A Breif history of Greenough..... The area was first explored by George Grey in 1839 after which he named the area after Sir George Bellas Greenough, the president of the Royal Geographical Society in London. Grey claimed that the area could become the granary of Western Australia. In 1851 Augustus Gregory surveyed 30,000 acres (120 km²) of land in the region which became known as the Greenough Flats. This was subdivided into 20- and 30-acre (120,000 m2) lots with the view to encouraging English settlers who would be more used to the relatively small (by Australian standards) farm sizes. Within a few years it had developed into a highly successful wheat growing area and a population of over 1,000 from which a successful town developed. Becoming the northern most settlement, the Greenough Front Flats were settled in 1852. The Hamersley and Co expanded into the area, leasing blocks and taking over pastoral leases from the Colonisation Assurance Corporation. Greenough soon became a successful wheat growing area. By 1858, over 20,000 acres (8,000ha) was occupied by wheat farmers. Though the wheat industry was successful, the settlers worked extremely hard to achieve this. Most of the settlers were poor (some ex-convicts) with many having only a shovel to prepare the fields. The sowing was done by hand, the wheat reaped with a sickle (curved blade with short handle) and the grain threshed (beat grain from husks) with a flail (stick attached to a handle). By the 1860s the population had peaked to over 1,000 and buildings and mills were erected. The success of the settlement was short lived however, due mainly to a series of natural disasters and the advancement of the agricultural industry in other parts of the state. In 1862 the Front Flats were flooded by heavy rains and half the barley crop were destroyed by a hail storm. A drought in 1870 led to many crop failures and placed pressure on settlers to pay their lease rent. In 1872 a cyclone swept through the area causing enormous damage to homes and crops. In 1888, four people lost their lives when the Greenough River burst its banks following a bad flood. Many disheartened farmers left Greenough to try their luck in the newly discovered goldfields of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. Sadly.....By the early 1900s wheat production in the area had declined due mainly to the increase scale of production of grain in other regions of the State, which was made possible by the mechanisation of the agricultural industry. The use of machinery, reduced labour (and labour costs) and increased productivity in many rural towns. The farmers that remained in Greenough began producing chaff for feed. By the 1930s all the mills had closed as they had became obsolete and could no longer compete with the other rural towns that had improved transportation, such as railways and highways. The town eventually fell into ruins and was little more than a ghost town. But all that is in the past and here we are today, a thriving freindly little community that has much to offer and an intergral part of this Great Region....We welcome new Members to our community everyday because that is what keeps us Here! Sources:~ westaustralianvista/history-of-greenough.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenough,_Western_Australia
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 02:56:29 +0000
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