Places/portgregory.html
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Port Gregory
Wikipedia:
Port Gregory, formally called Boat Harbour, was established in 1849 and named after brothers Augustus and Frank Gregory, two of Western Australia's most active explorers. In May 1853 sixty convicts and Pensioner Guards arrived from England via Fremantle in the brigantine Leander and the cutter Gold Digger. A townsite was gazetted in 1853 as Pakington near the shore, with Lynton gazetted around the same time as the convict depot and townsite for the guards, 1.4 km inland on the Hutt River. The convicts were used for Government works and in establishing a road to the Murchison River and the Geraldine lead Mine, operated from 1849 to 1875. Ticket-of-leave men from the depot were hired out for work at the port and on nearby farms and stations.
A major employer was Captain William Ayshford Sanford who, as magistrate for the region and the Superintendent of Convicts, built an impressive homestead alongside Lynton. He resigned in 1854 and took up pastoral and whaling pursuits, establishing a whaling facility just north of the Pakington townsite. John Bateman and others also established whaling facilities nearby. The name Pakington was rarely used however and the name Port Gregory, the harbour located next to the town, was more generally accepted. Initially the port was used by whalers and pastoralists and to ship lead ore and pig lead from the mines, notably the Geraldine mine. Salt from nearby Hutt Lagoon was shipped until the depression when the port and both the 'towns' became deserted.
The town is now called Gregory.
References and Links
Wikipedia page.
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 22 April, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/places/portgregory.html (it was last updated on 17 April, 2024). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.