Cape Arid

Cape Arid National Park is a national park located in Western Australia, 731 kilometres (454 mi) southeast of Perth.

Cape Arid National Park is a national park located in Western Australia, 731 kilometres (454 mi) southeast of Perth. The park is situated 120 kilometres (75 mi) east of Esperance and lies on the shore of the south coast from the eastern end of the Recherche Archipelago. The bay at its eastern side is Israelite Bay, a locality often mentioned in Bureau of Meteorology weather reports as a geographical marker. The western end is known as Duke of Orleans Bay.

Its coastline is defined by Cape Arid, a bay called Sandy Bight and, further east, Cape Pasley.

The first European to discover the area was the French Admiral Bruni D'Entrecasteaux in 1792 and he named it Cap Aride; Matthew Flinders anglicized the name in 1802 and the park took its name from this feature.

Pioneer graziers arrived in the area in the 1870s and the ruins of homesteads, dams and buildings as well as gravesites can be found near Pine Hill and Thomas Fishery.

Bay whaling was conducted by Thomas Sherratt at Barrier Anchorage in the 1870s. John Thomas also seems to have had a bay whaling operation in the 1860s at Thomas's Fishery.