Early European settlers in the Avon region faced extremely difficult conditions, not least from the Avon River itself. The river flooded in 1847, 1849, 1857, 1859 and 1862, and then again in 1902 and 1926. On the 21st of July 1926, the Avon River flooded Fitzgerald Street in Northam (Landgate, 2012).
Land in the new WA colony could be purchased very cheaply and with virtually no official oversight. For £3, a settler could have any available 16 ha (40 acre) parcel of land. By the 1830s, large areas of land had been taken up within the Avon Arc. By 1931 the system of land granting came to an end, and was replaced by the sale of crown land for five shillings per acre.
Prior to 1887, land occupation was largely associated with control of leasehold pastoral land. After that date the emphasis of settlement changed to acquisition of freehold land for agriculture (Burvill 1979).

Paddy Hannon discovered gold in Kalgoorlie in 1893, increasing pressure for development of rail and water resources through the centre of the Avon region to the Goldfields. By 1885 the railway extended to York (via Chidlow) and by 1894 reached east to Southern Cross (Mouritz 1965).
Fresh water was scarce in the Avon region and even more so in the Goldfields. As a result, the Goldfields Pipeline was constructed and by October 1902 allowed scheme water from Mundaring Weir to be pumped to Southern Cross (Le Page 1986). By December 1902, scheme water from the Mundaring Weir reached Coolgardie.
The first concerted agricultural expansion and associated increase in land clearing within the region occurred during the 1920s through the group settlement scheme (Burvill 1979). The aim of the scheme was primarily to clear land, initially by establishing dairy farms with settled British migrants in Karri areas south of the Avon River basin (ARB). The scheme then extended into areas of the ARB adjacent to the railways. During the 1920s the group settlement scheme led to extensive land clearing and planting of wheat. By 1929 wheat farms were scattered as far east as Hyden and Lake King and within 15 miles of Southern Cross. Between 1924 and 1929, the total wheat production in Western Australia more than doubled, facilitated by rapid land clearing.
The group settlement scheme was problematic with many landholders ultimately leaving the land, as many settlers were inexperienced at clearing and farming and the harsh and primitive conditions and isolation took their toll. A royal commission in 1925 recommended extensive reorganisation of agricultural land. Blocks were resurveyed and the government agreed to write off farmers’ debts, yet development continued unabated until the onset of the great depression (ACF 1984).
Many farmers faced great financial hardship due to a crash in the wheat price at the end of the 1920s. Unable to continue to eke out an existence, many landholders abandoned their farms and by June 1935 the State Agricultural Bank had more than 2,300 properties on its hands and almost £4 million outstanding (ACF 1984). Yet by the mid 1930s, railways had opened up most of the central region to agriculture in addition to large areas in the eastern and southern subregions (refer Figure 1) (Burvill 1979).

Land cleared in the early days of settlement tended to leave little or no native vegetation refuges, with very high clearing rates, typically greater than 95% in shires where early settlement occurred. Figure 2 Illustrates most that most large areas of native vegetation within the region are more than 16 km (10 miles) from the 1940 rail distribution network.