John Moir (12 August 1851 31 May 1939) was an Australian pastoralist in the areas to the east of Albany, in the Great Southern 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 ...

. Born at

Cape Riche Cape Riche is a cape and rural locality in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. By road, it is 525 km south-east of Perth and 123 km north-east of Albany Facilities in the locality include a boat launching ramp and a ca ...

in 1851, he was the eldest son of the pioneer Andrew Moir, who was from

Markinch Markinch (, (Scottish Gaelic: Marc Innis) is both a village and a parish in the heart of Fife, Scotland. According to an estimate taken in 2008, the village has a population of 2,420. The civil parish had a population of 16,530 (in 2011).Cens ...

Fifeshire Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i.e ...

, Scotland, and had settled in the region in the 1840s. The Moir family lived in a cottage in the neighbouring allotment to George Cheyne with two of John's brothers working at Cheyne's Cape Riche farm. The Moir family acquired the Cheyne's property in 1858, including the

homestead Homestead may refer to: *Homestead (buildings), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses *Homestead (unit), a unit of measurement equal to 160 acres *Homestead principle, a legal concept th ...

. The homestead and out-buildings were constructed between 1850 and 1850. A

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions of ...

room was built by John Moir with the assistance of Aboriginal people, with a blacksmith shop built at around the same time. Much of the furniture was fashioned from

driftwood __NOTOC__ Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides shelter and fo ...

found on the nearby beaches. The station was used as supply depot for the

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 ...

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...

and sealing industries that were flourishing in the area through the 1870s to the 1900s. Moir was married in 1881 and remained at Cape Riche where he had taken a half share of the property on the death of his father. Moir and his son Neil extended their land-holding along Cheynes Beach in 1920 when they acquired another of land. Cape Riche Station was still held by the family with Moir's other sons having set up

sheep station A sheep station is a large property ( station, the equivalent of a ranch) in Australia or New Zealand, whose main activity is the raising of sheep for their wool and/or meat. In Australia, sheep stations are usually in the south-east or sout ...

s further to the east near the Salt River. The Moirs used the sheep for meat production to supply the goldfields around

Norseman The Norsemen (or Norse people) were a North Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the pre ...

. Moir died on 31 May 1938 at Albany Hospital at age 87, and was later buried at Cape Riche.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moir, John 1851 births 1939 deaths People from Albany, Western Australia Settlers of Western Australia Australian pastoralists Australian people of Scottish descent