Remembering the Great Flood of 1862

The ‘Great Flood’ of 1862 ranks among the most extreme weather events in the southern half of Western Australia in the nineteenth century, and features prominently in the collective memory of colonial settlement in districts spread across the Southwest land division of Western Australia. This article explores the history of this significant flood in detail for the first time, building on the insights of local histories that refer to the event in regional contexts, and drawing on extensive eyewitness accounts in newspapers and archives. Flood impacts are described for the Swan and Avon valley districts, the Peel and Murray River district, Bunbury and the Vasse, and the Greenough and Victoria districts, and the process of disaster recovery is explored by examining the rebuilding of bridges, roads and drainage, and buildings. A third section assembles available meteorological and other environmental data to place the 1862 event in the context of climate and flood history in the Perth region. The ‘Great Flood’, we suggest, is remarkable not only in terms of its severity, but also as a formative event shaping local environmental knowledge in the colonial era.