Search results for "Interlude"

Search Results for: Interlude

Interlude Pursued – Part 8

Originally Published 15 December 2014: People of the Wild Cherry Above: Tijuk (Jeeuk-Bates), the Native or Wild Cherry, is related to the more widely known Quandong and a member of the Sandalwood Family. Also known as the Broom Ballart or Exocarpos Sparteus the plant is a weeping shrub native to Western Australia. Tijuk was totem to a clan of the Ngadgu (Ngadjumaia), Aborigines from the area north and east of …

Interlude Pursued – Part 7

Originally Published 31 October 2014: Background to Violence The events at Cocanarup during the 1880’s did not take place in a vacuum. Precedents of violent repression had been set along the Swan River since 1829, more forcibly at Pinjarra in 1834, the Vasse River and York District between 1835 and 1841 and at various …

Interlude Pursued – Part 6

Originally Published 11 October 2014: Cross-cultural understanding and the difficulty in researching old family histories Preface: The following post, as with others in the Interlude sequence, contains the names and images of deceased Aboriginal persons. Also contained is a discussion about the difficulties Aboriginal families of the South West of Western Australia …

Interlude Pursued – Part 5

Originally Published 1 October 2014: Above: Research takes time – I can’t go any faster. Photo Credit – http://blog.speedbit.com/?p=1485

Interlude Pursued – Part 4

Originally Published 15 September 2014: More thoughts on the movements and whereabouts of John James Dunn prior to March 20th, 1881 Above: Construction of the East-West telegraph line between Albany and Port Augusta, South Australia, impacted upon settlement along Western Australia’s South Coast. Both the Gillam and Dunn families established in …

Interlude Pursued- Part 3

Originally Published 31 August 2014: And the Dunns of Cocanarup; What do we know about John, James, George, Robert and Walter? Above: The Dunn brothers and sister, Eliza, probably taken around 1910 – After the death of brother George in 1907. Front row seated – Eliza, William & James. Back …

Interlude Pursued – Part 2

Originally Published 19 August 2014; And Yandawalla and Mulyall, who were they? Above: Unknown Noongar Brothers from an unknown origin. The photograph was taken from the Kaartdijin Noongar – Noongar Culture website. The men look to be brothers and look to be carrying the spoils of a recent hunt. There are so few …

Interlude Pursued – Part 1

Originally Published 12 August 2014: So, Who Was Dartambaum? When William Dunn walked in to the Albany Police station on Thursday, April 1st, 1880, he told Sergeant Furlong and the staff there that his brother John, ‘had left his station at Cocanarup on the 20th Ulto along with a native named …

Interlude Continued

Originally Published 3 August 2014: Regina Vrs Yungala Supreme Court – Perth Monday, 24th October, 1881 Above: Albany’s 1869 government building which housed the Court House, Post Office and Customs Office. Yungala was committed for trial at the Supreme Court in Perth after a hearing here on September 23rd, 1881, before Resident Magistrate …

Interlude Resumed

Originally Published 31 July 2014: Who were Henrietta Gillam and John Dunn? Above: Not Henrietta. There are no known photographs of Henrietta Gillam in the public domain so I had to go in search of an image that I thought might do her justice. This one from the Orien en Aeroplane cultural …

Interlude Postponed

Originally Published 29 July 2014: Police Vrs Yungala Reviewing the trial files of September 1881 This is taking longer than expected so I’m putting off my next post relating to The Lost Love Of Henrietta Gillam until I can do it justice.

Extended Interlude

Originally Published 26 July 2014: Above: Woodburn Homestead and Farm in 1913. The original dwelling is front and centre of the picture. By 1913 Woodburn had been sold to the Moir family. Photograph donated to the Albany History Collection by Gordon Norman. Following on from last week’s post I wanted to look into …

Interlude

Originally Published 16 July 2014: I fell for Campbell Taylor’s history for a whole lot of reasons, not least because he was among a select group of sons to first Albany settlers. These sons will come to occupy slabs of space in future history books relating to settlement along …

And he sailed in a ship called Success. . . Part 2

James Stirling and the quest for the Swan River Colony Above: AI generated portrait of 36-year-old Captain James Stirling, fifth son of Andrew and Anna Stirling, and second son to enter the Royal Navy under the patronage of his mother’s older brother, Admiral Charles Stirling. Image: Captain James Stirling …

Black Anderson: A Story of the South Coast – Part 2c

A long revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters

What was going on at Albany between January 1835 and December 1836

Continued from Part 2b

Cheyne, Albany and the root of James Stirling’s Swan River quest.

**Above:** Portraits of the (London) textiles and (Scottish) coalfields businessman, Andrew Stirling 1751-1823 (left), and his 5th son, James 1791-1865. The Stirling family were Navy men down their mother’s side and landowners and businessmen on their father’s. James Stirling was the second son to enter the Royal Navy under the patronage of their mother’s older brother, Charles. Images: Andrew – from Pamela Statham Drew’s biography, *James Stirling*, and James – drawn from the public internet domain.

Okay, before we go on to the four Anderson related court-cases of 1835 and 1836, we need to lay the groundwork beneath them as far as the town is concerned.

When we left off at the end of 1834 Cheyne had brought a settler collective from the Buffalo (Henry Townsend), Gem (Gordon & Sinclair), Jolly Rambler (R. H. Maddocks) and James Pattison (et al) together at his cottage for the purposes of petitioning the Colonial Secretary in London. The door to that position, however, had become something of a revolving one. The incumbent Secretary had changed five times since Stirling began campaigning for the colony in December 1826, the latest switch occurring just five months prior, so it’s likely Cheyne’s group didn’t know in particular who they were appealing to. A scenario in keeping with the general state of affairs vis-a-vis the troubled colony.

Cheyne was exasperated on multiple fronts and desperate to get things moving. Already, he was into his fourth year at the Sound and the best chance yet to kick-start the economy was withering before his eyes. The petition begged that Albany be reinstated as a convict depot in order that prisoners carry out essential road works, even though the idea was a breach of the social and economic precept upon which the colony was established. It might have taken a year, at best, if the plan worked, but it was more the impetus to try something than lean back and do nothing at all.

On the surface of things, Cheyne’s tactic had little to no chance of success. However, despite the urgency he was clearly trying to address, it begs the question as to why he thought it might. The answer to that lies in the frustration he felt toward the town’s agricultural prospects, but also with Stirling’s fundamental motivations for commencing the colony and the fact that Albany was not, originally, part of it.