Thomson Heritage

128 p. : ill., geneal. tables, maps, ports. ; 30 cm. Bibliography: p. 128. #030622

Brookhampton Western Australia

Thomson family.  |  Western Australia — Genealogy.  |  England — Genealogy.

In the 1850s, a squatter named Mueller, which was anglicised to Miller, erected a slab hut on land that was taken up in 1858-9, as freehold and extensive pastoral leases, by James Guy Thomson (b. Oxfordshire, 1833; arr. 1855, d. 1890; m. 1856, Emma, d. 1876, daughter of Surveyor General J. S. Roe; m. 2nd 1878, Mary Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Bussell). Until mid-1858, Thomson was in partnership with S. P. Phillips and A. Lee Steere, as Phillips and Co., graziers and horse-breeders, at Toodyay. He continued these pursuits at the place he named ‘Brookhampton’ after a family home in England. He was the first permanent settler in the district that took its name from his farm and pastoral station. In early 1860, he took his wife and family from Bunbury to visit the place, and the slab hut and kitchen became the nucleus of their home with the linear addition of three new rooms by May 1861, when they took up residence. At various periods in 1863-79, he employed a number of ticket-of-leave men, including carpenters and bricklayers, who probably worked on erecting some of the buildings and structures. His other employees included some Aboriginal people. ‘Gentleman’ Thomson as he was known had 14 children, nine from his first marriage and five from his second, and eventually the house comprised 15 rooms. Bricks were made and baked in kilns on the property to construct a number of buildings including a large separate kitchen, a school-room, cook’s bedroom, two staff bedrooms, a bathroom, dairy and storeroom. Two cottages and the school-room survive. Thomson was well known for his horse-breeding, including for the Indian Army, and there were stables for 30 horses and a racetrack. He planted couch grass from J. S. Roe’s garden in Perth on the flats by Thomson’s Brook, which became known as the best dairy land in the district. There were numerous other outbuildings. In 1882, two separate fires destroyed the hayshed and the carpenter’s shop. During Thomson’s lifetime notable visitors who stayed for an extended period included his friend the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon and the botanist Dr. Ferdinand Von Mueller (later knighted, 1879), who collected flora in the surrounding district. In 1890, James Guy Thomson (snr) died. When his ‘Valuable Farm and Station Property known as Brookhampton’, ‘one of the finest Station Properties in the South’, was advertised for sale in May 1891, it comprised 700 acres of freehold land and 80,000 acres leasehold, with about 800 cattle, 40 horses and 30 pigs (Inquirer 20 May 1891). The extensive improvements included the ‘roomy house with large kitchen, dairy, bath, store, and servants rooms and every requisite for a large establishment’, ‘excellent stabling and stockyards and all other necessary outbuildings’, ‘a large garden with vineyard and other fruit trees’ (ibid). It was not sold, and Thomson’s three eldest sons continued to work the property. In 1892, his widow married Captain L. H. Noyes and they moved to Busselton with her children. James Guy Thomson (b. 1860), who had returned from the North-West in ill health, kept the accounts at ‘Brookhampton’ until he died there in late 1895. In c. 1895-6, when the leasehold land was resumed for settlement, Mervyn ‘Bon’ Thomson (b.1874, d. 1966) acquired ‘Brookhampton’ (2,500 acres) and John ‘Jack’ Thomson (b. 1866, d. 1944) acquired the area to the east (2,000 acres, later expanded to 6,000 acres), which he named ’Woodperry’ after the Thomson home in Oxford, England. ‘Bon’ Thomson continued to work ‘Brookhampton’, where he and his wife, Frances (née Yelverton) raised their son, Kynaston ‘Ken’, and six daughters. A series of fires badly damaged the house, including one that destroyed the brick additions. By 1948, the original part, ‘with its straight grey chimneys’, was ‘time-worn’, the stables were disused, and Ken was managing the property (West Australian 4 Dec. 1948). In about the 1970s, the old house at ‘Brookhampton’ was replaced with a modern brick house. In 2012-13, ‘Brookhampton’ continues in the Thomson family under Jack Thomson’s grandson, John Thomson, who cares for the cottages and the schoolroom that survive. However, they are no longer habitable and he occupies the late twentieth century house.