Beeliar has been the name of a modern suburb since 1993, but the name has long referred to the area where the suburb is, and also to 'river' and 'waterways' generally. It was also the name of the country of Midgegoroo and his son Yagan, south of the Swan and west of the Canning rivers.
Beeliar was bounded by Melville Water and the Canning River on the north, by the mountains on the east, by the sea on the west, and by a line due east from Mangles Bay on the south. It was, as we might say, on the far side of the river, lying between the Canning, Fremantle and Woodman's Point. It was a large area of land, and the tribe was large, as tribes went, numbering some 58 persons, but there is some doubt as to whether it was not two tribes.
References
- ↑ Hasluck, Alexandra 1961, 'Yagan the Patriot, and some notable Aborigines of the first decade of settlement', Early Days, vol. 5 part 7: 33-48.
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 26 February, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/places/beeliar.html (it was last updated on 15 April, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.