This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Swan River Colony article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
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Should this page have Perth's history eg from 1840s to 1970s on? Maybe the title of Swan River Colony should change to History of Perth to be consistent with the other capital cities, or perhaps a new article called History of Perth. The reason is I'm not sure where to add historical events from Perth in the early 1900s. For example a sentence about the first airport or the 1962 Commonwealth/Empire Games in the Swan River Colony doesn't quite sound right. A lot of Perth's history is missing from Wikipedia. Any thoughts? Gazjo12:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say this article should be only about the period 1827 to circa 1832 when the name Swan River Colony was no longer used. Gnangarra06:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Current reading of this article (and recent edits) suggest an attitude of disfavour about swan river area - my memory (and i cannot place the ref easily) is that is not a NPOV line of argument and that such a conclusion is a shallow reading of sources - anyone? (Also posted at wa project noticeboard) SatuSuro01:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is fairly accurate. The consensus seems to be that early visitors to the area didn't seem to think much of it. The only explorer to show any enthusiasm was Stirling, and that appears to have been due to a combination of him having stuck almost exclusively to the narrow belt of good soil along the Swan, and his own ulterior motives for exaggerating the area's suitability. Hesperian01:58, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I made a clear and unambiguous mention of the fact that this article is about the founding of Perth which, as an American with little knowledge of Autralian history, I found obscure. I was lost as to what area this article was about. I read past the third paragraph's minor mention of Perth and could not find a definitive answer to the questions, "Is the Swan River near Perth? Is it near any city I have heard of?"
For instance the first colony in Massachusetts was at Plymouth. Boston was founded 10 years after Plymouth Colony. I doubt anyone in Perth has heard of Plymouth Massachusetts, or of Plymouth Colony, but I would think that most have heard of Boston Massachusetts.
This same sort of ignorance holds for Americans reading about the Swan River Colony. We need to be told right up front that Perth is at the mouth of the Swan River and was founded as the Swan River Colony. That is why we are reading the article. Having seen reference to the Swan River Colony I immediately wondered, "Is there some current place in Australia that I know of which derives from the Swan River Colony?"
You were quite right to point out a lack of clarity in the relation of the infant colony to the contemporary geography, etc. For general information, the Western Australian Year Book 1979 (150th anniversary) at page 9 states that the first official Western Australian settlement was established on 25 December 1826 at King George Sound (distant site of the city of Albany) with about 80 troops and convicts who were, however "about four years afterwards withdrawn by order of the Home Government and the settlement was annexed to that on the Swan River by proclamation dated 7 March 1831". The Year Book quotes in full the December 1828 letter of appointment by which Captain James Stirling was sent from England "to occupy the post on the Western Coast of New Holland, at the mouth of the river called 'Swan River', with the adjacent territory, for purposes of forming a settlement there." He was given the interim title of lieutenant-governor and urged to locate a settlement south of the river, which he did, founding the city of Perth. The Year book further details that, on 2 May 1829, Captain Charles Fremantle "anchored off the mouth of the Swan River and, hoisting the British flag on the south head, took formal possession in the name of His Majesty King George IV of 'all that part of New Holland which is not included within the territory of New South Wales'." James Stirling arrived at Cockburn Sound soon after, on 2 June, with "his family and other intended settlers, numbering in all sixty-nine." In a despatch dated 20 January 1830, Stirling "mentioned that two townsites had been laid out, [Perth and Fremantle], and that the country extending between the sea and the mountains fifty miles southward from Perth had been thrown open for location." It turned out that Fremantle was not a suitable deep-water port, until rendered navigable in 1897 by C Y O'Connor, and the main port continued to be Albany, with Rockingham (on Cockburn Sound) and Fremantle being suitable for lighter shipping. (The Royal Australian Navy's biggest base is now located at Garden Island near Rockingham.)
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Hi Mitch and Drover's Wife. I was led there after looking for the colony name from Geoffrey Dutton's Founder of a City, p.147,[1] which says "The British Government....in 1829 allowed the first free settlement in Australia, on the Swan River in Western Australia...". I didn't know what the name of the Colony was, and hit the river article first. So that was the first reason - to help readers find their way there. But I did have a quick google: the Western Australia Act 1829 (transcript here) only seems to refer to "Western Autralia"; the Swan River Pioneers, a group dedicated to the history of the Colony; State Library Victoria, references to the "settlement at Swan River"; ADB article about Thomas Peel, a man who was involved in the colony, doesn't mention it by the full name. So it seemed like a reasonable way to help signpost the article from the Swan River(along the lines of cataloguing rules for See Also refs), which then requires, as per WP rules, to put it in the lead of the targeted article. Not being at all familiar with the history myself, I will leave it to you to decide whether necessary or not.
References
^Dutton, Geoffrey (1984). Founder of a city: the life of Colonel William Light, first Surveyor-General of the colony of South Australia, founder of Adelaide, 1786-1839 ([New] ed.). Rigby. p. 147. ISBN978-0-7270-1913-4.
I don't think that really warrants putting it as an alternative name: none of those people are using it as an alternative name for the colony, they're just saying it's physically located on the river and not using any name for it. It's not even a matter of disambiguation because there's nothing to disambiguate it from. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:52, 7 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
