George Dashwood

George Dashwood was a Lieutenant on Charles Fremantle's ship Challenger when the latter came to claim western New Holland for the British Empire in 1829. When Dashwood returned with the ship briefly in 1832, he made some sketches of Fremantle, two of which are extant.

Errington writes that the top drawing shows 'the cottage-store built by James Solomon, later used by John Weavell.' Philippa O'Brien has more: 'The house in the foreground belonged to Charles Pratt and James Solomon, two businessmen who had arrived in the colony in January 1830. They soon erected a store and alehouse on the land beside the house.'
Of the second drawing, O'Brien gives us nothing more than the title, while Errington writes that it 'shows the Stirling Arms Hotel and part of Harbourmaster Scott’s house'. Unfortunately, he does not say which is which. If Dashwood was sitting where Leake Street meets Pakenham Street, that might be the hotel on Lot 105 in the middle of the drawing, on the corner of Pakenham and High Street, and the house cut off by the righthand side of the drawing might be on one of Daniel Scott's Lots 102 and 103.

[[People/buildings/img/stirlingarms1844.jpg|]]

This is part of an 1844 map redrawn by R.McK. Campbell. It is intended, in this context, to show the relationship between Leake Street and the site of the Stirling Arms (on the corner where 'Thompson' is thus misspelt) and the site of Scott's property two lots away.

References and Links

The Dashwood drawings are in the Art Gallery of WA, and are republished in the two references below, Errington and O'Brien. The map was courtesy of the FHC, City Library.

Wikipedia page.

Errington, Steve 2017, 'Fremantle 1829-1832: an illustrated history', Fremantle Studies, 9: 15-29.

O'Brien, Philippa 2023, No Stone without a Name: A Visual History of Possession and Dispossession in Australia's West, Ellenbook Cultural Foundation: 242.

Freotopia

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 19 February, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/dashwoodgeorge.html (it was last updated on 2 July, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.