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The Old Farm, now known as Strawberry Hill/Barmup, is located on Strawberry Hill in the suburb of Mira Mar in
The Old Farm, now known as Strawberry Hill/Barmup, is located on Strawberry Hill in the suburb of Mira Mar in Albany, Western Australia
Albany ( ; ) is a port city in the Great Southern region in the Australian state of Western Australia, southeast of Perth, the state capital. The city centre is at the northern edge of Princess Royal Harbour, which is a part of King G ...
. It is known as being the first farm in Western Australia
Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...
.
The hill on which the property is situated rises to a height of and is a spur of Mount Clarence. The soil is a mixture of clay and gravel with rich black loam on the lower side.
The farm was initially established in 1827 as a government farm when the first Europeans settled at King George Sound
King George Sound (Mineng ) is a sound (geography), sound on the south coast of Western Australia. Named King George the Third's Sound in 1791, it was referred to as King George's Sound from 1805. The name "King George Sound" gradually came in ...
. Edmund Lockyer
Edmund Lockyer, (21 January 1784 – 10 June 1860) was a British soldier and explorer of Australia.
Born in Plymouth, Devon, Lockyer was the son of Thomas Lockyer, a sailmaker, and his wife Ann. Lockyer began his army career as an ensign in ...
, Alexander Collie
Dr Alexander Collie (2 June 1793 – 8 November 1835) was a Scottish surgeon and botanist who journeyed to Western Australia in 1829, where he was an explorer and Colonial Surgeon.
Early life
Collie was born in Insch in Aberdeenshire, Scotland on ...
and John Lawrence Morley selected the site as a government farm. Originally it occupied an area of but only remain today. The next three commandants of the settlement, Captain Wakefield, Lieutenant Sleeman and Captain Collet Barker, followed Lockyer's plan of continuing to develop the farm.
Alexander Collie was appointed Government Resident
A resident minister, or resident for short, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of ind ...
of Albany in 1831 and moved into a wattle and daub
Wattle and daub is a composite material, composite building method in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called "wattle (construction), wattle" is "daubed" with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, and ...
cottage situated on the farm. He named the property ''Strawberry Hill'' after the small plot of strawberries
The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid plant cultivated worldwide for its fruit. The genus ''Fragaria'', the strawberries, is in the rose family, Rosaceae. The fruit is appreciated f ...
he was cultivating. Collie retired in 1832 and his successor was D. H. Macleod but it was the farm superintendent John Lawrence Morley who handed the property onto Richard Spencer.
Spencer was appointed as Government Resident in 1833; he acquired the farm and resided there with his wife, Ann, and his ten children. Spencer arranged for the erection of a granite
Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
two-storey building at the rear end of the original wattle and daub structure at a cost of £100. The garden was now well established and producing blood orange
The blood orange is a variety of orange (fruit), orange with crimson, near blood-colored flesh. It is one of the sweet orange varieties (Citrus × sinensis, ''Citrus'' × ''sinensis''). It is also known as the raspberry orange.
The dark flesh ...
s, raspberries
The raspberry is the edible fruit of several plant species in the genus ''Rubus'' of the Rosaceae, rose family, most of which are in the subgenus ''Rubus#Modern classification, Idaeobatus''. The name also applies to these plants themselves. Ras ...
, grape
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters.
The cultivation of grapes began approximately 8,0 ...
s, asparagus
Asparagus (''Asparagus officinalis'') is a perennial flowering plant species in the genus ''Asparagus (genus), Asparagus'' native to Eurasia. Widely cultivated as a vegetable crop, its young shoots are used as a spring vegetable.
Description ...
, fig
The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of tree or shrub in the flowering plant family Moraceae, native to the Mediterranean region, together with western and southern Asia. It has been cultivated since ancient times and i ...
s and almond
The almond (''Prunus amygdalus'', Synonym (taxonomy)#Botany, syn. ''Prunus dulcis'') is a species of tree from the genus ''Prunus''. Along with the peach, it is classified in the subgenus ''Amygdalus'', distinguished from the other subgenera ...
s. The first visitors to stay in the new building included Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
and Captain Robert FitzRoy
Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy (5 July 1805 – 30 April 1865) was an English officer of the Royal Navy, politician and scientist who served as the second governor of New Zealand between 1843 and 1845. He achieved lasting fame as the captain of ...
, of HMS ''Beagle''.
The old thatched roof wattle and daub part of the main residence burned down in 1870. A second cottage was built by Charles Miner in the same year.
Francis Bird
Francis Bird (1667–1731) was one of the leading English sculptors of his time. He is mainly remembered for sculptures in Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral. He carved a tomb for the dramatist William Congreve in Westminster Abbey and s ...
, the Chief Architect of Western Australia, acquired the property in 1889 and changed the name from Strawberry Hill to the Old Farm. His family retained ownership of the farm until the 1950s.
The site lay derelict for many years until being purchased by the Federal Government in 1956 and it was then vested in the National Trust of Australia
The National Trust of Australia, officially the Australian Council of National Trusts (ACNT), is the Australian national peak body for community-based, non-government non-profit organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's Ind ...
in 1964. Conservation work commenced shortly afterward and it was later opened to the public.
See also
*List of places on the State Register of Heritage Places in the City of Albany
A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
References
{{reflist Heritage places in Albany, Western Australia 1827 establishments in Australia National Trust of Western Australia Middleton Road, Albany State Register of Heritage Places in the City of Albany