Eastwell Boat Ramp Precinct

The Eastwell Boat Ramp is located near The Elbow, off Eastwell Road in Australind. The boat ramp and floating finger jetty provide excellent boat and kayak access to the picturesque Collie River.

The Elbow is where the Collie River bends, like an elbow, traversing south rather than west.

The area provides excellent toilet facilities and ample boat trailer and car parking. No wash-down facilities are available.

Please follow marine safety guidelines.

You can also access the Dandjoo Bilya (Twin Rivers) Trail from north and south of the car park.

History

Eastwell Farm was a 560-acre property at this location, first purchased by Samuel Moore in 1840, and then in 1856 by Australind’s first Chief Commissioner Marshall Waller Clifton.

Samuel Edward Moore (1803 – 1849) was a prominent Western Australian settler, merchant, pastoralist, and politician. Eastwell is a village in England where his father lived.

By 1859, Samuel Farrant was in the employ of Clifton. He wrote in his journal that they sent him out to Eastwell Farm daily to work, looking after the cattle and regularly bringing a few back to the town site for killing.

Clifton also grew potatoes at Eastwell on the banks of the Collie River.

Meet Old Collie Bill 

In the 1920s, William Gorst, a shy aged pensioner, lived in a humpy camp on the Collie River at The Elbow (slightly north of the car park at the bend or elbow of the river). Despite his nickname of ‘Old Collie Bill’, they said that he was of noteworthy lineage, descended from Sir Thomas Gorst.

George Sortras of Bunbury would visit Old Collie Bill with his father Jim and provide him with fish.

“Trees, creepers and foliage obscure the humpy from the boat landing. A short walk reveals the old man of the river waiting outside. The vegetable garden proudly displays its wares, the old man’s forte, while bunches of grapes hang temptingly from a trellis attached to his non five-star residence…dried figs hung on a line, together with fish and tomatoes.”
Tales of Bunbury, 2000, George Sortras

Sadly, in 1931, he passed away in a fire at his camp caused by a kerosene lamp.