Dumbleyung is a town and

shire Shire is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand. It is generally synonymous with county. It was first used in Wessex from the beginn ...

in the Wheatbelt region of

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 ...

, south-east 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 ...

between Wagin and

Lake Grace A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

on State Route 107.

History

Dumbleyung's name is of

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 ...

origin, coming from "Dambeling" which possibly means "large lake or inland sea" (although another source suggests it came from "dumbung", a game played with bent sticks and a hard piece of fruit. The lake nearby was discovered and named Dambeling Lake by explorers Henry Landor and

Henry Maxwell Lefroy Henry Maxwell Lefroy (August 1818 – 18 July 1879) was a prominent explorer of the Mid West and Goldfields-Esperance regions of Western Australia. He was the son of Rev. John Henry George Lefroy, the rector of Compton and Ashe, who died when h ...

in 1843, and the current spelling was used by surveyors in the 1860s and 1870s. Pastoralists and

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 ...

cutters moved into the area, initially settling at Nippering, north of Lake Dumbleyung and west of the present town. The first three families to settle in the area were the Cronin, Kersley and Bartram families. George Kersley, Sr. and his future son-in-law Henry Bartram were from pioneer families of the Beverley district and they used to take their sheep flocks from Beverley to Lake Dumbleyung for grazing. In 1875 Kersley received the first grazing leases and the Cronin family from Cork Ireland settled at "Bunkin" in 1878. Bartram settled his young family at "Wheatfield" on the edge of the Lake in 1886. However, in 1907, Dumbleyung was gazetted as a townsite and became the terminus of a railway from Wagin. Tenders were called for the construction of an Agricultural Hall in 1909, and it was completed by 1910. The

National Bank In banking, the term national bank carries several meanings: * a bank owned by the state * an ordinary private bank which operates nationally (as opposed to regionally or locally or even internationally) * in the United States, an ordinary p ...

temporarily opened its town branch in the hall. By 1915, Dumbleyung had grown to become the major rural service town in the region.

Present day

The nearby

Dumbleyung Lake Dumbleyung Lake, also widely known as Lake Dumbleyung, is a salt lake (geography), salt lake in the Great Southern (Western Australia), Great Southern region of Western Australia. The lake has a length of and a width of ; it covers a total area ...

is a well-known attraction. The lake is famous for

Donald Campbell Donald is a masculine given name derived from the Gaelic name ''Dòmhnall''.. This comes from the Proto-Celtic *''Dumno-ualos'' ("world-ruler" or "world-wielder"). The final -''d'' in ''Donald'' is partly derived from a misinterpretation of the ...

breaking the world water speed record there in 1964 in his boat, ''Bluebird''. Dumbleyung itself is a service centre with a post office, school, tavern, public library, caravan park and other facilities. Both the tavern and roadhouse offer counter meals. The community used to host the Bluebird Festival each November, though it was discontinued and effectively replaced by the 'Taste of Dumbleyung' event; the festival showcases the produce of the region alongside local entertainment attracting visitors to the town each April. The surrounding areas produce

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

and other

cereal A cereal is any Poaceae, grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, Cereal germ, germ, and bran. Cereal Grain, grain crops are grown in greater quantit ...

crops. The town is a receival site for

Cooperative Bulk Handling The CBH Group (commonly known as CBH, an acronym for Co-operative Bulk Handling), is a grain growers' cooperative that handles, markets and processes grain from the wheatbelt of Western Australia. History CBH was formed on 5 April 1933, at a ...

References

External links

Shire of Dumbleyung
{{authority control Towns in Western Australia Grain receival points of Western Australia

History

Present day

See also

References

External links