Point McLeod Military Camp
The City of Bunbury’s first European inhabitants arrived on the schooner Eagle on 6 March 1830. A detachment of the 63rd Regiment, they consisted of a sergeant, corporal, and 14 privates under the command of Ensign Donald Hume McLeod (also spelled MacLeod). The location at Port Leschenault (Sykes Foreshore, Bunbury, today) was chosen for a military station by Lieutenant-Governor Sir James Stirling after examining other potential locations along Geographe Bay (reference).
Soon after the Swan River Colony was established in 1829 and in response to a desire for greater land acquisition by settlers, it was proposed that a settlement be established in the South West at Port Leschenault (Bunbury). On 1 March 1830, a preliminary exploration party navigated the Collie River to the Darling Range. Large land grants were taken up by members of the expedition, including the Governor, James Stirling.
The perceived fear of Aboriginal people ‘attacking’ the would-be settlers and wanting to protect the lands they had just allocated to themselves led Governor Stirling to post a military detachment at the Port. A small military camp was established on a sandspit by the shores of Koombana Bay.
Having chosen to construct the camp on the north shore of Port Leschenault, the detachment offloaded their provisions and began constructing shelters and stores (reference). Whilst the Eagle remained with the 63rd Regiment, multiple exploration excursions were made to expand on their knowledge of their new environment, one of which was led by the Surveyor-General John Septimus Roe (reference). Not everyone approved of the chosen location, with Bunbury commenting in his journal that the north shore was barren, forcing McLeod and his men to create a canoe out of a tree trunk to cross the estuary to more fertile land.
Returning to Perth, Stirling advertised to potential settlers of the southwest that a military camp had been constructed at Port Leschenault to provide protection from the Aboriginal people. Despite this, Stirling ordered their removal and relocation to Augusta in August 1830 as no settlers arrived in the first six months, nor had the aboriginal people harmed them. On 25 August 1830 the military personnel departed Port Leschenault upon the HMS Sulphur (reference).. They left behind stores they constructed and buried rum and wine to be collected at a later date (reference). Records vary as to what happened to those provisions, some saying the rum was found by the local Aboriginal people reference), others that they found the meat, and a group of runaway convicts from King George’s Sound (Albany) drank the rum (reference). According to legend, the wine was never found and may remain there today.
Six years later the local Aboriginal people still remembered the short-lived military camp, which they recounted to Lieutenant Bunbury on his journey from Pinjarra to Vasse. Today, the location of the military camp is marked by a plaque at Sykes foreshore and a timber memorial plinth high on a sand dune near the original site.
Most of this article was taken from Bunbury Biographies article ‘Ensign Donald Hume McLeod and the 63rd Regiment.
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