Rockingham, Western Australia - Garden Island Causeway, monument -postcard c.70s

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Rockingham, WA - Garden Island Causeway....large granite rock in oreground was laid to commorate opening..
• Publisher: Murray Views - W15
• Postally used: no
• Stamp:  n/a
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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Garden Island (known as Meandup to the local Noongar people) is a narrow island about 10 kilometres (6 mi) long and 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) wide, lying about 5 kilometres (3 mi) off the Western Australian coast, to which it is linked by an artificial causeway and bridge.

Like Rottnest Island and Carnac Island, it is a limestone outcrop covered by a thin layer of sand accumulated during an era of lowered sea levels.[1] The Noongar peoples tell of walking to these islands in their Dreamtime.

At the end of the last glacial period, the sea level rose, cutting the island off from the mainland. For the last seven thousand years, the island has existed in relative isolation.

The Royal Australian Navy's largest fleet base, Fleet Base West, also called HMAS Stirling,[2] are on the shores of Careening Bay, on the southeastern section of Garden Island, facing Cockburn Sound. At the 2016 census, 720 people lived at the Garden Island base.[3]

Garden Island is home to a tammar wallaby population.

The island was marked but not named on Dutch maps in 1658, even though there were three Dutch ships in the area that year: the Waekende Boey under Captain S. Volckertszoon, the Elburg under Captain J. Peereboom and the Emeloort under Captain A. Joncke. However, it was outlined on the charts of the Southland, which were published after Willem de Vlamingh visited the region in 1697.

Jacques Felix Emmanuel, Baron Hamelin was the Captain of the Naturaliste, one of three French ships that visited in 1801 to 1803. He named the island "Ile Buache" after Jean Nicolas Buache, a marine cartographer in Paris. The island was renamed "Garden Island" in 1827 by Captain James Stirling, who "prepared a garden and released a cow, two ewes and three goats in an area of good pasture with good water supply." It has been widely believed that Stirling chose the name "Garden Island" because he planted a garden there, but Statham-Drew (2003) notes that he used the name well before anything was planted there. She argues that it was so named because the shelter that it provides to Cockburn Sound was reminiscent of the way that the Isle of Wight, then known locally as the "Garden Isle", shelters the waters off Portsmouth.

Stirling returned to the area in 1829, claiming Garden Island as part of his grant of 100000 acres (405 km2), plus any livestock remaining from the previous visit. The first settlement of 450 people was named Sulphur Town. Sulphur Bay and Careening Bay were important anchorage and cargo disembarkation points for ships until 1897 when Fremantle's inner harbour was completed.

In 1907 Peet & Co (now Peet Limited) subdivided eight-three blocks at Careening Bay. After World War I it became a holiday resort with wooden cottages erected at the bay. During World War II, gun batteries were located on Garden Island. These were part of an integrated coastal defence system for Fremantle Harbour facilities.

The Challenger Battery was the first gun battery constructed on Garden Island in 1942. Two US-supplied mobile Canon de 155mm guns on Panama mount were installed to protect Garden Island, Cockburn Sound and the Challenger Passage. The battery was installed in early 1943 and operational by April. In the meantime, more permanent batteries were constructed on the island, which were completed in October 1943. The battery was withdrawn again in December 1944.[4]

The biggest battery on Garden Island was the Scriven Battery, fitted with two breech-loading 9.2-inch MkX guns,[5] similar to the Oliver Hill Battery on Rottnest Island. In 1943 building began on a complex of tunnels and rooms, included shell stores, magazines, pump chamber and powerhouse, plotting room and command post, and battery observation posts. However, the threat of attack receded as the battery was completed. Resources were allocated elsewhere, and the battery and its guns were placed in reserve. The battery was decommissioned in 1963 and the guns scrapped.

