James Stirling

James Stirling, setting out on the punitive expedition with about 25 police, soldiers, and other settlers. Stirling’s troops came upon and then attacked a Bindjareb camp of men, women, and children, killing anywhere between 11 and 80 people. Stirling lost only one member of his…

A British naval captain, James Stirling, examined the Swan River in 1827 and interested English capitalist-adventurers in colonization. Two years later he returned to the Swan as governor of the new colony of Western Australia. The Colonial Office discouraged schemes for massive proprietorial grants; still the idea persisted, with…

James Stirling and the botanist Charles Frazer to examine the reaches of the Swan River. A mild summer and tall jarrah timber led them to overestimate the fertility of the coastal sand plain, and Stirling went to England to lobby for the establishment of Australia’s…