Killarney

by Jenny Golding
Updated: 8 May 2025

KILLARNEY – FARM AND HOME

The Garvey family from Hollyford in County Tipperary, Ireland, sailed into the Swan River Colony on the ship Clara and were in Dardanup when Bishop Salvado wrote their names on the list he made in 1854 of Catholic settlers in Dardanup.

Garveys named on that list were William and Mary (nee McHugh) and their children, Patrick, Timothy, Alice, Margaretta and Mary. Three of the children later married fellow Dardanup inhabitants: Patrick marrying Mary Hennessy, Alice marrying James Cleary and Margaretta marrying Forbes Fee. Timothy (Ted) and Mary did not marry. Descendants believe a young woman, perhaps a ward, was sponsored by the family and accompanied them on the ship but her name is now unknown.

The Irish home built by Timothy Garvey on Killarney, one of his several eventual small acreages in Dardanup, unfortunately became unliveable due to heavy white-ant activity and was dismantled in 1988. The photograph shows the roof sheets have been removed to reveal an older timber shingle roof. The home represents a cottage typical of Dardanup in the 1850s. In an Oral History recording in 1979, Mary Catherine Garvey said that the first hotel built in Charlotte St, in 1895, was built in the same style as the Killarney homestead. (Photograph; Jenny Golding – 1988)

Dardanup did not impress William Garvey. He was ill and is reported as saying; I should never have moved my family to this Godforsaken country. Even as Ireland was bad, it was better than this. He and and his teenage sons built a home of bark on the ten acres they moved to in the vicinity of what is now Cleary Road but William died three years after arrival, aged 47 years, with lung problems, perhaps from working in the mines at Tipperary

Patrick and Timothy became landholders on what became Garvey Road, later named Venn Road. Garvey/Venn Road was not then much more than a track and was part of the coach and cart way from Bunbury to Dardanup and beyond.

Patrick (Paddy) built a home on his 56 acres which he named Summer Hill and lived there with his wife, the former Mary Hennessy, (daughter of John and Nicola) and their unmarried daughters, Oggy and Sissy. It is thought Oggy’s boyfriend was killed in the Boer War.

Family have said that , following the deaths of their parents, Oggy and Sissy continued milking on the property and had a holding paddock in Bunbury, now known as Garvey Place, on which they kept cows destined for ships, perhaps whaling ships, sailing from the port of Bunbury.

Timothy built the pictured home on his property Killarney which he shared with his mother and unmarried sister Mary. Both acreages were close to the Littles and to twelve acres owned by the Coonan family.

The family had been welcomed by Irish couple, Thomas and Eliza Little, who migrated from India to Bunbury in 1838, and moved to their property Dardanup Park in 1854. The Littles were encouraging Irish newcomers to take up small or larger blocks and to become self-sufficient. Very soon Dardanup was a village, graced with the first country Catholic Church in the Colony, the foundation stone of the little mud-brick building laid in 1854, the building largely paid for by the Littles and the Irish settlers and completed 1856.

Ted’s father died, aged 55, in 1855 and his mother and some family members eventually lived with Ted. The house was typical of Irish homes in the area except that the Garveys, instead of forming walls with wattle bough uprights, used battens, sawn in pits on their land. The smooth side of the battens formed the outside of the house, meaning the rougher side could be used to hold mud and sand, which hardened strongly, to form the interior wall. A veranda gave  protection. Battens were also used in the roof, originally holding shingles made on the property and later, galvanised iron. There were several bedrooms but extra rooms were made by enclosing the side verandas and larger windows were a further alteration. In early days, the kitchen with an oven was away from the house for fire-safety but an open fireplace at the far end of the living room warmed the home and family in winter. Typically, there was an Irish mantlepiece high over the fireplace; covered with a crochet-edged cloth and proudly displaying precious keepsakes from Ireland.

Relative, Mrs Mary Taylor, spoke of visiting “the kindly family” and of being fascinated with the bag of gold sovereigns which the widowed Mary Garvey held in a chest.

Ted died in 1916 and willed Killarney to William, son of his brother and sister-in-law, Patrick and Mary. William and Mary Catherine Coonan, daughter of Thomas Joseph and Annie (Maguire) Coonan, moved into the home following their marriage in the Dardanup Catholic Church in1918.

Interviewed when she was ninety years of age, Mary (Coonan) Garvey spoke of white ants , ever a problem in the area, being in the home when she first came to make her home there.

She also spoke of the Irish homes her father built on two properties her family owned in Waterloo on the banks of the Collie River where she was born, firstly educated  by a neighbour on the neighbour’s property, and grew to adulthood. Her grandparents and their family were early arrivals to Dardanup and were also listed on Salvado’s list. Heart-warmingly, the many gnarled and twisted pomegranate trees, planted by Garvey ancestors, were a fascinating sight across the property even after 1988.

Killarney became one of the properties in the sub-division of Padbury Fields, Dardanup.

References:

  • Information from Mary Taylor and Jenny Trigwell.
  • Notes and interview with Barry Garvey by Jenny Golding in 2025.
  • Interview Mary Catherine Garvey (nee Coonan) in 1979 by Jenny Golding. Importantly, in her interview in 1979, Mary Catherine Garvey speaks of Michael and Ellen Coonan’s first hotel in Charlotte Street, Dardanup,  being built in the likeness of the home on Killarney.

Image:

  • Photograph of the Garvey cottage, 1988, by Jenny Golding