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Henry Maxwell Lefroy
Henry Maxwell Lefroy (1818-1879) arrived in the colony in 1841, and was granted land in the York area. He led an expedition east from York in 1863. After leaving Australia to serve in the Royal Navy, he returned as Superintendent of Convicts 1854-75. He died of pneumonia in Fremantle in 1879 and was buried in Karrakatta Cemetery.
Lefroy Road ran along the southern border of his estate, in the area where Beaconsfield TAFE was. The northern border was South Street, and the cutting between Field and Lewington Streets was known as Lefroy Cutting. Part of his property there was called Mulberry Farm, and the name is remembered in Mulberry Farm Lane, White Gum Valley. Davis Park, Beaconsfield, was part of what was earlier known as Mulberry Gardens/Farm. What is currently Bruce Lee Oval (which may become yet more housing) was part of his farm, and there are three very large olive trees on the northwest corner there which would have been part of the farm, according to Mike Lefroy (2010). There was apparently a farmhouse in that area.
Two of the Lefroy olive trees on Bruce Lee Oval. Mulberry Farmhouse stood in this area: the foundations were still visible in the late 1950s (Geoff Teague, personal communications).
Also named after him are the (self-named) Lefroy River, and Lake Lefroy.
References and Links
Lefroy, Henry Maxwell 1934, Memoir of Henry Maxwell Lefroy (1818-1979): an early settler in Western Australia, compiled from his intimate letters by his son Charles Edward Cottrell Lefroy, Billing & Sons, Guildford, Surrey.
Lefroy, Henry Maxwell 1863, 'Diary and Journal of the Eastern Exploration Expedition Made in the Year 1863 under the Leadership of Henry Maxwell Lefroy', typescript copy, being an account of an expedition carried out under the auspices of the Colonial government and the York Agricultural Society for the purpose of exploring the eastern interior of Western Australia [1 volume, ML MSS 1230], Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales.
Lefroy, Mike 2010, 'Hard landings', Fremantle Studies, 6: 93-104.
Biggs, Hazel 1997, Exploring in Western Australia, WA Museum: 35-37.
Wikipedia page
Entry in Kimberly for Henry Bruce Lefroy.
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 23 November, 2014 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/lefroy.html (it was last updated on 12 March, 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.