Swan River Colony
British colony which later became part of Western Australia
The Swan River Colony, also known as the Swan River Settlement, or just Swan River, was a British colony established in 1829 on the Swan River. This initial settlement place on the Swan River was soon named Perth, and it became the capital city of Western Australia.
The name was a pars pro toto for Western Australia. In 1831, the military outpost Frederick Town, Colony of New South Wales (Fremantle Town) was transferred from the Colony of New South Wales to the Swan River Colony and renamed Albany, and on 6 February 1832, the Swan River Colony was renamed the Colony of Western Australia, when the colony's founding lieutenant-governor, Captain James Stirling, belatedly received his commission. However, the name Swan River Colony remained in informal use for many years.
European exploration
The first recorded Europeans to sight land where the city of Perth is now located were Dutch sailors. Most likely the first visitor to the Swan River area was Frederick de Houtman on 19 July 1619, travelling on the ships Dordrecht and Amsterdam. His records indicate he first reached the Western Australian coast at latitude 32°20', which is approximately at Warnbro Sound. He did not land because of heavy surf, and so proceeded northwards without much investigation.
On 28 April 1656, Vergulde Draeck en route to Batavia (now Jakarta) was shipwrecked 107 km (66 mi) north of the Swan River near Ledge Point.
The public source identifies “Swan River Colony” as british colony which later became part of Western Australia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Swan, River and Colony.
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This entry incorporates text from “Swan River Colony” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.