Tammin

Distinguished and Famous people from Tammin

🌾 John and Emma Packham

John and Emma Packham established themselves near Tammin in the 1890s after earlier years in Victoria and Fremantle. The shire identifies John as an early European settler, while the Western Australian Museum traces the family's farm near Doongin Peak through a collection of Aboriginal objects that later travelled to Britain and returned to Australia. The objects include boomerangs, spear throwers and spearpoints; the museum carefully distinguishes what is known about them from uncertain details of their collection. The Packhams' story connects the district's agricultural settlement with a surviving record of Ballardong Noongar material culture, and its connections with this country.

🧭 Charles Cooke Hunt

Surveyor Charles Cooke Hunt recorded the name Tammin Rock in 1864 during journeys through country east of York. His wider work involved surveying routes, clearing tracks and establishing wells that later travellers used across the dry interior. Noongar guide Tommy Windich joined one of his subsequent expeditions, bringing essential local knowledge to the undertaking. Hunt's Tammin association is a recorded survey visit and place name, within a landscape already known to Aboriginal people. His diaries and letters survive in the State Library, providing records of the practical problems of water, navigation and movement before the later railway and farming township.