The City of Bunbury’s first European inhabitants arrived on the schooner Eagle on 6 March 1830. A detachment of the 63rd Regiment, they consisted of a sergeant, corporal, and 14 privates under the command of Ensign Donald Hume McLeod (also spelled MacLeod). The location at Port Leschenault (Sykes Foreshore, Bunbury, today) was chosen for a military station by Lieutenant-Governor Sir James Stirling after examining other potential locations along Geographe Bay (reference).

Having chosen to construct the camp on the north shore of Port Leschenault, the detachment offloaded their provisions and began constructing shelters and stores (reference). Whilst the Eagle remained with the 63rd Regiment, multiple exploration excursions were made to expand on their knowledge of their new environment, one of which was led by the Surveyor-General John Septimus Roe (reference). Not everyone approved of the chosen location, with Bunbury commenting in his journal that the north shore was barren, forcing McLeod and his men to create a canoe out of a tree trunk to cross the estuary to more fertile land.

Returning to Perth, Stirling advertised to potential settlers of the southwest that a military camp had been constructed at Port Leschenault to provide protection from the Aboriginal people (reference). Despite this, Stirling ordered their removal and relocation to Augusta in August 1830. On 25 August 1830 the military personnel departed Port Leschenault upon the HMS Sulphur (reference). They left behind stores they constructed and buried rum and wine to be collected at a later date (reference). Records vary as to what happened to those provisions, some saying the rum was found by the local Aboriginal people (reference), others that they found the meat, and a group of runaway convicts from King George’s Sound (Albany) drank the rum (reference). According to legend, the wine was never found and may remain there today. 

Six years later the local Aboriginal people still remembered the short-lived military camp, which they recounted to Lieutenant Bunbury on his journey from Pinjarra to Vasse. Today, the location of the military camp is marked by a plaque at Sykes foreshore.