A Glimpse of the Past

28 July 1939

In 1866 the Cathedral was finished and consecrated by Bishop Hale, of Perth. The prisoners were quarrying stone where the aerated water works now stand. Mr. D. North and James Hayes and Andy Tyler had bullock teams carting the stone. Warder Blinco was in charge of them most of the time. Mr. T. C. Carey was over the Town Trust at the time as the chairman. Mr. L. S. Eliott was Clerk of the Court and also secretary of the Town Trust and Postmaster. The Government built a stone Custom House and the Post Office was at one end of it towards the gaol and the Sergeant of Police, named Kelly, had two or three rooms at the hill end. A Mr. H. Sing was gaolor at the first. Then came Mr. Veal and family. Sergeant Kelly was relieved by Mr. Temperley who was afterwards Magistrate for several years. 

In 1869 or 70 Mr. Geo. Eliott, R.M. left for Geraldton to take charge and a Mr. William Pearce Clifton was the Magistrate for a good while and Mr. Teede who had been school master, took on the office of Clerk of Court. He used to live where the Stirling Hospital now stands and had a very good garden. In fact at that time there were quite a lot of gardens about town. 

Mr. Carey had a large paddock, about 80 acres. He cut it up into blocks and sold all the frontage from about Sampson-road to just past where the Federal Hotel now stands. Quite a lot of people bought the Spencer-street frontage and built houses on them. Later on a Mr. Tom Brown bought the back part and cut it up, built a house and lived in it. He sold a great many boats and at last sold the house and lived in Sampson road. He filled in a big swamp and sold a lot of the land and built houses in which some of his family live. Now of course, places have been built so that a person would not know the place. 

In 1874 the wharf was lengthened to what was afterwards known as the Blacksmith's Shop, where there was a depth of 19 feet, with a crane and spring piles to take the jar off the shipping. In 1894 an engineer was sent down named Nolan. He put on a head that would take two ships on the north-east and one on the west. Mr. Nolan did not want to go towards the reef as he said that the wharf should go to the mud hole about 400 feet out, straight with the old wharf as there was a depth of 36 feet of water and the rock was several feet further down and the piles could be driven instead of having to blast the holes in the rock as had to be done where the wharf had been put. All the wharf that has been built drew closer to the break water which was started in 1897 and went out past the old reef buoy nearly a mile out from the point of land. 

Mr. C. Y. O'Connor in 1892 when he and several of the heads came down with Sir John Forrest, said that as we were to have an inner harbour it would not matter as the way that Sir John and others wanted would in years to come fill the harbour up— which has come true, worse luck. Mr. C. Y. O'Connor only wanted the breakwater to be a little above high tide as he thought that the sea breaking over it would help to keep the harbour clear of silt. With all the knock-backs that Bunbury has had it still keeps its head up. 

Nearly all the old settlers are now gone to their rest so it does not really matter to them how the port gets on.