Benger is a locality just north of Brunswick Junction in the

South West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. The

South Western Highway South Western Highway is a highway in the South West region of Western Australia connecting Perth's southeast with Walpole. It is a part of the Highway 1 network for most of its length. It is about long. Route description Perth to Bunbury ...

runs through the region. It is also a

crossing loop A passing loop (UK usage) or passing siding (North America) (also called a crossing loop, crossing place, refuge loop or, colloquially, a hole) is a place on a single line railway or tramway, often located at or near a station, where trains or ...

on the south-west railway between Armadale and Bunbury.

History

Before European settlement, the region was inhabited by the

Pindjarup The Bindjareb, Binjareb, Pindjarup or Pinjareb are an Indigenous Noongar people that occupy part of the South West of Western Australia. Name It is not clear if ''Pindjarup'' is the historically correct ethnonym for the tribe. After their dis ...

people, in whose language "Benger" may have meant "swamp" according to some sources (the word Pijar was also used). The explorers

Thomas Peel Thomas Peel (1793 – 22 December 1865)Alexandra Hasluck,, ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Vol. 2, MUP, 1967, pp 320-322. retrieved 2009-11-04 organised and lead a consortium of the first British settlers to Western Australia. He was ...

and Stephen Henty travelled through the district in 1835. The area was known as the "flats of Mornington", and some years later, Mornington Siding was established with a hall, school and shop/post office.

Sandalwood Sandalwood is a class of woods from trees in the genus ''Santalum''. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and, unlike many other aromatic woods, they retain their fragrance for decades. Sandalwood oil is extracted from the woods for us ...

from the area was used in the

Swan River Colony The Swan River Colony, also known as the Swan River Settlement, or just Swan River, was a British colony established in 1829 on the Swan River, in Western Australia. This initial settlement place on the Swan River was soon named Perth, and it ...

. In 1887, John Partridge founded a dairy in the area, which is still open today as the White Rocks Museum and Dairy. The town was renamed from Mornington to Benger in 1902, although many geographic names in the area (including the creek near the school) bear the original name. A

bushfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identif ...

broke out in the Benger swamp near the town in January 2013, burning out of farmland.

References

{{authority control Towns in Western Australia Shire of Harvey