2-979-553 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

York, in Western Australia, from an original sketch, 1857. The oldest inland town in Western Australia. [It is '...the chief settlement over the Darling Hills...[and one of] the principal corn-producing districts of the colony...York is pleasantly situated in the rich valley of the Avon, and thence the farms and stations extend still fifty miles further. The high land at the back of the town...is known as Mount Bakewell, or more familiarly as "old Bakewell; " the inhabitants...being justly proud of their handsome friend...Like most Australian rivers the Swan, or Avon as it is called at York, only runs in the winter, and sometimes not even then, being entirely dependent on the rain that falls in the winter months; but there are occasional reaches, or "pools" as they are termed, where the water remains fresh and sweet the whole year round, except in very severe droughts...when the pools become brackish'. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.