About Ravenswood
Ravenswood is a locality within the Shire of Murray in the Peel District of Western Australia and is named after the first farming property in the area which was called Ravenswood.
Significant development of the Ravenswood farm area did not occur until the 1960’s when land was subdivided and the shire requested that a townsite be declared. The town was gazetted in 1970. The population increased substantially from the early 1990’s as new dwellings were added to the area, with the most significant growth between 2006 and 2011.
The Ravenswood locality comprises an area of 5,316 hectares (53.16 km2) and is a predominantly rural area with growing residential and rural-residential areas. Rural land is used mainly for grazing.
The major residential population is centred around the existing Ravenswood Town site, Ravenswood Hotel/Caravan Park complex and Murray Bend. There are new residential growth areas to the north of Nancarrow Way and south of Old Mandurah Road including Settlers Village, Ravenswood Waters, and Ravenswood Green.
The population in 2013 was 2,113 residents and was projected to grow to 2,945 by 2021 and 4,084 by 2026. Ultimately Ravenswood could accommodate approximately 7,500 residents.
RAVENSWOOD HISTORY
Original Inhabitants
When European settlers arrived in Western Australia in 1829 they came to a land which had been inhabited for over 40,000 years. The people living in today’s Peel Region were known as the Bindjareb. Their name is taken from the word pinjar or benjar, meaning wetlands or swamps. The Bindjareb people were "people of the wetlands" which were the main feature of the bioregion they inhabited.
As a people of the wetlands, the Bindjareb were famed for their fish-traps, and a seasonal cycle of six seasons, making full use of the environmental resources from the coastal estuaries and sand-dunes, through the interior lakes and wetlands to the more fertile soils of the Darling Scarp foothills and ridgelines. Western long-necked tortoises, black swans, ducks, and migratory birds formed an important part of their diet. They were distinguished from the surrounding peoples by their skill in spear making, a valuable craft which saw Bindjareb spears traded as far the Gascoyne region in the state’s mid-west.
When the settlers arrived, the newcomers were looked upon as the returned spirits of the dead who would once again depart over the sea to their homes. When this proved not to be the case, tensions increased. As the Europeans began to fence off land and hunt native wildlife, tensions increased further. Traditional Indigenous burning of the land to encourage regrowth was seen as a form of attack by the Europeans. European farm animals such as sheep were looked upon as game by Indigenous people, open to be hunted in the same way as kangaroo and other native animals. When this happened, the Europeans saw their own scarce food resources as being threatened. Conflict between European settlers and local aboriginal groups hindered European settlement in the Peel Region.
European Settlement
Ravenswood farm is only one of several historical properties within the current locality of Ravenswood.
Ravenswood
The first settler at Ravenswood was Adam Armstrong. Adam was born 23 Feb 1788 at Smeaton Farm near Dalkeith. He was a coal mine owner in Scotland, then a Farm Manager in Cheshire, England and then an Estate Manager for the Powell family at the “Nanteos Estate” in Wales. From Wales he moved to London where he eventually worked for Thomas Peel helping to form an Association to bring people to the Colony. Adam interviewed prospective emigrants for Peel. Before leaving England, he signed a legal agreement to work for 5 years as an accountant and surveyor in the Colony.
In 1824 Adam’s wife Margaret Gow died in London. Margaret was buried in the churchyard of Old St Pancras Church, Camden, London.
Adam came to Western Australia in 1829 per Gilmore with his children to work for Peel as per his agreement. Thomas Peel sent Adam (in charge) and others to Mandurah to begin a settlement. By the middle of 1831 he left Peel’s service and took up a grant of land of 1,200 acres of land adjoining the Murray River on Cockburn Sound Location 16. He named the farm Ravenswood. Adam named his property Ravenswood after a bend in the Tweed River, at “Scott’s View”, Melrose, Scotland where there also is a property called Ravenswood. Raids on his stock and produce by the aboriginals forced him to abandon this property.
Adam was granted Swan Location 85, 320 acres on the Swan River in September 1831 and he called this farm Dalkeith, after where he was born in Scotland. The City of Nedlands claim Adam and his children as their “first European residents”. He established a very successful farm at Dalkeith which he sold to John Lewis in Feb 1839 for £250.
In 1839 Adam Armstrong returned to the Murray District and Ravenswood, with his younger children Adam Jnr, Laura and Christopher where he built a mud brick cottage for his family. In the first year his family had 32 acres of wheat planted.
In 1840 Adam brought his sister Elizabeth out from Scotland to keep house for him.
