The following is an excerpt is from the book by Richard Piggott, "Fishtraps and Floods, Apples and Spuds: A History of the Lower Kalgan District" reproduced with the kind permission of the author.

The story of Lower Kalgan is the story of one of the state's earliest farming districts. The earliest record of aborigines on the south coast of Western Australia comes from the lower reaches of the Kalgan River. Artefacts found at Upper Kalgan in the late 1970s by Dr William Ferguson, an archaeologist with the Australian National University, show that man was inhabiting the Kalgan district at least 19,000 years ago.

The artefacts found by Dr Ferguson are not the only pointers to a past aboriginal presence in the district. The first white visitors to Kalgan River recorded in their diaries such things as native huts, native wells, native fires and kangaroo traps while exploring the river's lower reaches. It seems that at certain times of the year, at least, the Kalgan and the foreshore of Oyster Harbour were aboriginal hunting and fishing grounds

The first white man to record the fishtraps of Oyster Harbour was Captain George Vancouver (17571798) in 1791. Vancouver, at one time a junior officer under James Cook and regarded as the first Briton to visit King George Sound, wrote of finding fish wears in a river nearby the Oyster Harbour fishtraps. Another less conspicuous reminder that aborigines were at the Kalgan are the relics of fishtraps existing in the Kalgan River. The French explorer, Nicolas Baudin, wrote at some length in his journal of 1803 on the dikes, as he called the river fishtraps.

Another Frenchman, Dumont D'Urville, a visitor to the Kalgan in 1826 wrote of the aborigine after sighting the fishtraps in the Kalgan: Among the industries which displayed their greatest intelligence was their fisheries. Accompanying D'Urville was a draughtsman, Louis de Sainson, who painted at least two sketches of the Kalgan including a bush and river setting, and a piece depicting what looks like fishtraps at the base of a waterfall.

Today's map of the district shows few aboriginal place names. And of those few names that are probably of aboriginal derivation ‑ Nanarup, for instance, or Carnagannup (Gull Rock Lake) or Paikeclerup (Mt Mason), what of their meaning? The pantry appears empty. There is one name, however, corrupted a little perhaps from the original, that does remain in common use and that is the name of the Kalgan River itself.

In 1831 Alexander Collie, the first Resident Magistrate of Albany, wrote that the aborigines of King George Sound had two names for the river that ran into the north east of Oyster Harbour. Collie, a close friend of the aboriginal leader, Mokare, wrote that aborigines called the river Kalganup (believed to mean place of fish, though also recorded as place of many waters) and Yamungup (the meaning of which is not known). The river, however, had another name by the time of Collie's writings.

In the summer of 1803 the French vessel, Geographe, under the command of Nicolas Baudin, anchored for two weeks at King George Sound. The French explored and mapped the Sound, as Vancouver had done a decade or so earlier. It was the French, however, who would ink on the map the first official name of the Kalgan River Rivière des Francaise or French River.

Baudin had been impressed by the Kalgan, writing that its banks were very pleasant to look at and the ground high and well covered with big trees. While much of the bush has gone today, and certainly nearly all the good timber, the river arguably retains much of its beauty.

Another early visitor to be impressed by the Kalgan was Major Edmund Lockyer (17841860), founder of Albany, who came in 1827 not to inspect the river, as such, but the soil on its banks.

Lockyer wrote: -...the scenery at its entrance is beautiful; and the ground on the right side the best for commencing a government farming establishment that I have yet seen.

This day went to the French River accompanied by Captain Wakefield to examine the ground on its banks. Though by no means good it is better than that at the settlement and on arrival of settlers and an increase to the establishment, farming and agricultural concerns must be carried out there..."

Thomas Braidwood Wilson (17921843), naval surgeon and explorer, wrote in 1829 of finding the soil by the Kalgan rich and good in many places even to the tops of hills. Like Lockyer, Wilson suggested that the land was suitable for cultivation and well adapted to the growth of the vine.

A group comprising Geake, Cheyne, Symers, Taylor, Drake and Townsend were the first landowners of a district then known as Candyup. (now Lower Kalgan). Where the word Candyup came from is not clear. Glen Candy as it was also known. The word may well have a Scottish connection. Whatever its origins, the word Candyup remained in common use as a district name well into this century. The name Lower Kalgan doesn't appear until the 1920s, and even then, Candyup appears to have shared equal status for quite sometime. The district's first hall, built in 1927, was the Tandyup Agricultural Hall and under management of a Tandyup Hall Committee. It wasn't until 1959 with the building of a new hall that the name Candyup Hall was scrapped and replaced by the Lower Kalgan Hall.

Patrick Taylor (18071877), was born in Montrose, Scotland and orphaned at a young age. Taylor inherited family estates and by the time he arrived at Albany aged 27 years was a man of means. It seems Taylor did not know Miss Mary Bussell, his future wife, in 1833 when they boarded the James Pattison in England bound for the Swan River. Miss Bussell, the daughter of a deceased clergyman and one of nine children, was travelling with her mother to join the pioneering Bussell brothers at Vasse on the state's south west coast. A diary kept by Mary on the trip out reveals she took an immediate liking to Patrick; -

"... I wish my many friends knew him. The more I see him the more pure and quietly faultless he appears and the more suited for what we fancy..."

