Places/kojonup.html
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Kojonup
Kojonup's importance in the history of European settlement in Western Australia is that it is between the first settlement at King George's Sound (Albany) and the capital, Perth. Once a mail route was in existence along what would much later become Albany Highway, soldiers were posted there in 1837, followed in 1851 by members of the Enrolled Pensioner Force, who began some of the earliest farming in the area.
Alfred Hillman was surveying for a Perth-Albany road in 1837 when he was guided to a permanent spring by local Noongar people. He recommended the place to the governor as suitable for an outpost of progress. Lt Armstrong had the original wooden barracks built in September. By 1845 that had been replaced by a stone building which is still extant in 2021. Pensioners began to replace soldiers in 1851 and from 1854 they were given ten acres of land each to begin farming.
References and Links
Bignell, Merle 1971, First the Spring: A History of the Shire of Kojonup Western Australia, UWAP for Kojonup Shire Council.
Bignell, Merle ed. 1997, Tell Their Worth: Tales of the Shire of Kojonup, Kojonup Historical Society.
Bignell, Merle ed. 2001, All Their Might: Tales of the Shire of Kojonup, Kojonup Historical Society.
Harris, Joseph 1837, 'Journey overland from King George's Sound', Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 18 March.
Kojonup Historical Society website.
Redcoat Settlers page for the Kojonup military base (Diane Oldman)
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 5 June, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/places/kojonup.html (it was last updated on 17 April, 2024). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.