Salmon Fishing at Hopetoun, Western Australia, 1949

A Western Australian salmon industry was established after the Second World War. With the opening of fish canneries at Perth in 1941, Busselton in 1949, Albany in 1947, and Hopetoun, Geraldton and Esperance in 1948, enabled salmon fishing to rapidly expand along the south and lower west coast. From 27 tonnes in 1941-42, the catch reached 2,523 tonnes in 1948-49. As the following series of photographs from Hopetoun in the 1940s show, salmon were captured in seine nets deployed by boat and pulled to shore by hand or by tractor.