Boyanup is a town on 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 ...

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 se ...

agricultural region, 195 km south of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

and 18 km south-east of

Bunbury, Western Australia Bunbury is a coastal city in the Australian state of Western Australia, approximately south of the state capital, Perth. It is the state's third most populous city after Perth and Mandurah, with a population of approximately 75,000. Located a ...

. The town is located on the

Preston River The Preston River is a river in the South West (Western Australia), South West region of Western Australia. The river has a total length of and rises near Goonac siding then flows in a north-westerly direction until discharging into the Lesch ...

. Boyanup is a

Noongar The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...

name, said to mean "a place of

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

" as "Boya" means "rock" or "stone". The first European in the area was Lieutenant

Henry William Bunbury Henry William Bunbury (1 July 1750 – 7 May 1811) was an English caricaturist. The second son of Sir William Bunbury, 5th Baronet (see Bunbury baronets), of Mildenhall, Suffolk, he came of an old Norman family. He was educated at Westminster ...

, who in December 1836 explored the route from Pinjarra to

Busselton Busselton is a city in the South West region of the state of Western Australia approximately south-west of Perth. Busselton has a long history as a popular holiday destination for Western Australians; however, the closure of the Busselton ...

and thought it to be ideal for farming. In 1845 Dublin solicitor James Bessonnet took up Location 54 in the Wellington District, consisting of 385 acres through which the Preston River flowed and the new road from Bunbury to the Blackwood had just been completed. The land also had a natural spring, sometimes known as Bessonnet Springs, and a permanent

billabong Billabong ( ) is an Australian term for an oxbow lake, an isolated pond left behind after a river changes course. Billabongs are usually formed when the path of a creek or river changes, leaving the former branch with a dead end. As a result ...

. Bessonnet named his farm ''Boyanup''. Bessonnet left the colony in 1849 aboard ''Despatch''. Location 54 proved to be "too far from anywhere to be workable and eventually the bush took it back". A road survey in 1869 shows the town name as "Boyinup". In 1894 the South Western Railway was completed from Perth through Boyanup to Bunbury. The Bunbury to Boyanup section was completed on 30 November 1887. The townsite was gazetted in 1894. A railway line extension between Boyanup and

Bridgetown Bridgetown (UN/LOCODE: BB BGI) is the capital and largest city of Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Island ...

opened on 1 November 1898. The population of the town was 198 (103 males and 95 females) in 1898. The Yoganup North Mine site, located north-west of the town and closed in 1997, is owned by

Iluka Resources Iluka Resources is an Australian-based resources company, specialising in mineral sands exploration, project development, operations and marketing. Iluka is the largest producer of zircon and titanium dioxide-derived rutile and synthetic rutil ...

and where

mineral sands Heavy mineral sands are a class of ore deposit which is an important source of zirconium, titanium, thorium, tungsten, rare-earth elements, the industrial minerals diamond, sapphire, garnet, and occasionally precious metals or gemstones. Heavy m ...

were mined and separated.

References

{{authority control Towns in Western Australia South West (Western Australia)