Aubin Grove

Lot 212

The site of Aubin’s land corresponds very closely with the borders of today’s Aubin Grove, though the suburb is larger than the original Lot 212 and slightly further south. On the east his land bordered Lyon Road, on the west it shared a boundary with James Hammond's land, and Gibbs Road was its southern border.

Market gardening

Aubin and Hammond were neighbours, friends, and friendly rivals for the vegetable-growing prizes at the annual Coogee and Jandakot Agricultural Shows. They both grew the local stalwarts: onions and potatoes, along with many other crops like cauliflower, pumpkin, beetroot, and more, and they both won multiple awards each year for their best vegetables. When Hammond died in 1914, Aubin was one of his pallbearers.

Aubin was the first gardener to install a sprinkler system in the Jandakot region in 1914, though it would have been run by a pump system as Jandakot did not have electricity connected until the 1950s.

Road names in Aubin Grove

Lyon Road was named after John McMurray Lyon who took up the lease on Lot 214 in 1894 and named his farm Wild Croft. This lot was directly north of Aubin's block, with Bartram Road as its northern boundary. Lyon was an active member of the Jandakot Agricultural Society and considered something of an expert in potato growing.

Gaebler Road was named after Waldemar Gaebler, a German migrant who had a basketmaking business in West Perth and took up Lot 291 in 1904. His block of land was on the south-eastern shore of Forrestdale Lake, further east than modern day Cockburn, but in 1915 he asked the Roads Board to improve Oxley Road as it bordered his property, and today's Gaebler Road is a western continuation of Oxley Road.

Modern land use

Aubin himself died at Fremantle in 1926, and his land at Jandakot was auctioned off in 1949, along with a block he had owned in Hamilton Hill. Even in 1949 the land was still being advertised as suitable for ‘dairying, market garden, and poultry farm'.

The locality of Banjup was created when the Jandakot Roads Board collapsed in 1923, and the area became part of the Cockburn district. When, in 2003, the urban development alongside the Kwinana Freeway near the Cockburn Gateways Shopping Centre was being planned, the two suburbs of Aubin Grove and Hammond Park were carved out of Banjup at the same time, recognising two modest but reliable settlers of the Jandakot area.

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