Answers to quiz 4: first settlers
1. One of the first streets to be named in Perth honours the memory of the first medical man in Perth, founder of the Colonial Hospital among other things. Who was he?
William Lane Milligan, who did not quite arrive in the Parmelia or Sulphur in 1829, apparently not getting here until January 1830 via the Wanstead. He came as the surgeon of the 63rd regiment, members of which arrived on the Sulphur in June 1829. He was earlier thought to have been with them, and at the ceremony of the foundation of Perth, but that is doubtful. He moved from Perth to Fremantle in 1834, but left the colony for India in the same year.
2. Another Perth street, apparently among the first two to be named for someone actually in the colony, honours the first military commandant. Who was he?
3. Who was the second most powerful man in the colony in 1834, as not only Colonial Secretary but also Secretary of the Legislative Council? He arrived on the Parmelia in 1829, gave Bassendean its name, and died in the colony in 1846.
Peter Broun, aka Brown.
4. Who gave her first name to a bay in the Swan River? It won't help if I tell you that her maiden name was Bennett, nor that the bay had four other names, but you would probably recognise her married name, which we'll get to in the next question.
Matilda Bennett. Matilda Bay (Goodroo) is the most common present name of Currie Bay, Sutherland Bay, and Crawley Bay - all referring to the same long, open bay that stretches all the way from Pelican Point (Point Currie) to Mt Eliza.
5. Speaking of her husband, who was he? When he wasn't busy drawing (for example) the original plans of the towns of both Perth and Fremantle, he was off exploring parts of the Wheatlands - as the Wheat Belt was then to be called.
John Septimus Roe, the first Surveyor-General.
6. I believe James Stirling gave his wife's name to only one thing - tho there is a street named in her honour in Fremantle, but probably not by Stirling himself. What was her name? Extra points if you can think of her second name, and anything named after it.
Ellen Mangles. Ellenbrook, the Perth suburb, takes its name from Ellen Brook (Ellen's Brook) a tributary of the Swan. The Mangles name was applied to Mangles Bay, in Cockburn Sound. There is also a Mangles Drive in Ellenbrook. Ellen was from Woodbridge in Surrey and Stirling so named his Guildford estate and cottage. There is now a small suburb of that name in that area (and Woodbridge House—which was not Stirling's house but that of Charles Harper).
7. Who was unemployed, having just been sacked in the Cape Colony in South Africa, when James Stirling appointed him Civil Engineer of the colony which he was on his way to set up?
Henry Reveley, who designed the first jails, the first two court houses, the first government house, the first causeway ... the list goes on and one.
8. Who was appointed the first harbour master on the last day of 1828? When he got to the Swan River Colony he started work in a tent in Perth but soon moved to the wreck of the Marquis of Anglesea, as it was the most substantial 'building' in the whole of Western Australia.
9. What was the name of Mark Currie's wife and why is she arguably now more important than he?
Jane Currie is arguably now more important then her husband Mark, because whatever he did is more or less forgotten, whereas her paintings are very important as they continue to document what conditions were like in the very earliest days of settlement.
10. The deputy of the first harbour master arrived on the second passenger ship, the Calista, in August 1829. He later became the second harbour master and first chairman of the Town Trust (and so the equivalent of the first mayor). His three-storey house was prominent, being on the corner of High and Cliff Streets, the most important street corner in the early days. His name?
Daniel Scott also owned the warehouse where the transported convicts were housed when they arrived unexpectedly in 1850.
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 September, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org (it was last updated on 27 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.