He died in 1853 and was buried on Ravenswood. Adam’s son Adam Jnr inherited Ravenswood on his father’s death.
In 1858 Adam Jnr sold the Ravenswood farm to Elizabeth Thomas on behalf of her husband Captain John Thomas. After the original Armstrong cottage was damaged in the 1862 floods, Captain Thomas constructed a large two-storey house at Ravenswood which he called Ravenswood Hall. This building was later to become the Ravenswood Hotel. He also built a new red brick coach house barn.
In 1890 Alfred Thomas, son of John and Elizabeth married Amy Augusta Amelia Armstrong, Adam’s granddaughter.
In 1899 a bridge was built over the Murray at Ravenswood and this soon became the popular route between Bunbury and Fremantle.
In November 1907, Captain Thomas’s son Alfred, Amy’s husband, applied for a licence to convert the house into a wayside inn. He described the place as follows: “The premises are of brick, and contain seven bedrooms, two sittings-rooms, exclusive of those required by my family. I am the current occupier and owner of the premises, which are now licensed under the name of Ravenswood Hotel, and which I intend to keep as an lnn or Public-house”.
Alfred died in July 1911, and after this the Ravenswood Hotel was run by his wife Amy Augusta Amelia Thomas Nee Armstrong. Around this time, the Hotel developed a reputation for being a honeymoon venue, and accounts note that this was many newly-married couple’s destination. In the 1920s, it also became known as a desirable holiday resort.
In April 1936, Mrs Thomas transferred management of the hotel to Kenneth Howell Angel, a well-known air pilot. He immediately announced plans for a major refitting of the Hotel, with tennis courts, golf links, a sports ground, and a landing strip for aircraft. It is likely that the interior of many parts of the current Hotel, e.g. the private dining room, date from this time. The ownership of the hotel remained with the Thomas family until 1943.
Ravenswood Hotel has undergone a number of extensions and refits throughout the 20th century. The hotel was classified by the National Trust in October 1969. In 2003, a bottle shop and drive through was added to the north, along with an extension to the lounge bar.
Jim Jam
In 1831 Charles Brown took up Location 15 on the Murray River. The area was known as “Jim Jam” by the natives (a chain of swamps). William Beacham went to work for Brown in 1836 and built a mudbrick house close to the current location of the Murray River bridge. He bought the 866 acre property from Brown in 1841 for £600. His house was destroyed in the flood of 1862 and he built a new homestead from bricks made on the property, with a shingled roof reminiscent of an English cottage. The Beacham family sold the property in 1961 for £20,000.
Murray Bend
In 1834 Captain Robert Meares took up Murray Location 14. The area was known as “The Bend” because of the large bend in the Murray River. Location 14 was purchased by Alexander and James Adam in 1876 and has since been farmed by four generations of the Adam family. The only residences in the area were the Cooper residence, “Yangee”, built by Mary Ann and Rosa Cooper in the late 1800’s, and the Adam residence built in 1907.
During 1940 and 1941 members of the 7 Army Troops Company RAE and later 22nd Army Field Company were camped at Murray Bend in order to complete training in readiness for posting to operational areas in South East Asia and the Pacific. They built a number of pontoon bridges across the river, used for vehicle crossings, and then dismantled and rebuilt them again and again. After the war the area became a popular camping, swimming and fishing site.
Plans for the first sub-division of 12 lots were submitted by Roy Adam and received Town Planning approval in 1955. The area was named Murray Bend. The land adjoining the Murray River was ceded for recreation and public purposes and a boat ramp, public conveniences, barbeques, and a children’s playground have since been constructed.
Future Development
Short term developments include:
- Further stages of Ravenswood Waters and Ravenswood Green housing developments.
- A new housing development on Old Mandurah Road called Ravenswood On Murray.
- A Community Centre on Wilghi Way adjacent to the proposed school site.
Long term developments include:
- A commercial precinct hub with supermarket, retail shopping and community facilities located at the junction of Old Mandurah Road and Pinjarra Road.
- A Regional Sporting and Recreation complex is planned on the north eastern side of the Kwinana Freeway interchange at Pinjarra Road to serve the wider district and regional active recreation needs.
- A site on Wilghi Way has been nominated for a future school.
This document was compiled in 2017 and updated in March 2021 based on additional research provided by Shellie Cummings.
Historical information has been compiled from various sources including Shellie Cummings and Tess Thompson.
Population and development data have been sourced from the Shire of Murray.
Additional historical information of the Murray Districts can be sourced from the Murray Districts Historical Society Inc.
