Yowangup Homestead
Yowangup Homestead
Yowangup has both historical and social significance as it represents one of the very first properties established in Katanning and was still owned by descendants of the original owner, Elijah Quartermaine, until recently. The Victorian Georgian style homestead (c.1860-62) homestead was constructed by Elijah Quartermaine, who had arrived in the colony as a servant in 1838, as his primary residence and centre of his pastoral enterprise
The significance of this site is heightened in that it contains the grave of Elijah Quartermaine who is considered as the first settler in the Katanning district. After finding abundant water and feed for his sheep in the area, Quartermaine permanently settled and was the first to secure land (1852). His first lease was on Kojonup location 11, which was to become the homestead of Yowangup – a local Aboriginal name for a spring on his property. It was the Aboriginal people who showed Quartermaine where the springs were.
The Yowangup property is entered via a conifer lined driveway and the house has Flemish bond brick [2] walls and a high-pitched broken back roof and granite foundations although the original shingle roof has been replaced with corrugated iron. The verandah is of sawn board, and the house has pane casement windows and fibro extensions and iron infill to the verandah has been carried out.
There is also tanks, framed outbuildings and sheds, which form part of the property, and is surrounded by post and rail fences. Oleander, Japanese pepper and fruit trees surround the house.
Yowangup has been associated with the Quartermaine family as prominent citizens of the district to the present (2018), demonstrating the rapid social advancement that was achieved by many indentured servants in Western Australia. As the first homestead established in the Katanning region it represents the arrival of European settlement in the area.
John Battersby with a memorial he had erected to the memory of Elijah Quartermaine, Katanning’s first permanent white settler
Today, Yowangup’s heritage value remains as besides the homestead there is a well (c.1860s, now covered over), a family burial ground (1877-1897, including Elijah Quartermaine (1888), Yowangup Spring dam (c.1860), a house use dam, cow shed (nineteenth century, expanded 1939), wash-house (1939), store (1939), remnant Harper fencing (c.1860s), remnant slab fenced pigpens, hollowed log troughs, remnant house gardens, early fig tree (Ficus carica), almond trees (Prunus dulcis) remaining from its nineteenth century orchard, a cypress pine entrance avenue (Cupressus sp.), abandoned farm machinery of various eras, and potential archaeological remains of 1860 farm buildings, use of bricks made and fired on the property, and incorporation of local field granite into the foundations.
Information sourced from the
WA Heritage Council’s “Inherit” website
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