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Mid West (Western Australia)

administrative region of Western Australia

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ606266 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Mid West region is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is a sparsely populated region extending from the west coast of Western Australia, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) north and south of its administrative centre of Geraldton and inland to 450 kilometres (280 mi) east of Wiluna in the Gibson Desert.

It has a total area of 285,497 square kilometres (110,231 sq mi), and a permanent population of about 54,000 people, more than half of those in Geraldton.

Earlier names

The western portion of this region was known earlier as "the Murchison" based on the river of the same name, and the similarly named goldfield.

Economy

The Mid West region has a diversified economy that varies with the geography and climate. Near the coast, annual rainfall of between 400 and 500 millimetres (16 and 20 in) allows intensive agriculture. Further inland, annual rainfall decreases to less than 250 millimetres (10 in), and here the economy is dominated by mining of iron ore, gold, nickel and other mineral resources. Geraldton is an important hub for the tourism industry. The Mid West also has the highest value fishing industry in Western Australia, with Geraldton the hub of the Western Rock Lobster industry. Western Rock Lobster netted almost $234.5 million in revenue for WA in the 2012–13 financial year, making it Australia's most valuable single-species wild capture fishery.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mid West (Western Australia)” is administrative region of Western Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through West, Western and Australia, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, West, Western and Australia is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “administrative region of Western Australia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q606266. Authority coordinates are -28.000, 114.000. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Mid West (Western Australia) primary sources, Mid West (Western Australia) archive and West research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Mid West (Western Australia)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.