An early report from one of the first pioneers of York, Western Australia. Just under a hundred kilometres east of Perth, it was settled in 1831 and became the first inland town.
Thomas Carter arrived at Swan River in July 1830 on the Medina. He was one of those first settlers to arrive in York. Notably, he assisted in the construction of the mud brick Gwambygine Homestead, which was the first to be built in York and remains one of the earliest colonial buildings in Western Australia. Both Lieutenant Bunbury and Rev. Wollaston would stay there. While York was located in 1831, and received its first settler, Henry Bland, the town wasn’t officially settled until 1835. It grew slowly. By 1836, it still didn’t look much like a township, holding little more than a couple of houses and a barracks. Indeed, the following year “over 500,000 acres had been allotted in 113 separate grants, but there were only about 10 farms in actual existence in the York district” (Hasluck).
Here Carter writes to his family back in England. The letter is full of information on local farming conditions and colony politics. He writes: “we are in the midst of shearing the sheep … I continue to enjoy the blessings of health and that everything is going on with me as usual. I am anxious and expecting to hear from England every day by the Britomart which is hourly expected.” Turning to business matters, “the last season has been the dryest and most unfavourable we have experienced since the formation of the colony and will have a considerable effect upon the quality of the wool. I shall not therefore anticipate a high price as the staple is very weak it will otherwise be in much better condition than the last I sent. The sheep are now doing very well. We had a most trying time last lambing but have now much recovered. The dry season has just set in and I am afraid we shall be short of feed before we get more … The corn has also felt the effects of the drought …”
The pace of life in the first decades of the Swan River Colony was slow to start and, three weeks’ later, Carter was able to add to this letter while on business in Perth. He would have to wait some time for news, the Britomart did not reach Fremantle until 5 December that year.
In this second section, he turns attention to politics: “we expect a change very shortly in the Government as a Governor is expected very shortly. Sir James Stirling will leave this immediately that the Britomart arrives with official despatches that he is to be removed we have learned by way of India that [John] Hutt has been appointed to succeed him. I hope I shall find him independent and active. His coming in stranger will have no prejudices or interest to bias him as Sir James who always took an opportunity of favouring any district in which his own land was situated.”
The letter concludes with Carter referencing a subscription to Bell’s Weekly Messenger, stating that “it is very seldom that I can get a London paper.”
The site of the town was located, and founded, by the surveyor Robert Dale, then just twenty-years-old. Dale became the first European to cross the Darling Range and so discovered the Avon Valley in 1830 - in every respect as important for the Swan River Colony as Blaxland’s was for New South Wales. A highly accomplished young man, his Panoramic View of King George’s Sound … (1834) remains one of the outstanding pictorial representations of nineteenth-century western Australia.
Hasluck, Paul (“Polygon”), “Centenary of York. The First Inland Settlement” in The West Australian, Saturday, Sesptember 12, 1931, p.4: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/32375817 . Accessed 29 June 2020.
.
