by John Garvey
Updated: 11 December 2024
2014 Australia Day speech
When Chris invited me to speak, he said, to keep it short and tell a few funny stories about some of my forebears. Unfortunately, they were a pretty serious lot, and there was has been more tragedy and comedy.
Since 1856 all of them, with only three exceptions, are buried at either the old Catholic cemetery or the new cemetery on Garvey Road. My 94 year old grandmother was the first to opt for the new cemetery. She had attended many funerals in the old cemetery and seen how close the water table can get to the surface in the winter. All of her descendants have gratefully followed her to higher ground.
I note the neighborhood has moved very much upmarket recently following Mr and Mrs Piacentini moving in.
The Garveys hailed from Hollyford County, Tipperary. William Garvey, his wife Mary McKew and five children arrived on the sailing ship Clara in September 1853 after a voyage of several months around the Cape of Good Hope.
Shortly afterwards, they moved to Dardanup where they were attracted by Thomas Little’s scheme to settle Irish immigrants. Unfortunately, William died two years later in 1856. He is the first person buried in the old Catholic cemetery.
By then, his eldest son Patrick, was 21. Paddy and his younger brother Timothy, or Ted as he was often called, were quite successful, and over the next 30 years or so, acquired several thousand acres of land. Paddy was gazumped on the first land which he applied for in Dardanup. So he walked to Perth to apply in person at the Lands Office for the first land they were granted.
They established their homesteads on adjoining properties just west of Dardanup off what is now Venn Road but was then the road to Bunbury. Paddy’s place was named Summer Hill and Timothy’s was Killarney. Originally. These properties extended from east of the current Dardanup-Picton Road, later Quadrio’s property, beside and behind Thomas Little’s Dardanup Park and out to the Preston River. It also included most of what is now Padbury fields.
William and Mary also had three daughters. Alice Garvey married James Cleary. Their great granddaughter, Amelia Kalaf and her husband Nick, lived at the old family home Rosevale on Cleary Road, just south of the town, until quite recently.
Margaret Garvey married Forbes Fee. Their family property, Roseland, adjoined the Cleary’s to the south on the Boyanup Road. They have many descendants in the South West and in Perth. Mary never married and lived at Killarney with her brother Timothy.
Patrick and Timothy also took up land at Lake Preston and at Joshua Brook, or Quinderup.
Paddy bought the Buffalo Station at the head of the Leschenault Estuary and he and my great-grandfather, and later my grandfather, leased Belvidere on the seaward side of the estuary for many years.
They regularly moved their cattle around between these properties depending on the season and the feed available. Often, they co-operated with their relatives the Fees and the Clearys who also had properties at the Lake, Australind, Quinderup and out on the Preston River.
Their first cousin George Fee kept diaries over 50 years between 1886 and 1942. Fee makes numerous mentions of Paddy and Timothy and later my grandfather and the Fees moving large mobs of cattle, often over 200 head, between Lake Preston and home properties at Dardanup, with smaller mobs to and from Quinderup.
Paddy married Mary Hennessey, daughter of John and Nicola Hennessy of Bunbury. They had three children who survived infancy. My grandfather William Garvey was an only son. His two sisters, Cissie and Alice, never married and lived at Summer Hill all their lives. They ran a dairy farm there. They also owned and developed Garvey Place off Stockley Road in Bunbury.
William inherited Killarney from Timothy and moved there with his wife, Mary Catherine Coonan after they married in 1918. He was then 37 years old. May was the daughter of Thomas Coonan and Annie Maguire, and the grand-daughter and grand-niece of James and John Maguire, the fellows who arranged John Boyle O’Reilly’s escape from Buffalo.
Tom Coonan always said he was stateless, as he was born on the Travencore in the Bay of Biscay enroute to the colony in 1852.
Four Coonan brothers and cousins, one of Tom’s sons and three of his brother Michael, the Dardanup publican, went to the First World War. William (10th Light Horse) was killed at Gallipoli and Joseph (28th Battalion) in France. Marcus died soon after his return home. Frank had been gassed in France, was left deaf and with no sense of taste or smell. He lived a reclusive life, much of it at the remote old Buffalo house. Had it not been for the Great War, the name Coonan may yet be common around Dardanup.
My grandparents promptly produced eight children while my grandfather took over the running of all Paddy and Timothy’s properties. The family prospered. We have photographs of them with uncles and aunts and cousins on the sea beach at Buffalo and in four wheeled buggies and sulkies, transporting the ever-increasing family across the head of the estuary to old Buffalo house for summer holidays.
However, my grandfather was struck with a debilitating sickness, possibly Motor Neurone Disease, around 1933 while several of his children were still very young. This led to increasing paralysis over many years until he died in 1950.
Unfortunately, my grandfather’s declining health was matched by a decline in the family’ fortunes. Various properties were sold. I believe that each time one of my four aunts was married, 100 acres was sold to pay for the wedding. The result was three quite small dairy farms.
On my father’s return from the war and subsequent marriage, he and my mother, Pat and Connie Garvey, took over Summer Hill from his aunts Cissy and Alice, . My grandmother and unmarried uncles John and Bill continued to live and farm at Killarney and subsequently at Johnny’s farm Kentucky, off Garvey and Padbury roads.
Summer Hill and Killarney were both both sold in the 1960s. My parents, seven kids, and my surviving great-aunt Alice, moved to Bunbury, much to the horror of neighbours in Mangles Street at the arrival of a horde of wild bushies from Dardanup on the back of a cattle truck (a slight exaggeration by my sister).
We still have a few remnants of Killarney. And the names Summer Hill and Killarney are preserved as road names in the sub-divisions between Venn road and Padbury Road, and there is always Garvey Road and the many family members who will obviously remain permanent residents there in the cemetery.
Perhaps I could conclude with George fee’s entry in his diary for 26th of January, 1914, 100 years ago today. It reads: W Garvey, and I left for Belvidere, this morning. It was a very hot day. We camped at the Buffalo Station tonight. It’s not too bad this morning. But recently, the weather has been much the same 100 years later.
DHC Note: Click here for more information about Killarney.
Dardanup Heritage Collective 