Dixon Park’s Nyungar history and the campaign to protect Hamilton Hill’s Community Heritage Precinct

Whadjuk Nyungar people have lived on and cared for the land now called the City of Cockburn since time immemorial. They will always be Cockburn’s traditional custodians.  

 

As Whadjuk Nyungar communities resisted the settlement and occupation of the Swan River Colony from 1829, they were involved in ongoing conflicts with settlers, who threatened their way of life. Midgegooroo and his son Yagan were two important resistance fighters during the early years of the colony.

Midgegooroo was the leader of the Beeliar tribe who were the custodians of a large area south of the Swan River: from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Canning River in the east and Mandurah in the south. Their lands included what is now the City of Cockburn.

One of many important Beeliar sites located in the City of Cockburn is Dixon Park (a former wetland and burial place, and according to oral histories, massacre site), in Hamilton Hill. Historically, this area was often referred to as the Hamilton Hill swamp.  

Midgegooroo, Yagan, and their tribe used the Hamilton Hill Swamp as a summer campground. During the warmest months of the year, they camped nearby, utilising its fresh water and hunting the wildlife that also relied on the swamp.

In 2019 Fremantle Labor MP Simone McGurk made funding available for a study of this highly significant historical site. The resulting report by Terra Rosa Consulting was titled Early European and Aboriginal Heritage Study, Hamilton Hill Swamp Precinct (2021). As part of the research process, Terra Rosa consulted with a group of local Elders and Traditional Owners who confirmed that the Hamilton Hill Swamp Precinct was a significant Aboriginal site, both prior to European occupation, and well into the late 19th century. Much of what is now known about the historical significance of the Hamilton Hill Swamp is thanks to the information shared with Terra Rosa by this group.

During the consultation process, the Traditional Owners advised that the Hamilton Hill Swamp was a ceremonial meeting ground of great significance that formed part of a ‘larger interconnected ceremonial web winding through Hamilton Hill, Fremantle, and Manning Park in Spearwood’.  According to Traditional Owners, ceremonies were performed on the western side of the precinct.  Other ceremonial grounds included segregated men’s and women’s areas, with a women’s ceremonial hill to the south of Rockingham Road. Red and white ochre pits, used for painting women during ceremonies, were located on this hill. As the Traditional Owners described to Terra Rosa, an important bidi (track) also runs from this women’s ceremonial hill, through a small patch of vegetation north to Clontarf Hill.

Terra Rosa’s consultation revealed that Hamilton Hill Swamp is connected with the Seven Sisters Dreaming (Marajinbangga Gurdjir Koodjal Djoorkaarn) which includes the limestone hills (Djidong) running along the Swan River and south along the coast. According to Terra Rosa’s report, this ‘Dreaming connects Cantonment Hill (Dwerdaweelardinup) and Clontarf Hill (to the north of the Swamp), and various other hills in the vicinity, which have since been razed for development’.

 


 


In one instance, an entire skeleton was uncovered which locals immediately recognised as the remains of an Aboriginal man called Wee Waw, said to have been buried at the swamp in 1862.  According to the Daily News, Wee Waw became so unwell in 1860 his clan mistakenly assumed he was dead. They buried him in a traditional sitting position covered lightly with dirt and leaves in South Fremantle, before immediately departing for a journey south.

However, Wee Waw was only unconscious. A few hours later he awoke, left his grave and travelled to Mandurah to find his people. Upon seeing him, apparently returned from the dead, the clan were horrified and ostracised him. He spent the rest of his life working as a shepherd around Hamilton Hill Swamp, dying two years later. Before Wee Waw’s clan buried him for a second time, they hit him multiple times with a stone hammer to make sure he was truly dead – breaking both his legs and arms in the process. He was finally laid to rest in a deep grave at Hamilton Hill Swamp.

In 1933, The West Australian newspaper featured David Butchart’s memories from ‘old colonial days’ in which he recalled the significance of the Hamilton Hill swamp to local Nyungar people. Butchart came to Fremantle in 1852 and recalled Aboriginal people (the ‘Fremantle-Mandurah tribe’) gathering at the Swamp for corrobborees. He said that 'Natives from hundreds of miles used to gather and they would keep up the celebrations for days'.  Although white settlement and suburban development restricted the ways in which Nyungar people were able to live on and utilise their land, they have always maintained a deep connection to Hamilton Hill and wider Cockburn.  
 

