Robert Dale (explorer)

In February 1829 Dale embarked for the Swan River Colony on HMS Sulphur as part of a detachment of troops commanded by Captain Frederick Chidley Irwin, arriving 6 June 1829.

[2][3] On arrival at the colony, he was seconded as an assistant to Surveyor General John Septimus Roe, whose Survey Department was suffering under an extreme workload.

He was the first European to cross the Darling Range, where he discovered the fertile Avon Valley and explored the future locations of Northam, Toodyay, York and Beverley.

The sale of his commission, along with £500 inherited from his grandfather, who had died in January 1835, enabled Dale to set himself up as a timber merchant in Liverpool in November 1835.

The Panoramic View of King George's Sound, Part of the Colony of Swan River, a 2.7-metre-long (9 ft) hand-colored aquatint panorama of Albany after sketches by Dale, was published in 1834 by Robert Havell.