Captain, now Lieutenant-Governor, Stirling arrived a month later in the transport Parmelia, and the free colony of Western Australia was launched on its varied career.
The names first mentioned in the annals of land exploration in Western Australia are those of Alexander Collie and Lieutenant William Preston, who together explored the country on the coast between Cockburn Sound and Geographe Bay.

This was in November, 1829, and in the following month Dr.
J.B.Wilson, who came to the Sound with Captain Barker on the abandonment of Raffles Bay, made an excursion from the Sound and discovered and named the Denmark River.
In a passage in a letter written by R.M.Davis, of the medical staff, to Charles Fraser, the botanist, there is a detailed reference to this trip:-- "Dr.Wilson, who came here with Captain Barker, started in a direction to Swan Port (Swan River) with a party of men, and in eleven days went over at least two hundred miles of ground.

He says, without fear of contradiction in future, that there is far greater proportion of good land in this direction than in any other part of Australia that he had been in, and also wood of large growth, with innumerable rivers.

He ascended a very high mountain, which he called Mount Lindsay, in honour of the 39th regiment." On the 22nd of March, 1830, we first hear of the exploring feats of Lieutenant Roe, R.N., the Surveyor-General of the new colony.

Captain John Septimus Roe was born in 1797, and entered the navy.