History of Greenough Flats
History of Greenough Flats
Historical Chronology
In 1527 Menezes, a Portuguese navigator blown off course while on route to
the spice island, was nearly wrecked on reefs on the Western Australia
Coast. He wrote on his chart “ abri vossos olhos” (keep your eyes open)
1801 French explorer Baudin in Geographe named Jurien Bay and is responsible
for many French names on the coast. 200,000 plant, animal and mineral
samples were taken back to France. Hence Kangaroos were first in France upon
the return voyage.
Around 1629 two mutineers from the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia
were stranded on what is now called the Batavia Coast, as punishment for
their barbarous actions following the wrecking of the ship in the Abrolhos
Islands. They were probably the first Europeans to "reside" in this area.
This was 200 years before the Swan River Settlement, now Perth, took place
in 1829.
In 1679 the area between Champion Bay and Drummond Cove was investigated by
Willem de Vlamingh, a Dutch Explorer who found huts and tracks to confirm
human habitation.
Philip King surveyed the coast by ship in 1822.
In 1839 George Grey's party conducted the first survey by land, in which he
observed a river "about five and twenty yard wide" which he named the
"Greenough"
Greenough was implicated in the expansion of colonial settlement in the
mid-nineteenth century, a developmental stage partly driven by the domestic
need for more agricultural pastoral land. Exploration of the district was
also tied to notions of Imperial extension and acquisition. Sir George Grey
named the Greenough River after George Bellas Greenough, president of the
Royal Geographical Society, and linked his glowing report of the country to
the Imperial cause.
'I have taken the liberty of naming this northern range after her most
gracious Majesty, "The Victoria Range"; and the extensive district of
fertile country, extending from its base to the sea, and having a length of
more than fifty miles in a north and south direction, I have also named the
"Province of Victoria" - trusting that her Majesty will not object to bestow
her name upon one of the finest provinces in this, her new, vast and almost
unknown empire; and which, protected in its very birth and infancy by her
fostering hand, will, doubtless, ere long, attain to no mean destiny among
the nations of the earth.' (Grey, p. 117)
To learn more of our history, click on the following time periods:
1822 - 1856 |
1857 - 1867 |
1868 - 1877 |
1880 - 1899 |
1900 - 1963 |
1963 - 1993
The Batavia |The Batavia Graveyard
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