Wonnerup House

Wonnerup House is a heritage-listed farm precinct in Wonnerup, Western Australia. The current house was built in 1859 by George Layman Jr., one year after the original house built in 1837 by his father, George Layman Sr., was destroyed by fire. The dairy and kitchen survived the fire because they were separate from the house. Stables and a blacksmith workshop were later additions to the farm. In the 1870s, when the lack of a school in Wonnerup was an issue for the local residents, George Layman Jr. donated land near Wonnerup House for a school, which was built in 1873. In 1885 a teacher's house was constructed. The precinct was purchased by the National Trust of Australia in 1971 and opened to the public in 1973.

The name Wonnerup comes from the Indigenous Australian term. Wanna describing a woman's digging stick, up meaning water.

In 1827 George Layman, then 17 years old, immigrated to Australia from England and settled in Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania, with his brother Charles. Van Diemen's Land was initially a penal colony, but became a colony in its own right in 1824. In 1829, Layman was attacked and robbed of all his money by escaped convicts, and decided to work his passage to the new Swan River Colony, arriving in October 1829. He married Mary Ann Bayliss in Perth in 1832; the couple established a homestead in Augusta. However, Augusta failed as a settlement, and many of the settlers chose to exchange their grants there for land in the Vasse region.

George and Mary Layman moved to Vasse in 1834 with their two young daughters, Harriet and Mary. Their son George Jr. was born in 1837, the same year that George built a homestead on his land. This cottage was followed by a separate dairy and kitchen complete with cellar and large ovens. The Laymans had two other children, Charles in 1838 and Catherine (Kate) in 1841.

Relations between the European settlers and the native Wardandi people were strained to the point of violence, resulting in several Aboriginal deaths. In February 1841,(the headstone clearly says Feb) after a long days work at the Layman property, George Layman was speared to death by Wardandi elder Gaywal. According to several witnesses including Robert Heppingstone, Layman had gotten involved in an argument between Gaywal and another Wardandi tribesman Milligan over the stealing of Milligan's allocation of damper by Gaywal. Layman pulled Gaywal's beard, which was considered a grave insult. A manhunt for Layman's killer went on for several weeks, involving much bloodshed as Captain Molloy, the Bussell brothers, and troops killed an unknown number of Aboriginals. One source has described these events to later become known as the Wonnerup Massacre, however no official records can substantiate this claim. The posse eventually shot Gaywal and captured his three sons, two of whom were imprisoned on Rottnest Island.

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