 The federal government built the Trans-Australian Railway in 1917 to connect Kalgoorlie, Western Australia and Port Augusta, South Australia.However, it was not until 1970 that gauge conversion enabled through trains to operate on standard gauge tracks along the entire corridor., the rail corridor carried 81 per cent of land freight between the eastern states and Perth, up from 60 per cent in 1996–97; and in November 2007, 3.46 billion gross tonne-kilometres of freight was carried, a record at the time.