Bunbury

Sister cities

• Jiaxing

History

The Wardandi people are part of the Noongar cultural bloc of Aboriginal Australians who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia. They hunted and fished throughout the Bunbury sub-region prior to the first European settlement in the 1830s. The first registered sighting of Greater Bunbury was by French explorer Captain Louis de Freycinet from his ship the Casuarina in 1803. He named the area Port Leschenault after the expedition's botanist, Leschenault de La Tour. The bay on Greater Bunbury's western shores was named Geographe after another ship in the fleet. In 1829, Dr Alexander Collie and Lieutenant Preston explored the area of Bunbury on land. In 1830 Lieutenant Governor Sir James Stirling visited the area and a military post was subsequently established; it only lasted six months. Bunbury's first settlers were John and Helen Scott, their sons Robert, William and John Jr, and step-son Daniel McGregor, who arrived in January 1838. Bunbury township was mentioned in the Government Gazette in 1839, but lots in the township were not surveyed until 1841. In March 1841 lots were declared open for selection. In 1884, the Government decided to construct a railway from Bunbury to Boyanup, long. When the line was completed in 1887, the contractor who had built it obtained a contract to control and work it, which he did with horses. The line was eventually taken over by the Government in 1891 and operated with locomotives. The inconvenience of a railway isolated from the capital gave rise to agitation and in 1893 the South Western Railway was constructed between East Perth and Picton, connecting Greater Bunbury and Perth. The Boyanup line was extended to Donnybrook in the same year. The railways connected the port of Bunbury to the coal and mineral deposits and…

Geography

Bunbury is situated south of Perth, at the original mouth of the Preston River and near the mouth of the Collie River at the southern end of the Leschenault Inlet, which opens to Koombana Bay and the larger Geographe Bay which extends southwards to Cape Naturaliste. Bunbury has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen classification Csa) with warm to hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. Precipitation peaks from the months of May to September.

Most-observed species

• Willie-wagtail

  Rhipidura leucophrys (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  1,640
• Australian Raven

  Corvus coronoides Vigors & Horsfield, 1827 · Aves
  1,621
• Silver Gull

  Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae (Stephens, 1826) · Aves
  1,597
• Australian Ringneck

  Barnardius zonarius (Shaw, 1805) · Aves
  1,490
• Red Wattlebird

  Anthochaera carunculata (Shaw, 1790) · Aves
  1,467
• Australian Ibis

  Threskiornis molucca (Cuvier, 1829) · Aves
  1,431
• Australian Magpie

  Gymnorhina tibicen (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  1,331
• Galah

  Eolophus roseicapilla (Vieillot, 1817) · Aves
  1,291

Most recent

• M 2.7 — 2006-03-04
  9 km ESE of Donnybrook, Australia
• M 2.5 — 2002-02-18
  22 km SE of Collie, Australia