What’s the deal with Thomas Peel and why the controversy over the name of our region?

But the name ‘Peel’ has been a part of the region since early settler Thomas Peel was granted 250,000 acres of land between what is now Cockburn and the Peel inlet in 1829.

And for the area’s traditional owners, the Bindjareb people, the name Thomas Peel is synonymous with the 1834 Pinjarra Massacre.

Bindjareb traditional owner Kerrie-Anne Kearing is spearheading a campaign to rename the Peel, with the support of Murray-Wellington MP Robyn Clarke.

Thomas Peel (1793-1865) was an English landowner who was one of the first settlers in Western Australia.

Born in Lancashire to a wealthy family of cotton manufacturers, he planned to emigrate to New South Wales before learning of the new Swan River Colony.

He took on a business partner who would finance the operation and headed to Western Australia with a promise he would be granted 250,000 acres on the southern banks of the Swan and Canning rivers. But he arrived too late – his land was allotted to another settler and he went south to what is now the Peel region.

Local historian Nicholas Reynolds said Thomas Peel first constructed a settlement called Clarence on what is now Woodman’s Point, about 10 kilometres south of Fremantle, while he awaited further supplies.

But malnutrition and disease plagued the emigrants at Clarence and Thomas Peel himself became ill from a gunshot wound.

Mr Reynolds said the reasons behind the gunshot wound were debatable.

“Some say it was a hunting accident; others less friendly to him say he got shot in a duel with the ship captain of the Rockingham [a ship that was wrecked off Garden Island],” he said.

“He lost the use of his right arm from the shot. He was known to be vindictive and money grubbing.”

Some say 30 people died in Peel’s tent city, unable to leave because they were indentured to Peel. This is what MP Robyn Clarke means when she said Thomas Peel had hurt white people as well as Aboriginals.

With the Clarence settlement a failure, Peel and the remaining loyal settlers – the Tuckey and Eacott families – headed south in 1830 to the Murray River and the area known today as the Peel region.

Thomas Peel’s settlers began farming operations near the Murray River, but after a number of violent altercations with local Aboriginals, many of the settlers headed back to Fremantle, leaving Peel almost alone.

But in Mandurah, Peel had some success. He surveyed roads, developed land to sell and is credited with the early development of what is now a thriving city.

Thomas Peel grew old in the region and he was was described in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as “hot-tempered” and “proud”.

He died at Mandurah on December 21, 1865, and is buried at Christ Church’s Anglican Church.

No one knows for sure how many Aboriginal men, women and children died on October 28, 1834, but Thomas Peel was certainly one of the military force who rode down a group of up to 80 Bindjareb people on the banks of the Murray River.

According to the State Heritage Office, the Bindjareb camp was on the southern bank of the Murray River, just upstream from where Ravenswood Bridge now stands.

On October 25, James Stirling and John Septimus Roe had ridden out of Perth in a party of about 25 people. They met at Thomas Peel’s house on October 27 and headed towards Pinjarra.

Early on the morning of October 28, the military force attacked the encamped Aboriginal people and from there accounts diverge.

The first reports suggest between 15 to 20 Aboriginal people had been killed. But the group of 80 had been subjected to intensive fire from 24 guns for an hour, from a number of flanks.

At first the numbers of women and children killed were not included in reports. The heritage office said an eyewitness put the figure at more than thirty.

The location of the Pinjarra Massacre was registered as a heritage site in 1985 and the first ‘Back to Pinjarra Day’ remembrance ceremony was held in 1991, initiated by traditional owners Theo Kearing and his wife, Gloria.

Bindjareb people now refer to the massacre as the Anzac Day for their ancestors.

For a long time there was no such thing as the Peel region.

The first mentions of the Peel region, as we now know it, cropped up in parliament in the late 1980s, when politicians were first discussing the establishment of the regional development commissions.

Since the the 1993 state law that established the Peel Development Commission, the use of the name has become widespread, with the Commonwealth also setting up a Peel regional development authority.

But outside of government authorities, there are hundreds of businesses and non-government organisations that use the name Peel, such as the region’s Peel Thunder football team, the Peel Health Campus, right down to organisations such as the gay rights activist group Pride in Peel.

The costs of changing the name are unknown.