Wansbrough

Wansborough is a small nature reserve midway between Cranbrook and Tambellup on the Great Southern Highway, Lower Western Australia. It is a wetland swamp adjacent to the Gordon River which in part the highway and railway line track in this area. The swamp had been a fresh water and food source for traditional Aborigines of the locality for millenia. Wansbrough is also a railway siding sitting upon the Avon to Albany main line. Prior to 1926 Wansbrough Siding was known as Tingerup Siding. in 1875 Tingerup was also known as Tinjarrah, a sheep run owned by Mr Arthur Trimmer whose homestead station was Pootenup, also a railway siding and now also a small nature reserve located nearby, closer the Great Southern Highway's junction with Albany Highway. The introduction of pastoralism along the Gordon River from the 1850s damatically affected the lives of the Koreng and Willmen Aboriginal people. Wansbrough, then known as Tingerup/Tinjarrah was the scene of the unfortunate death of Trooper Armstrong. Based at the proximate Kojonup Barracks, Lance-Corporal Armstrong died at the hands of Bobbinet, a traditional Aborigine wanted for the murder of another Aborigine at York. Armstrong was shot dead by Bobbinet in the bulrush swamp at Tingerup on January 14th, 1875, while trying to apprehend him. Some weeks later Bobbinet was captured at Yeriminup, an important Aboriginal meeting ground to the west, near the village of Frankland River. He was tried at the supreme court in Perth in April that year, found guilty and hanged very soon after. He was penitent, well knowing the punishment for murder was death, a sentence practised by both cultures. Bobbinet's full story isn't told here, suffice to say he was terrified of the colonial justice system which tracked him down and sought to punish him for a tribal matter. Something he was justified to carry out in his own culture and therefore something many Aborigines of that era were confused and angered by.