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The Hamersley family were a wealthy and well-connected family of early settlers in the colony of Western Australia. Members of the Hamersley family emigrated to Western Australia from England in 1837.
In history, a colony is a territory under the immediate complete political control and occupied by settlers of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception.
Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, and the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a total land area of 2,529,875 square kilometres, and the second-largest country subdivision in the world, surpassed only by Russia's Sakha Republic. The state has about 2.6 million inhabitants – around 11 percent of the national total – of whom the vast majority live in the south-west corner, 79 per cent of the population living in the Perth area, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated.
Prominent members and connections of the family included:
- Edward Hamersley, pastoralist and MLC;
- his sister Frances, who married William Locke Brockman;
- their son Edmund Ralph Brockman;
- their son Henry Brockman;
- his son Edward, pastoralist and MLC;
- his wife Jane, sister of Andrew and Charles Dempster;
- his son Samuel, pastoralist, explorer, MLA and MLC;
- his wife Matilda, sister of Maitland Brown;
- his son Vernon, MLC;
Maitland Brown was an explorer, politician and pastoralist in colonial Western Australia. He is best remembered as the leader of the La Grange expedition, which searched for and recovered the bodies of three white settlers killed by Indigenous Australians, and subsequently killed a number of Indigenous people in an incident that remains controversial to this day.
Vernon Hamersley (1871–1946) was an Australian politician. He served the longest term ever as a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Council.
- his daughter Margaret Elvire, who married Sir John Forrest;
- his daughter Flora, who married Frederic North;
- their son Charles North;
- his nephew Malcolm, who accompanied John Forrest on his 1869 exploring expedition. [1]
Henry Brockman was an Australian politician. He served as the Member of the Western Australian Legislative Council from 1884 to 1889.
Charles Edward Dempster was a politician in Western Australia, serving two terms in the Legislative Council—as the member for the seat of Toodyay from 1873 to 1874, and as one of the three East Province members from 1894 until 1907. A farmer and grazier by trade, he was also one of the first European explorers of the Esperance district as well as a councillor and chairman on the Toodyay and Northam Road Boards for many years.
Samuel Richard Hamersley (1842–1896) was a Western Australian pastoralist, and a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Council for six years.
- his sister Frances, who married William Locke Brockman;
Pastoralism is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as cattle, camels, goats, yaks, llamas, reindeer, horses and sheep.
William Locke Brockman was an early settler in Western Australia, who became a leading pastoralist and stock breeder, and a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Council.
Edmund Ralph Brockman was an Australian farmer and politician who was a member of the Legislative Council of Western Australia on three occasions – from 1878 to 1880, from 1887 to 1889, and from 1890 to 1891.
A number of places in Western Australia have been named after the Hamersley family. John Septimus Roe named the Hamersley River in their honour in 1848–49; and Francis Gregory also named the Hamersley Range in the Pilbara region in their honour. John Forrest, during his 1869 exploring expedition, named Mount Bevon, Mount George, Mount Malcolm, Mount Flora, Mount Elvire and Mount Margaret, all in honour of members of the Hamersley family. [1]
The Hamersley Ward of the City of Stirling (formerly Perth Road Board), the suburb of Hamersley, settled in the late 1960s, a golf course in North Beach, and at least ten streets in the Perth suburbs of North Beach and Watermans Bay are named after members of the family. Their 19th-century home, Hamersley House in Beachton Street, North Beach was demolished in 1962.
