to the Goldfields and Fremantle, but the line was not extended to Esperance. A railway line between Coolgardie and Esperance was eventually completed in 1927. The Mallee area approximately north of the town began grain production in the 1920s, and by 1935 the construction of a second jetty, tankers jetty, was completed. After a rail link had been established between Salmon Gums and the Esperance port in 1925, the wheat harvest rose from that year to in 1929 and more than two years later. Large-scale agriculture was introduced to the Esperance sand plain by an American syndicate, in partnership with the state government, in the 1960s following the discovery that adding superphosphate fertilisers containing trace elements to the poor soils made them suitable for cropping and pastoral activity. Despite early difficulties, the project eventually became a success and large areas of land were cleared during this time. The population of the town in 1968 was approximately 2,700. In 1979, pieces of the space station Skylab crashed onto Esperance after the craft broke up over the Indian Ocean. The municipality fined the United States $400 for littering. The fine was paid in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners, and paid the fine on behalf of NASA. Skylab's demise was an international media event, with merchandising, wagering on time and place of re-entry, and nightly news reports. The San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 prize for the first piece of Skylab to be delivered to their offices. Seventeen-year-old Stan Thornton scooped a few pieces of Skylab off the roof of his home in Esperance, caught the first flight to San Francisco, and collected the prize. On 14 February 1991, the bulk carrier Sanko Harvest sank off Esperance, leaking of bunker oil and of fertiliser into the surrounding waters near the Recherche Archipelago; the wreck later became a marine sanctuary and dive site. In January 2007 Esperance experienced a storm with wind gusts of up to which brought of rainfall within 24 hours, causing significant flooding. More than 100 homes were damaged, several boats were destroyed, trees were felled, of bridge on the South Coast Highway, (the main road linking Esperance to Perth), was washed away, and power was cut from thousands of homes. The Western Australian Government declared the area a "natural disaster zone". At least 37,000 sheep were