Australind is a town in Western Australia, located 12 km north-east of Bunbury's central business district. Its local government area is the Shire of Harvey. At the 2016 census, Australind had a population of 14,539. History Prior to European settlement, the area was home to the Wardandi people. Early explorers and settlers found them to be excellent trackers, and many of them found employment on farms. The first sighting of the coast was by Captain A. P. Jonk in the VOC ship Emeloort, who sighted land at 33°12' S (most likely opposite the estuary from Australind) on 24 February 1658 while looking for Vergulde Draeck, but did not land. A few months later, Elburg, under Capt. J. P. Peereboom, anchored off what is now Bunbury. Peerboom met three Aboriginal people, and returned to Batavia on 16 July 1658. In 1802–03, Nicolas Baudin visited the coast and explored the estuary and nearby rivers. He named Point Casuarina in Bunbury after one of his ships , and the Leschenault Inlet after on-board botanist Jean Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour. The name Australind is a combination of Australia and India, which was chosen due to the belief that the area could be used for breeding horses for the British Indian Army, as was later done at Cervantes, Northampton and Madura. In 1840, the Western Australian Land Company purchased of land with a plan to create an English-style village populated by settlers. The area had been mapped in 1831 by John Septimus Roe and explored by land by Lieutenant Henry Bunbury in 1836. A detailed plan of the town included a town square, church, a school, stores, a mill and a public hall. Marshall Clifton, who arrived on Parkfield in 1841, was appointed leader of the 440 settlers. However, in January 1841, the Swan River Colony's Methodist minister Rev. John Smithies wrote in the following terms to the Wesleyan Missionary Society in London: If any of your friends are thinking of Austral-Ind as a point of emigration tell them to Stop. It is one of the greatest puffs that there has been for some time. I should be sorry if any of our Methodist friends or others should be so deluded as to embark for such a place. Before long, the settlement began to fail owing to poor soils and climate — no water in summer and too much of it in winter —