During World War II Careening Bay Camp became a major training base for the secretive Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), also commonly referred to as "Z Special Unit". The base was officially known as the Special Boat Section and was used to train operatives in the advanced use of folboat folding kayaks as well as top secret British midget submarines such as the "Motorised Submersible Canoe" ("Sleeping Beauty"), "Welman" and "Welfreighter" submarines. SRD Parties staging out of Careening Bay Camp were sent on clandestine missions into Japanese-occupied territory.

Following the war, Garden Island became a holiday resort again and the home of the RAN Reserve Fleet.

Rockingham is a city and primary centre in Western Australia south-west of the Perth city centre and south of Fremantle. It has a beachside location at Mangles Bay, the southern extremity of Cockburn Sound. To its north stretches the maritime and resource-industry installations of Kwinana and Henderson. Offshore to the north-west is Australia's largest naval fleet and submarine base, Garden Island, connected to the mainland by an all-weather causeway. To the west and south lies the Shoalwater Islands Marine Park.

History

Rockingham received its name from the sailing ship Rockingham, one of the three vessels that Thomas Peel had chartered to carry settlers to Western Australia (the others being Gilmore and Hooghly). Rockingham arrived on 14 May 1830. Rockingham was blown ashore and eventually abandoned after failed attempts to refloat her. She eventually broke up, having sunk in shallow waters.[2] Settlers supposedly camped near the wreck used the name "Rockingham Town" as their address.

The region had been inhabited for several thousand years by tribes of the Noongar people whose leader at that time was Galyute.[3]

Rockingham was first surveyed and lots offered for sale in 1847. However, few lots were sold until the development of a railway and jetty in 1872 to transport jarrah timber and sandalwood from Jarrahdale overseas. Rockingham prospered until the construction of the Inner Harbour of Fremantle in 1897, which caused Rockingham as a timber port to steadily decline.[4] Another factor that contributed, albeit gradually, to the decline of the port's importance for timber export was the opening in 1893 of the South Western Railway, the line of which intersected the Jarrahdale-Rockingham line and created the possibility of trucking timber north to Fremantle or south to Bunbury where the ports were capable of taking larger ships with deeper draughts. By the turn of the century, the international timber trade was being handled by larger ships and when the timber merchants determined that they could not justify the expense of dredging to enhance access to the port of Rockingham timber exports shifted to Fremantle. After 1908 the port saw no further use for timber exports.[5]

The ending of the port coincided with the arrival of the motor car, and this new mode of transport gave impetus to the rapid development of the little coastal settlement into a seaside resort town.[6] It was a comfortable day trip by motor car from Fremantle and Perth, and a sufficient distance from those centres for the 'travellers' to legally purchase alcoholic beverages at the Rockingham hotel on Sundays during an era when such sales were strictly regulated to protect the sanctity of that day. Holidaymakers had the use of the old port's jetties while they remained, but by 1947 they were gone, destroyed through the effects of decay and storms.[7] From the earliest years of the 20th Century, holiday shacks were developed in the town, and by the 1970s Rockingham had also become a desirable locale for retirement villas - mostly of a modest scale.

In recent decades Rockingham has become a satellite city in Perth's southwest, together with Mandurah, and is among Australia's fastest-growing residential districts. The maritime tradition has been strengthened by steady growth of the Royal Australian Navy's main fleet base HMAS Stirling and by the development of major shipbuilding and marine support services at nearby Henderson.

Since the nineteenth century, abundant sightseeing and recreational attributes have been the basis of a tourism industry. Visitors can launch small boats or board ferries to view dolphins, seals, pelicans and penguins in the adjacent Marine Park. The coast at nearby Safety Bay is ideal for windsurfing and kitesurfing.

On 7 May 2009, a boundary realignment of Cooloongup and Hillman approved by the Minister for Lands incorporated the Rockingham Train Station into Rockingham.

Geography

Rockingham is topographically flat, has sandy soils and coastal vegetation. It has a northern aspect to Cockburn Sound, from Rockingham Beach and Palm Beach.