One of the major recommendations of the Terra Rosa report was that Traditional Owners and non-Aboriginal community members wished to highlight the Aboriginal and environmental significance of the Precinct and suggested that it be recognised through information and interpretative signage, native plants, cultural trails, place names, use of language and protection of intangible values.

The idea that the Hamilton Hill Heritage Precinct should be saved from over-development and cared for by the community started in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There was sustained local opposition to, and community campaigns against the Fremantle Eastern Bypass, first proposed in the 1950s, and included in the Perth Metropolitan Region Scheme in 1973. This plan included a highway through Clontarf Hill.  The Transport Action Coalition (TRAC) was a group formed by local people who opposed the construction of a freight highway through the suburbs of White Gum Valley, Beaconsfield and Hamilton Hill. They ran a successful community campaign to ‘Ditch the Bypass’.

 
In 1997, 300 people walked the route of the Fremantle Eastern Bypass, culminating in a concert and blessing ceremony at Clontarf Hill. Father Donovan from Christ the King parish called for local people to stand up and fight for the hill and conducted a ‘blessing of the hill’, in the spirit of advocacy for the preservation of the hill as a place of natural heritage.  The Gallop Labor Government, responding to the strong community campaign, acted to abolish the Eastern Bypass in 2003.

Friends of Clontarf Hill (established in 1992) worked hard to revive the 10-hectare area which borders both the Cities of Fremantle and Cockburn, and have it recognised as a Parks and Recreation Reserve in the Metropolitan Region Scheme. They commissioned a research paper by Nandi Chinna exploring Clontarf Hill history, which showed it had significant Nyungar and ecological heritage value.

The early European history of the site was also identified and valued, with Perth’s first newspaper press set up in bush at the swamp by Charles McFaull to publish the Fremantle Observer. McFaull also planted the state’s first grapevines at the swamp in the 1830s. Local history researcher Joe Baker wrote:
 

In the mid 1880’s, some of the Dixon brothers (James, Horace, Alfred and Henry), along with John Fielder and Alma Dunning, began to squat on and fence off the Hamilton Hill swamp. They evidentially won legal possession after various courts ruled against Lucius Manning, who claimed ownership. The brothers used their land for market gardens, sheep, pigs and cows.

 From correspondence with Joe Baker 27 May 2025.

      ~Joe Baker
 

 

In 2015 a coalition of community groups proposed the development of a Hamilton Hill Community Heritage Precinct, encompassing Clontarf Hill reserve, the heritage listed Randwick Stables and the land bounded by Healy Road, Ommaney Street, Hurford Street, Leda Street, and Rockingham Road, including Dixon Swamp, now known as Dixon Park. The coalition argued that this space had significant pre-and post-colonial heritage and was a well-used, much-loved community open space and wildlife habitat that needed to be protected for the benefit of all the community and future generations.

Christine Duckham wrote in ‘The case for preserving Hamilton Hill open space and surrounds as community open space in perpetuity’:

The site also forms an important link in the ancient Aboriginal Bidi, which, from Fremantle, passed over the shoulder of Clontarf Hill, across the south side of Hamilton Hill Swamp, then branching east to Walliabup (Bibra Lake) and south along Hamilton Road to Lake Koojee and points south. This was also the first colonial road leading south-east out of Fremantle, south on Hamilton Road, then branching into the Rockingham Road and Dunnage’s Track (to Jandakot) until 1880.

 Christine Duckham for Friends of Clontarf Hill, Hamilton Hill Action Group, Friends of Randwick Stables, Cockburn Community Wildlife Corridor Inc., ‘The case for preserving Hamilton Hill Open Space and surrounds as Community Open Space in Perpetuity’, 2015.

      ~ Christine Duckham
 

The community groups in the coalition are Friends of Clontarf Hill, Hamilton Hill Action Group, Hamilton Hill Community Group Inc, Friends of Randwick Stables and Cockburn Community Wildlife Corridor. They joined forces to advocate for the retention and preservation of the open space and tuart woodlands adjacent to Dixon Park. They argued against further housing development on the site and a large banner was spread on land next to 54 Rockingham Road, Hamilton Hill to draw attention to the campaign. The Hamilton Hill Community Heritage Precinct group continues to provide many hours of volunteering on community projects, such as revegetation, and keeping the area clean and weed-free.