Cape Riche

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title: "Cape Riche" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["city-of-albany,-western-australia", "headlands-of-western-australia", "whaling-stations-in-australia"] description: "Cape in Western Australia" topic_path: "geography/australia" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Riche" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Cape in Western Australia ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox Australian place | type = other"]

Field	Value
name	Cape Riche
image	Cape Riche 1.jpg
caption	Cheyne Island off Cape Riche
state	wa
region	Great Southern
lga	City of Albany
mapframe-marker	yes
local_map	yes
pushpin_label_position	top
relief	yes
zoom	10
coordinates
stategov	Albany
fedgov	O'Connor
dist1	525
dist2	123
dist3	24
dist4	406
::

| name = Cape Riche | image = Cape Riche 1.jpg | caption = Cheyne Island off Cape Riche | state = wa | region = Great Southern | lga = City of Albany | mapframe-marker = yes | local_map = yes | pushpin_label_position = top | relief = yes | zoom = 10 | coordinates = | stategov = Albany | fedgov = O'Connor | dist1 = 525| dir1 = SE | location1 = Perth | dist2 = 123| dir2 = NE | location2 = Albany | dist3 = 24| dir3 = S | location3 = Wellstead (townsite) | dist4 = 406| dir4 = W | location4 = Esperance Cape Riche is a cape in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. By road, it is 525 km south-east of Perth and 123 kmnorth-east of Albany. It is part of the locality of Wellstead and is 24 km south of the townsite.

Facilities in the area include a boat launching ramp and a campground with flushing toilets and showers.

History

Cape Riche was named for Claude-Antoine-Gaspard Riche, a naturalist on Bruni d'Entrecasteaux's 1791 expedition who became lost for two days near Esperance.

Matthew Flinders aboard Investigator charted the area in 1802 as part of his circumnavigation of Australia.

George Cheyne, a Scottish immigrant, took up land at Cape Riche in 1836, after arriving in Albany in 1831. He established a trading post which was often visited by American whalers. In about 1848, sandalwood cutters arrived in the area, The Surveyor-General of Western Australia, John Septimus Roe, visited the Cape in October 1848 as part of this 1848–49 expedition and reorganised his supplies while staying with the Cheyne family. He left four days later to make his way to the Russell Range.

The Cheyne properties were later taken over by the related Moir family.

Bay whaling activity took place on the coast in the 1870s.

In the 1890s the schooner Grace Darling provided supplies and delivered the mail on its monthly run between Albany and Esperance.

Flora and fauna

A number of botanists and explorers conducted plant collections in the area in the mid-19th century including Ludwig Preiss (1840), James Drummond (1840, 1846–48) John Septimus Roe (1848) and William Henry Harvey (1854). Plant species which were formally described based on these collections included Moirs wattle (Acacia moirii), sheath cottonhead (Conostylis vaginata), tallerack (Eucalyptus pleurocarpa), autumn featherflower (Verticordia harveyi) and Bossiaea preissii. Ludwig Diels and Ernst Pritzel also collected plant material at Cape Riche in 1901.

Cape Riche is home to a number of rare flora species including feather-leaved banksia (Banksia brownii), Manypeaks rush (Chordifex abortivus), Manypeaks sundew (Drosera fimbriata) and coast featherflower (Verticordia helichrysantha). The Albany/Cape Riche area is noted as a calving area for southern right whales.

Gallery

|align=centre |width=180 |height=180

|Image:Cape Riche and Cheyne Island.jpg |Cape Riche and Cheyne Island from nearby Mount Melville

References

References

1. "Cape Riche". Geoscience Australia.
2. "Cape Riche". State Heritage Office.
3. "Boat launching ramps". Department of Transport.
4. "Top Camping in Western Australia". travel-australia-online.com.
5. (1916). "Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia". S.N..
6. (2 December 1935). "Flinders knew Albany". [[Mount Barker And Denmark Record]].
7. "Explorers' Diaries of Western Australia".
8. (2014). "Upgraded and Expanded Biographical Notes – Western Australian Exploration 1826-1835". Western Australian Explorers' Diaries Project.
9. Speakman, Stefanie. (21 November 1999). "Aloft Down Under". The New York Times.
10. Heberle, Greg. "Heberle Fishing, Western Australia 1929-2004".
11. "Cape Riche Homesead". Heritage Council of Western Australia.
12. "Quaalup Homestead Group". Register of Heritage Places – Assessment Documentation=Heritage Council of Western Australia.
13. "The shore whalers of Western Australia : historical archaeology of a maritime frontier". Sydney University Press.
14. de L. Marshall. (2006). "Maritime Albany Remembered". Tangee Publishing.
15. Beard, JS. (2001). "The Botanists Diels and Pritzel in Western Australia:A Centenary". Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia.
16. "The South-west Marine Bioloregional Plan – Bioregional Profile Plan".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::