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William Kernot Shenton
Hasluck & Bray:
In October, 1829, William Kernot Shenton, engineer, born in Winchester (England), 26 years of age, and unmarried, arrived in the Colony by the ship Lotus. He brought to the State a sawmill complete, and this, together with his miscellaneous property, was valued at £852. He received permission to select 11,360 acres of land. His principal grants were in the Leschenault area and on the Helena River at Guildford. He also obtained town lots at Fremantle.
Shenton came to the Colony under engagement to Colonel Latour, who planned an ambitious emigration scheme on 100,000 acres of land in the Leschenault area. The scheme came to nothing, and within a year the establishment had been broken up and Shenton was independent. One of his first public undertakings was to lead an expedition, including Stephen Henty (later of Portland fame), Henry Campbell, and W. Bryant, in January, 1831, to explore the Collie River, travelling by boat from Fremantle to Port Leschenault, into which the river flows.
About the same time Shenton was busy with two other ventures—one a newspaper and the other a flour mill. The newspaper, under the title of The Western Australian Chronicle and Perth Gazette, was first published in manuscript at Fremantle on February 19, 1831.
It was later transferred to C. Macfaull, and developed into The Perth Gazette of 1833 and The West Australian of to-day.
References and Links
Hasluck, Paul & F.I. Bray 1927, 'Early mills of Perth', Early Days, vol. 1, part 8: 62-84.
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 28 July, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/shentonwk.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.