[1][3] On 30 September 1828, Lieutenant-Governor James Stirling made a number of appointments to important public service positions for the planned colony of Western Australia, including appointing Peter Broun to the position of Colonial Secretary at a salary of £400.

Initially he worked out of a group of tents on Garden Island, before transferring to a temporary building on the new site of Perth, constructed by Broun with the intention of being his home.

In 1832, the Colonial Secretary's office moved to more permanent quarters on the corner of Hay and Irwin Streets.

Broun had brought livestock, equipment and furniture valued at more than £500, which entitled him to a grant of 9,626 acres (38.96 km2), which he took up in Upper Swan and West Guildford.

Broun was entirely untrained in matters of finance and accounting, and the large distances over which the colony was spread meant that cheques were often held for long periods of time.

Payments to shipping companies by settlers for imports meant that hard currency became scarce and in January 1834 the government issued a limited number of £1 notes.

James Battye claims[note 1] that the entire family had changed the spelling of their surname to Brown in an attempt to avoid the consequences of an involvement in the Jacobite rising of 1745.