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Mount Toolbrunup - the
Stirling Ranges near
Cranbrook
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Kendenup
Western
entrance to the beautiful Stirling Ranges National Park
A tiny, unimportant settlement between Cranbrook and
Mount Barker and located 345 km south east of Perth, Kendenup's one
claim to importance is that, in 1874, it became the site of Western
Australia's first gold mine.
The area was first settled by the Hassell family in the
1840s. In March of that year John Hassell drove 850 sheep from Albany
to Kendenup. He established a huge sheep station (by 1850 it was 25 000
acres freehold and 38 000 leasehold) which became quite legendary as a
stopping point for itinerants moving through the area.
In January 1856, for example, the Hassells were visited
by Archdeacon Wollaston (the first Anglican archdeacon in Western
Australia) who complained bitterly about the fleas he had to endure.
In her famous book The Passing of the Aborigines Daisy
Bates recalls how an old Aboriginal woman facing death was determined
to return to Kendenup because, among many reasons, she had fond
memories of the Hassell family.
'Old Yeebalan of Kendinup, a township east of Albany,
found herself in the Dumbleyung district when palsy and blindness came
upon her. Her white protectors tried to dissuade her, but she promised
them she would go back to the Hassals of Kendinup whose sheep run had
been her father's group area, and who had been good to her in her young
days. They gave her food and money for the journey, and she immediately
handed it over to the derelicts in camp in return for their
hospitality, as in their primitive sense of honour every native must.
Months later, after a solitary journey through the white settlements,
she crawled towards the old Kendinup homestead where she had so often
sought and found food and clothing. It was empty and deserted. Yeebalan
made her last camp in the gully, and died a few days later.'
In 1920 the Hassell family sold Kendenup station to
Clement John de Garis, the remarkable and visionary rural businessman
who had developed the Sunraysia dried fruit industry in Victoria.
De Garis moved to Kendenup in December 1921 where he
created a community of 350 settlers and started to grow potatoes,
apples and farm produce. He dreamed of turning 'a Wilderness into a
Garden' but over-extended himself financially. In 1925, realising that
the plan was not working, he wrote the aptly titled The Victories of
Failure: A Business Romance of Fiction, Blended with and Based on, Fact.
Disappointed by his failure and hounded by his creditors
he gassed himself on 17 August 1926.
Things to see:
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Stirling Ranges National Park
For more information see Cranbrook.
Accommodation
and Eating
There are no facilities in the town.
