Explorers Routes Revisited: Roe Expedition 1836

“John Septimus Roe has been called the ‘father of Australian explorers’. In a career spanning 57 years, he served in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars; joined Phillip Parker King in circumnavigating Australian and mapping sections of Australian coastline; and was appointed Surveyor General to the fledgling Swan River colony, in which capacity he served for almost 40 years. During that time Roe made at least 16 journeys of land exploration in Western Australia. In 1836 he travelled by horse and on foot almost 1000 kilometres – east as far as the Holleton area, the north to Mount Marshall, and west to the Wongan Hills, before returning south to Perth, circumscribing almost the whole of today’s central wheatbelt. During this trip Roe and his party met Aboriginal people who had never before seen white men; he made a large collection of plant specimens of which at least 30 were new to science; and named almost 50 landmarks. This work re-examines Roe’s route in the context of today’s landscape; it details some of Roe’s botanical and zoological observations; and sets down some of the changes that have been made over the last 175 years, first to the original Noongar placenames, and then to Roe’s placenames.”