Arthur River

Arthur River is a small town located in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, between Williams and Kojonup on the Albany Highway.

Arthur River is a small town located in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, between Williams and Kojonup on the Albany Highway.

The town is named after the Arthur River, which flows through it, a headwater of the Blackwood River. The river was named by Governor James Stirling in October 1835 after Arthur Trimmer who was a member of the exploring expedition led by the Governor. Trimmer arrived in Western Australia in April 1831 and selected land at York. In 1836 he married Mary Ann, one of King George Sound Government Resident Sir Richard Spencer’s daughters.Following the introduction of convicts in Western Australia labour to the Swan River Colony in the early 1850s, the road from Perth to Albany was completed and a number of small settlements sprang up along it to support pastoralists who had been granted grazing leases in the area from as early as 1854. Arthur River gradually developed into a thriving centre with a police barracks and gaol (1866), the Mount Pleasant Inn (1869), St Paul's Church (1885) still surviving to this day as remnants of the original settlement, and a post office, blacksmith, doctor and trading post also being built around that time. By the end of the century it was the major centre in the area.

The towns post office originally operated out of the inn. Mary Ann Spratt was appointed as the post mistress in 1866. The post office itself was not gazetted until 1892 which was the same year that the telegraph line was connected. The first telephone subscriber service commenced in 1913.

When the Great Southern Railway opened in 1889, much of the existing trade moved to new railway towns further east and many of the centres along the old "Coach Road" closed.A bridge over the Arthur River was built in 1907 at Nobles Crossing.