The Swan River Colony: Settlement of the Southwest

Abstract

Western Australia is Australia’s largest state and the second largest subnational entity in the world with climate ranging from tropical monsoonal in the far north, Mediterranean in the south-west and semi-arid to desert in the rest. While it is well known that colonial Australia was founded as a penal colony on a Sydney beach in 1788, it is less known that the first free Australian colony, the Swan River Colony, was founded only 41 years later on the other side of the continent. This chapter outlines the environmental conditions faced by the colonists and the history of colonisation.

In a rush of settlement labelled “Swan River Mania”, settlers poured into the new colony bringing with them a British system of mixed farming to settle in the new land. Under environmental and economic pressures, this system transmuted into a pastoral dominant form of farming from which indigenous Australians were largely excluded.