Newly arriving colonists at the mouth of…

Newly arriving colonists at the mouth of the Swan River in present Western Australia have their first view of the Australian mainland on June 1, 1829.

Captain James Stirling, who establishes the site as the political center of the free settler Swan River Colony on June 3, will later state that the site is "as beautiful as anything of this kind I had ever witnessed."

This secures the western third of the Australian landmass for the British.

On August 12 of this year, Mrs. Helen Dance, wife of the captain of the ship Sulphur, cuts down a tree to mark the founding of the town.

Stirling, a Scot, chooses the name Perth for the new town in accordance with the wish of Sir George Murray, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, that the town be named after Perthshire, which was his birthplace as well as his parliamentary seat in the British House of Commons.

Although the British Army had established a base at King George Sound (later Albany) on the south coast of western Australia in 1826 in response to rumors that the area would be annexed by France, Perth is the first full scale settlement by Europeans in the western third of the continent, and secures the area for Britain.

The colony itself will be officially designated Western Australia in 1832, but will be known informally for many years as the Swan River Colony after the area's major watercourse.