In a part of the world where some can’t see the possibilities, Emma Withnell, daughter of farmer George Hancock travelled with her stonemason husband John to the state’s north west in search of good pastoral land.
Nearly two decades after Western Australia was colonised, the northwest of the state remained largely unexplored.
But Emma’s cousin, explorer Francis Gregory, began working as a surveyor in Western Australia in the 1840s where he made several expeditions to a large swathe of land north of Geraldton. He estimated he had seen between 2 to 3 million acres of grazable land and noted the commercial potential of oyster pearls in the north west.
Emma, who was settled on a farm roughly 100 kilometres from Perth in the York district with her husband John, was struggling to make ends meet thanks to drought, pests and poisonous weeds. When Gregory promoted the idea of them going up north, they decided to make the move.
It was a perilous journey to a part of the world that few had settled in and stayed, but the Withnells, Emma pregnant with her third child, sailed for Port Walcott from Fremantle. The vessel carried 650 ewes, several rams, cows and draught mares, one Clydesdale stallion and a large supply of station requisites – stores, clothing tools, firearms and medicine. The Withnells had to take with them everything necessary for outfitting a property in an undeveloped and isolated area.
When the ship ran aground, all of their livestock except eighty-six sheep were lost. Wearing makeshift clogs of wood and sheep-skin, the family walked to the Harding River and settled near Mount Welcome, not four kilometres west of today’s Roebourne, and so named by Emma due to the fresh water pools there.
They first sheared in September but for the next few years they were forced by low prices to diversify. Leaving Emma to manage the station, Withnell went pearling. With his wife's assistance he then started a butcher's shop on the outskirts of Roebourne. By 1866 it was the north-west’s first gazetted town and was named Roebourne in honour of John Septimus Roe, Western Australia’s first surveyor general as well as Francis Gregory’s past neighbour and initial mentor.
Their property became the hub of a growing community: within two years there was a population around them of approximately 200 people, and became known as the Harding River Settlement.
Bad droughts in 1870 and 1872 were followed by a cyclone which destroyed the Withnell’s home and killed their stock and in 1878 a fire destroyed most of the buildings on their property. After twenty plus years of pastoral achievement, they sold and moved to Perth.
The Withnells are considered one of the north-west’s great pioneering families, and many of their descendants remain in north-west Australia to this day. While they weren’t the first European settlers to arrive there - that title belonged to Walter Padbury and John Wellard - they were the first to settle and stay, unlike Padbury and Wellard who had both left within five years.
John and Emma Withnell raised eleven children and ran several stations, which ultimately went on to be either owned or managed by their sons or sons-in-law. Their son James (“Jimmy”) is credited with starting the Pilbara gold rush at Mallina Station. The stone that started it all is kept in the WA Museum and the museum wrote of its significance:
Jimmy Withnell picked up this stone near Roebourne in January 1888 to throw at a crow, which had spilt the flour for his damper. As the 19-year-old threw the stone, he noticed the glint of gold. He quickly found more nuggets in the same area.
They were taken to Roebourne’s Resident Magistrate Colonel Edward Fox Angelo who sent a telegram to Colonial Secretary Sir Malcolm Fraser: "Jimmy Withnell picked up a stone to throw at a crow seeing it glitter discovered gold stated to run very rich at mallina station peewar river thirty miles from forrester island" (sic).
According to legend only the first line of the telegram, "Jimmy Withnell picked up a stone to throw at a crow", was received in Perth so the reply came back "... and what became of the crow?”.
The telegraph is held in the State Archives […]. The finding of the nugget led to the discovery of the first payable goldfields in the North West.
Emma Withnell is featured in Susanna de Vries’ 2010 volume, The Complete Book of Heroic Australian Women.