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Mrs. Grover, directly and also in association with her husband, the late William Grover, was connected with the very first settlement of the Kojonup district; as she came to what is now Kojonup in 1850, when her father, Sergeant Noonan, as an Imperial soldier, was sent there with a detachment, to keep in check the turbulent natives, and to afford some protection to the royal mail from Albany to Perth.
She was then eight years of age, having been born in 1842 in Dublin; but even at that age she had seen something of the world, for she had accompanied her parents from her birthplace to England, and thence to India, and back again.
The vessel which bore the family to Western Australia was the Trevancourt, the voyage from England occupying more than six months. William Grover married Bridget Noonan in 1862. Of the eleven children of the marriage, nine survived.
Mrs. Grover had a fund of interesting tales of her early experiences, both at Kojonup and later at Indinup. As a girl, she attended the Victoria Park convent school, and made the long journey of 150 miles (241 kilometres) from and to Kojonup more than once on foot, accompanied only by an indigenous female through a country mostly unpeopled.
Later, as a married woman, she made the same trip with cart and horses, many times, to procure household necessities, in exchange for skins and pelts. Mrs. Grover used to relate that her mother, when in urgent need of fresh milk for her children, walked from Kojonup to Bunbury, in order to buy a goat, and then walked back with her purchase. Such journeys seem almost incredible; but in those early days there was practically no live stock in the State. Even the meat for rationing the soldiers was shipped from England, salted in casks.
Shortly after their marriage William resigned from his official position to take up land with his brother-in-lay Michael Noonan, the two acquiring some 40,000 acres under pastoral leave. In the beginning a small flock of 150 ewes were purchased from William Cornwall at Beaufort and the sheep now on the family property ‘Indinup’ are the descendants of those first ewes. As settlement progressed, the old pastoral lands were encroached upon by other pioneers, until finally they were abandoned, to be replaced by leases under purchase. These now comprise the 7,500 acres of freehold in "Indinup" and form one of the finest properties in these districts.
Ref: Lost Katanning - Home Lost Katanning Great Southern Western Australia
With gratitude to Arthur Todd for encouragement, help and support. Lost Katanning, Old Railway Station, 67 Austral Terrace, Katanning
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