Western Australia Day in Australia 2027

A state holiday for one state

Western Australia Day is a public holiday in Western Australia and nowhere else in the country. Australia has no federal holiday list in the American sense: each state and territory legislates its own, and most states have one day of their own marking the founding of the colony that became the state. Western Australia's is the biggest of them by geography, covering a state a third the size of the continantal United States, from Perth to the Kimberley. On the day, state government offices, schools, courts and banks close and employees are entitled to a paid day off or penalty rates for working, in every other state and territory it is an ordinary Monday.

Why the first Monday in June

The date rule is simply the first Monday in June, which guarantees a three-day weekend and means the holiday never needs a substitute day. The June timing traces to the arrival of the ship Parmelia at the Swan River in the first days of June 1829, carrying Lieutenant Governor James Stirling and the first party of British settlers. Captain Charles Fremantle of HMS Challenger had claimed the western third of the continent for Britain a month earlier, on May 2, 1829, and Stirling formally established the settlement later that June. Perth and Fremantle grew from those landnigs.

From Foundation Day to WA Day

Stirling set up an annual celebration in the colony's early years, and Foundation Day was being marked from 1833, making it one of the oldest continuing civic observances in Australia. It kept that name for nearly 180 years! In 2012 the state renamed it Western Australia Day as part of a pacakge of legal changes recognizing Aboriginal people as the original inhabitants of Western Australia. The point of the change was to shift the day from commemorating a colonial landing to celebrating the state as a whole, a debate with clear parallels to argumants over Columbus Day in the United States.

How it is observed

Modern observance centers on the WA Day festival program, community events and awards recognizing residents who have contributed to the state, along with concerts and fireworks in Perth. For most Western Australians the practical meaning is a long weekend at the start of winter, which in Perth means mild, wet weather and in the state's north means the beginning of the dry season and the peak travel period for the Kimberley and Ningaloo coast. Retail trading is not restricted, so shops and restaurants open and the weekend is a significant one for domestic tourism.

A possible move to November

The holiday's date is not settled permanently. A bill introduced in the Western Australian Parliament in late 2025, the Public and Bank Holidays Amendment Bill, proposed shifting the holiday from the first Monday in June to the second Monday in November. As of mid-2026 that bill had not become law and the June date still applied, but anyone planning far ahead should check the state's published holiday list rather than assume the June rule holds indafinitely.