain. Due to fears of the French establishing a colony in Western Australia, there was a push to colonize the West. Thus, in 1829 the city of Perth was founded and named after the birthplace of Sir George Murray who was British Secretary of State for the colonies. On May 2nd of that year Charles Fremantle sailed to the area and claimed all the territory outside of New South Wales for Britain. Similar to the conflict between the indigenous people of the United States and the colonists, there were natives in Western Australia who were driven from their land to make way for the new colony. Also like the population boom in the Western United States which came about because of the gold rush, so too did Perth see an influx of people towards the end of the 19th century after the discovery of gold (Lambert). Perth became widely known as the “City of Lights” when U.S. astronaut John Glenn told the world he had seen the city’s lights during his historic orbit around the Earth in February of 1962. There was also international attention on Perth later that year when the British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in the city (Aboriginal Connection and European Settlement). Many people have moved from the highly populated areas in the eastern Australia such as Sydney and Melbourne, to the slower paced and historically lower cost of living which exists in the western side of the country.