s
decided to found a new colony there.

In 1829, Captain Fremantle of H.M.S. Challenger hoisted the British flag
at the mouth of the Swan River, and thenceforth the whole of the
Australian continent was under British sway. Captain, now
Lieutenant-Governor, Stirling arrived a month later in the transport
Parmelia, and the free colony of Western Australia was launched on its
varied career.

The names first mentioned in the annals of land exploration in Western
Australia are those of Alexander Collie and Lieutenant William Preston,
who together explored the country on the coast between Cockburn Sound and
Geographe Bay. This was in November, 1829, and in the following month Dr.
J.B. Wilson, who came to the Sound with Captain Barker on the abandonment
of Raffles Bay, made an excursion from the Sound and discovered and named
the Denmark River.

In a passage in a letter written by R.M. Davis, of the medical staff, to
Charles Fraser, the botanist, there is a detailed reference to this
trip:--

"Dr. Wilson, who came here with Captain Barker, started in a direction to
Swan Port (Swan River) with a party of men, and in eleven days went over
at least two hundred miles of ground. He says, without fear of
contradiction in future, that there is far greater proportion of good
land in this direction than in any other part of Australia that he had
been in, and also wood of large growth, with innumerable rivers. He
ascended a very high mountain, which he called Mount Lindsay, in honour
of the 39th regiment."

On the 22nd of March, 1830, we first hear of the exploring feats of
Lieutenant Roe, R.N., the Surveyor-General of the new colony. Captain
John Septimus Roe was born in 1797, and entered the navy. He accompanied
Captain P. King to explore the north and north-west coasts of Australia,
in 1818, and was a member of King's expedition in 1821. He was the first
Surveyor-General of Western Australia, and held that position for
forty-two years. He is commonly styled the father of western exploration.
He died at Perth on May 28th, 1878. Mrs. Roe, who accompanied her husband
to Western Australia in 1829, pre-deceased him in 1870.

On the date mentioned in 1830, Roe was in the field exploring in the
vicinity of Cape Naturaliste. Afterwards he was active in the country
between the head-waters of the Kalgan and Hay Rivers. In 1836 he first
tried serious conclusions with the inland country of Western Australia,
when he headed an expedition