Geraldton - Culture and History

Apart from the Dutch who passed the present site of the town on their way up the coast (see the sections on the Houtman Abrolhos and the Maritime Museum for more details), the first European to really explore the area was the hapless George Grey who, having failed to explore the North-West Cape was forced to walk from Shark Bay back to Fremantle in 1839.

A decade later the explorer A. C. Gregory travelled through the area. He discovered lead on the Murchison River and the mine which was subsequently established was named Geraldine after the Governor Charles Fitzgerald.

The town of Geraldton was gazetted in 1850. In the years that followed the hinterland was settled by farmers and in 1857, after the closure of the unsuccessful Convict Depot at Port Gregory, Geraldton became a short lived convict settlement. In the 1860s, after the decline of Port Gregory, it became the major port north of Fremantle and in 1871 it was officially proclaimed a town.

It was during the time after 1850 that the local Aboriginal population, which was estimated at over 1000 between Dongara and Geraldton, was virtually wiped out. Massacres and diseases were the killers. It is known that nearly 300 Aborigines died at Tibradden Station in 1853 as the result of an outbreak of measles.

In 1879 the Western Australian government built a railway between Geraldton and Northampton.

The town's major period of growth occurred in the 1890s when it became the major port for the Murchison gold rushes. Prospectors poured through the port on their way to the fields at Cue, Day Dawn, Mount Magnet, Meekatharra and Yalgoo.

By World War 1 Geraldton had become the major centre for the surrounding wheat belt. It still holds this position today and is an important centre for fishing, wheat, sheep and tourism.