Rockingham's greatest claim to fame is that it was the site of the first permanent European settlement on the Swan River in Western Australia. The settlers who arrived in 1829 were forced to wait on Garden Island for about six months before they were allocated land.
The coast around Rockingham had been explored by the Dutch and the French prior to the arrival of the English. Indeed Nicholas Baudin had named Garden and Carnac Islands respectively Ile Buache and Ile Berthellet and when Captain Stirling arrived to explore the area in 1827 the names of the islands were well established. In his journal Stirling wrote that at 'Buache Island we found fresh water by digging in the sand. I had a well made, fifty yards from shore, and it was instantly filled with fresh water'. It was probably this rather romantic perception of the island which helped Stirling to decide that Garden Island (he renamed it) would be the site of the first settlement.
On 7 June 1829 Stirling decided that until the site of Perth had been surveyed and further explorations had been carried out Garden Island should be the site of the temporary settlement. Storehouses and shelters were duly built on the island, wells were dug and a bakery was constructed. There is a memorial to this early settlement at Cliff Head on the island.
It is unfortunate that Garden Island, which has a number of important historical sites, is restricted. It is now joined to the mainland by a 4 km causeway. Access along the causeway is restricted to Naval personnel stationed at HMAS Stirling and the only access to the island for non-Navy personnel (which probably means you) is by boat or ferry.
The early settlement of Rockingham occurred when Thomas Peel arrived with a group of settlers aboard the ship Gilmore which anchored in Cockburn Sound on 15 December 1829.
Peel, cousin of the famous British Prime Minister Robert Peel, had developed a scheme to settle 10 000 people in the district.
The British Government had granted him 1 million acres (404 million ha). He was preparing to sail to Western Australia when the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir George Murray, demanded that the colony be started by 1 November 1829. Peel arrived late and his grant was cut to 250 000 acres (101 000 ha). On 15 December 1829 169 settlers arrived at Cockburn Sound and they were followed shortly afterwards by the two further vessels, the Hooghly (a vessel of 465 tons) and the Industry (87 tons).
It wasnąt until the 1870s that the tiny settlement of Rockingham began to grow. A syndicate headed by the Wanliss brothers began cutting the jarrah trees in the hinterland and, determined to export their rich harvest, they built a sawmill, a jetty at Rockingham, and a railway linking the mill to the jetty.
For a brief period Rockingham became the most important port on the coast. Its importance declined with the construction of the railway from Perth to Bunbury in 1893 which resulted in much of the produce from the area being transported either to Perth or Bunbury. Around this time C Y O'Connor completed the Inner Harbour at Fremantle. With this excess of port facilities Rockingham continued to decline. By 1908 the Rockingham port had been closed.
For most of this century Rockingham remained a sleepy little seaside village. It was only with the establishment of Kwinana in the 1950s and the development of the Naval Support Facility at Green Island in the 1970s that the town was revitalised. | 
