The Peel Estate featured a second time in the states history 80 years later when it was part of the assisted migration Group Settlement Scheme, which operated in Western Australia from the early 1920s.

Like its predecessor, this venture was also a failure, with most settlers abandoning the estate because of the low quality of the land which was, for the most part, unsuitable for the intent of the scheme, dairy farming.

[1] European settlement in the area dates back to the late 1820s, when Thomas Peel arrived in the recently established Swan River Colony.

With the construction of the South Western Railway from Perth to Bunbury in the 1890s, it was proposed that the unused 100,000 acres (40,000 ha) of the Peel Estate should be opened up and sold on the free market.

Dalgety offered the estate on behalf of the Colonisation Assurance Corporation of London at 20 shillings per acre but the government declined a month later.

[4] The inspection carried out concluded that all swamps except The Spectacles could be successfully drained at low cost and that this would result in 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) available for settlement.

Negotiations commenced, with the final sales price of 8 shillings per acre agreed to and approved by the government on 16 February 1920 and Peel Estate being sold for £24,230.

Construction of the drain was started in October 1920, supervised by the experienced chief engineer Richard John Anketell of the Public Works Department of Western Australia.

[4] The Peel Estate, like other Group Settlements, was predominantly populated by migrants from Britain, 44,000 of whom took up the offer to settle in Western Australia under the scheme.

[7] In an August 1928 statement by the Minister responsible for Group Settlement, Frank Troy, he declared that, of the 492 original holdings in the Peel Estate, 227 had been completely abandoned while another 88 had been merged with others to improve their position.

A significant amount of the land proposed for dairy farming in the estate was found to be completely unsuitable for such an activity and was deemed unlikely to ever become profitable.

[8] Annual winter floods contributed to the problem; those of July 1928 had been especially severe, overwhelming the main drain and filling the fields, in the words of a visiting farmer, "with wild ducks and swans".

[12][13] The management and cost of the Peel Estate Group Settlement Scheme were eventually subject of a Royal Commission, which was appointed in December 1923 and presented its report in March 1924, making five recommendations.

[4] The five recommendations regarding the Peel estate and future Group Settlement Schemes were to expand the board to include agricultural experts and that the blocks of land were to be inspected and unsuitable ones were to be abandoned.

Additionally, the area of The Spectacles was to be reserved for future settlement, that settlers should be supported past the end of the scheme and that Western Australia should ask for financial assistance from the Federal and Imperial Government.