Katanning is a town located 277 kilometres (172 mi) south-east of Perth, Western Australia on the Great Southern Highway.
Katanning is a town located 277 kilometres (172 mi) south-east of Perth, Western Australia on the Great Southern Highway. At the 2016 census, Katanning had a population of 3,687.
History
The meaning of Katanning is unknown but it is thought to be a local Aboriginal word Kart-annin that literally means "meeting place of the heads of tribes", Kartanup, meaning "clear pool of sweet water", or Katanning, which means "spiders on your back". Others suggest that the place is named after a local Aboriginal woman.
The first Europeans to explore the Katanning area were Governor James Stirling and Surveyor General John Septimus Roe who travelled through the area in 1835 en route from Perth to Albany.
In about 1870, sandalwood cutters moved into the area but they did not settle. It was not until the development of the Great Southern Railway, a land grant railway built by the West Australian Land Company from Beverley to Albany in 1889, that the township came into existence.
The townsite was initially developed by the West Australian Land Company. The state government purchased the railway and the townsite in 1896 and later formally gazetted the town in 1898, when the population of the town was 226, 107 males and 119 females.In April 1891 the Premier Roller Flour Mill was opened in the centre of the town by brothers Frederick Henry Piesse and Charles Austin Piesse. The mill provided an important cash market for local wheat growers. Initially the mill supplied flour to the whole of the Albany district, replacing more expensive imports from Adelaide. At that time Albany was Western Australia's principal port. The ground-floor street frontages of the mill were converted into shops from the 1930s, including a music shop, butchers', dress shops, a barber, and tearooms. By 2008 the building was owned by the Shire of Katanning, which sold it for $1 to a private developer who renovated the by-then dilapidated building and turned it into a hotel and restaurant that opened in 2018.Katanning remains an important centre on the Great Southern Railway to Albany.
Weather
Katanning sits on the border between the warm-summer and the purely subtropical mediterranean varieties with January and February being just below 22 °C (72 °F). Under the Köppen climate classification it is classified as Csb.
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