Henry Ommanney

H.M. Ommanney, born Yarmouth, Norfolk, arrived per Edward Lombe, 24 August 1830. He married Elizabeth (Bessie) Capel Bussell (b. 1818, daughter of William Marchant Bussell and Frances Louisa [Yates] Bussell) 13 March 1839. He departed with his family 1847 per Unicorn for London, and died in England in 1880.

He was an assistant surveyor who surveyed Busselton and other places in the southwest of Western Australia. He bought Fremantle town lot 392 some time between 1829 and 1837. However, the lot number does not appear on the 1885 [1877] Town Plan and may have become part of Queens Square. Ommanney Street in Hamilton Hill is named in his honour.

He named the Ferguson River after Dr John Ferguson who owned a property along the river surveyed by Ommanney.

Heritage Council:
In 1841, Commander John Lort Stokes of the Beagle agreed to a request by Marshall Waller Clifton of the Western Australia Company to carry out a hydrographic study of Koombana(h) Bay. Charles Codrington Forsyth, an officer with the Royal Navy, carried out the survey on Koombana Bay and the Estuary while Stokes was away with Clifton examining the Port Grey area. Forsyth’s map was attributed to Stokes. In 1836, Thomas Watson received instructions to survey and lay out the first 70 townsite lots. He commenced the task but his fieldbooks are not complete. A survey of the townsite was completed by Assistant Surveyor H. M. Ommanney in March 1842 under urgent instruction from the Surveyor-General, J. S. Roe. The original shoreline is therefore referenced in the 1841 hydrological survey and the 1841/42 tracings of Assistant Surveyor H. M. Ommanney.

References and Links

Erickson.

Early townsite of Busselton, 1835.

Bunbury shoreline 1841.

Plan of Korijekup, 1841, figure 7, Shire of Harvey Municipal Heritage Inventory, 2014.

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 13 May, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/ommanney.html (it was last updated on 15 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.