WILLIAM GIBBS  

HARRIET MARTIN  

Married:14th April 1847

Born:Dec.1807 London

Baptised: 8th May 1825 East Sussex

Died:18th  June 1895 Darkan

Died:22nd February 1896 Perth

Father:Samuel Gibbs

Father:Henry Martin

Mother:Charlotte Gibbs

Mother:Elizabeth Batcup

William and Harriet married in 1847 and in 1850 moved to Serpentine.Most of their 11 children were born here. William steadly acquired land in the Perth Swan and Canning areas.In Jan.1853 William applied for 1000 acres of land at Cockburn. The Gibbs's lived on the banks of the Serpentine River (near the south west highway) between 1850 and 1860.

In the early 1860's William moved his large family to the Upper Beaufort River.They lived in a house owned by William Cornwell. William Gibbs worked by hunting kangaroos and selling the skins in return for provisions in Bunbury.William and his sons were also employed by the government to discover new land for settlement.While on one of his expeditions William found an area known by the local aborigines as 'Darkan'. The Nyoongar people regarded this place as the camping ground for unborn babies waiting for a mother.Early 1867 the Gibbs's moved once again to the place discovered at Darkan.The water was found to be unreliable so the family moved one mile west of the original site. Harriet gave birth to her last baby. Sarah was the first white child born in the area. The family survived from the kangaroo skin trade. They also were sandalwood cutters.For the next 5 years  family were the only family in the area. How isolated must that have been. In the early 1870's the Fisher family arrived and took up land a few miles south of the Gibbs's. Two of William and Harriet's children, William and Sophia, married a Fisher.For the next 30 years these two families comprised of the entire population of the area.

William and Harriet Gibbs would seem to have been true pioneers in a harsh land - surviving on forward thinking, determination, improvision and an adventurous spirit.

Children