Taylor and Miss Bussell married in Fremantle in 1837, in a ceremony where Governor Stirling is reported as giving away the bride. Soon after, the newlyweds set sail for Albany, possibly to live briefly at Taylor's home in Duke Street (today the Patrick Taylor Museum), but soon to settle into a cottage Taylor built on Candyup (Location 38).[2]

Mrs Taylor kept a diary. The population was evidently small, for even 20 years after the time of her diary it was reported that just five settlers lived east of the river and this in a period when the land at Nanarup had been opened up and new settlers such as McKail and Affleck had just settled by the river mouth.

Mrs Taylor wrote that her husband, Patrick, picked fruit for sale in Albany; the fruit taken by cart to the Candyup Jetty on the Kalgan River where it was loaded onto Alexander Armstrong's boat. In later years small boats and lighters bearing mostly apples from the orchards of Upper Kalgan would become a not unfamiliar sight on the river, but not so in the days of Mrs Taylor's diary. The Taylors were probably the first to send fruit out from the district. The diary reveals they sold apples, pears, plums and peaches.

Another settler was Angus McKail, who also wrote on the decline of water transport on the Kalgan River; -

"...the first world war set many such concerns back five years, and after the war better roads and the increasing use of ~tor vehicles saw the end of water transport..."

The remains of the Government Jetty, built to meet the needs of the new settlers in 1912 on the west bank can still be seen from the bridge. The jetty was intended as a berthing spot for lighters to offload goods for the district's new settlers. As well, the jetty served as the site for offloading wooden stave and cast iron pipes used in the building of a water pipeline running from Two Peoples Bay to Albany.

The story of the water supply scheme at the Bay was told by Edith Webb (nee Poole) of Lower Kalgan in an article in The Albany Advertiser, A History of Two Peoples Bay, September 3, 1963: -

"...Albany was growing and eventually it was decided to go ahead with a water supply scheme from near Two Peoples Bay, so in 1911 Mr Angove surveyed nearly an 11,000 acre water catchment reserve enclosing the waters of Angove River and work was commenced in 1912. A dam was built across the river and a steam pump (the same one as on the Goldfields water scheme) installed, with a small auxiliary pump for emergency use, affectionately known as "Pumping Percy". This pumped the water through 10inch wood stave pipes to a tank on the summit of the nearby hill known as Reservoir Hill. In country of huge granite rock this tank was built by blasting the rock and spoil, dug by shovel, carted away by horse and dray. Concrete was poured between a matchboarding mould and the dirt wall, working up from the bottom in sections, making a 9inch thick wall.

The water from this tank gravitated to one built on the side of Mt Clarence, 134 feet lower, a distance through twenty andahalf miles of woodstave and castiron pipes."[3]

The Government Jetty served little of its intended purpose, according to Angus McKail:

"...had settlement in the Kalgan region upper and lower, started earlier, the jetty would no doubt have served its purpose of enabling Lower Kalgan settlers to avail themselves of the lightering service then becoming popular with the Upper Kalgan farmers and orchardists. But the First World War set many such concerns back five years, and after the war better roads and the increasing use of motor vehicles saw the end of water transport."

He continued:

"...The jetty was to serve a valuable purpose for many years. Messrs Armstrong and Waters used it to tie up their pleasure craft steamer, Silver Star after her run from Albany boarded with sightseers. From there two motor launches conveyed the passengers two miles up river to Killarney and back. Finally the use of both jetty and launches was discontinued when the steamer was fitted with a telescopic funnel which enabled her to do the journey on her own.

In a like fashion, the old jetty across the river came into use, when, in the early twenties Hopson's Tearooms started business on the old Affleck homestead, this structure (the jetty) lengthened and strengthened by the indomitable Alf Hopson, also served as a tieup for the Star and as a landing for passengers..."

[1] ISBN 0 646 11765 3
Originally Published by AR & BH Little RMB 8631 Albany Western Australia 6330
First Edition Printed by Albany Printers Lockyer Avenue Albany, Western Australia
Subsequently reprinted by Tangee Publishing.

[2] [NB The reader interested in a section of the original book on MRS TAYLOR'S DIARY 1873‑1875 should obtain a copy of Richard Piggotts book, readily available from Albany bookshops.]

[3] [NB The rest of Ediths fascinating article is also reproduced in Richard Piggots book.]

Thanks to Richard Piggott for this abbreviated excerpt. The rich history of the Kalgan since continues, and more is being written with every passing day. Any reader interested in pursuing it further will find a wealth of literature on the subject in the Local Studies Collection of the City of Albany library, and the many publications available at any of the local bookshops. Residents of the Kalgan are fiercely fond and proud of their district, and even though visitors are always welcome, the locals are nonetheless notorious for their reluctance toward progress. Richard's book concluded with a little poem by one of them that demonstrates why the local Progress Association is considered to be something of a misnomer; -

I've watched it happen to our fragile land,
Reverting, like a moonscape, to rock and sand,
As rivers turn salt, erosion takes soil,
Pollution, with chemicals, sewerage, and oil
Ever Bandaid solutions, no positive plan,
That dare interfere, to the profits of man.
The rip offs, and swindles, that never once did,
Now, man stops at nothing, to make a quick quid.
Just two hundred years, some proudly proclaim,
But the pillage continues, without hindrance or shame.

Jack Davies 1990