Edward Shann

“ But the dream of free societies, in which the first arrivals might be granted wide areas, and thus found landed families like the old Norman barons, was being spread by every letter from Sydney. When, therefore, in 1829, Captain James Stirling, a fellow officer of the Bussells' kinsman, Captain Robert Yates, R.N., called for settlers to colonize the Swan River District, in Western Australia, the lively hope of favours to come from the governor reinforced the prospect of free grants of land in an area pronounced by Stirling 'not inferior to the Plain of Lombardy'. ”

“ To these the first settlers had perforce to scatter. Until the work of von Liebig and Bennett Lawes, making feasible the cheap supplementing of poor soils, had become widely known, close settlement by agriculturists was far less practicable than the rainfall figures suggested. It is unfair, therefore, to think of the pioneer settlers as ignorant of the land's powers because they settled it so sparsely. In the then state of agriculture the scattering was ordained by the soil.
Four types of country were early recognized, and distinguished primarily by the timber they carried. ”

“ I should like to have a little land in this colony. I don't mean a grant or a farm, but building ground, for I assure you there is nothing as profitable as houses. It requires some capital to begin with, but then there is no danger. One hundred pounds will go as far as £5OO in England. I should never think of sending money home, for even bank interest is never below 8 per cent.; at present it is 10 per cent.... A single gentleman here, with a little economy, might keep his carriage on £150 a year. ”

“ I am tired of this villainous place; it is dangerous to go out of sight of the town, day or night, for the bushrangers are becoming so desperate that scarcely a day passes without a robbery being committed somewhere. ”

“ The agelong prevalence of dry seasons has stopped the accumulation of humus and the formation of rich soils, sive in moise valleys. The woody foliage has dried and been burnt, incessantly, by the black-fellows' fires, lit to drive the game. The skilled farmers amongst the early settlers soon noted the consequent prevalence of earths without humus, and the scattered occurrence of true soils. The humus necessary to profitable cultivation, in the days before scientific manuring, was to be found only on alluvial flats, in swamp lands and in pockets among the hills. ”

“ Every letter from officers on service in New South Wales to their friends and relatives in the southern English ports told of rich fortunes to be made at wool-growing and land-owning, of low prices for the necessaries of life, and of fertile plains begging for occupation. ”

“ At Winchester, suffering hard treatment as a fag, he had vowed never to illtreat his own fag, if he became a prefect. He kept the vow, and when he went up to Oxford, his fag ran away from school to follow him. The fag's guardian, when she sent the boy back to Winchester, settled a hundred a year on John while he was at Oxford, in grateful expression of the truant's goodwill. Graduating B.A. in Trinity Term 1829, John fully intended entering the Church, and sought ordination by the Bishop of Sarum. ”

“ Friends and relatives of William Marchant Bussell promptly gathered sufficient money to buy £3 ,000 in consols, and settled the income upon the widow for her life. A place at the Bluecoat School, Christ's Hospital, was obtained for Charles, and Vernon and Alfred began their schooling at Winchester. For a decade the widow, whose maiden name had been Frances Louisa Yates, watched over her boys' training. Financially, success in preparing each for a profession was just within her reach by using each payment of the 'Pelican moneys' to meet the later years' expenses of the next younger son. ”

“ Those who know best the three barriers set by nature to the speedy conquest by European methods of the South-West corner, viz. patchy land, dry summer, and the big timber, will measure with tolerance the limited success the first attack achieved. The forlorn hope made good a footing against the timber and the marauding blacks, and hung on.
↑ For concise accounts of the settlement and its land regulations, see R. C. Mills's Colonization of Australia, or Stephen Roberts's History of Australian Land Settlement.↑ See The Colony of Western Australia, by Nathaniel Ogle, F.G.S., 1839, p. ”

“ It is fit for cultivation with heavy manuring only where alluvial flats have been spread over the sandplain by streams from the Darling Range, or where, in chance depressions, peaty deposits have accumulated and enjoy during the dry summer a natural irrigation from higher strata. ”

“ They pressed everyone they met and made them fight, and many who refused were murdered on the spot. They drove everything before them, entered the houses of respectable settlers, and after taking everything that was useful, burnt them to the ground. ”

“ This unfortunate man is at present employed by a poor settler as shepherd, and has always conducted himself in a very meritorious manner, having taken several notorious bushrangers, for which he received a ticket of leave and three years taken off his sentence ”

“ Charles Bussell, predisposed by his stammering to seek a life of seclusion, embraced the project with enthusiasm, and his brothers Vernon and Alfred in their sixteenth and fourteenth years were all agog for such an adventure. What youthful spirit could have resisted it? John, filling in the time before his ordination as tutor to the sons of Mr. John Fleming, M.P., met on the Isle of Wight, a Waterloo veteran, one Captain John Molloy of the Rifle Brigade, and learned of his determination to settle in Western Australia with his young bride. Mrs. ”