Why is the Swan River called the Swan River?

The European name comes from a bird. In January 1697 the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh explored the river and gave it its name.¹ A bronze sculpture in Burswood Park shows him meeting the black swan, the bird after whom he named the Swan River, and it freezes the moment at 12 January 1697.^2,9 It went up in January 1997, marking the 300th anniversary of the naming.¹⁰

His own account is less heroic and more practical. On the shallow flats upriver his men had to climb out and push the boats, and the State Library of Western Australia preserves his complaint that the river split into many channels and they could go no further.¹¹ The party saw many swans and fish, footprints, fires and huts, but met none of the people who had made them.¹² His notes read like a working log: depth, obstacles and signs of people, written by a crew that wanted to get back to the ship.

The swans are still here. Black swans are among more than 80 species of waterbirds that use the Swan and Canning rivers.¹³ You might see a pair on a cruise, gliding near the reeds or upending to feed in the shallows. The answer to why is the river called the Swan River is, in the end, simply that a sailor saw these birds and wrote them down.

Where does the Swan River start and finish? The answer depends on the name. The Swan River (Derbal Yerrigan) is 72km long.⁵ Upstream of Walyunga, the same water is called the Avon River, though both are actually one river.⁶ The state's river health program puts it this way: the Swan meets the Avon at Walyunga National Park, and the combined river rises near Wickepin and runs out into the Indian Ocean at Fremantle.³³

Counted together, the Swan-Avon is 280km long, and it drains a huge area of farmland and bush far inland.²³ Along the way it collects tributaries such as the Helena River and the Wooroloo, Susannah, Ellen, Bennett, Henley and Jane brooks.³⁴ The Canning River, 110km long, shares the estuary with the Swan, and the city spreads around the broad water where they meet.¹⁷ On a map the shape is unmistakable: a narrow river from the hills that swells into wide basins near the coast.

For visitors, the useful version is shorter: the river you cruise is the estuary. It reaches inland as far as Walyunga National Park, and from there to the sea it is the same body of water you see from the deck.³⁵ The Swan Canning Riverpark that protects it covers 7210 hectares of river reserve and public land along the banks.³⁶ The Swan River starting point most people mean, the spot where the name changes, is in that national park, upstream of the city and its suburbs.

The river has its own dolphins. Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins live in the Swan Canning Riverpark, and research over fifteen years (2009-2024) found a community of about 20-25 that use the rivers on a daily basis.^78,7 River Guardians, the program run by the state's conservation department, now lists 26 resident dolphins in the community.^79,80 The group includes adult females with calves, two alliances of bonded males and a band of young dolphins.⁸¹

Many, if not all, are likely to have grown up in the estuary, and they seem to know where the fish are and return to those spots.^82,83 Researchers tell them apart by the shape of the dorsal fin, and the FinBook catalogue covers dolphins seen in the Riverpark and the Fremantle Port Inner Harbour from 2008 to 2022.^84,85 Akuna, an adult female, is easy to spot by the triangular notch at the top of her fin.⁸⁶

There are rules, and they are law. On a vessel you must stay 100m from dolphins, or 50m if you are swimming, and you must never chase or follow them, on any craft from a boat to a paddleboard.^31,70 Under the Biodiversity Conservation Regulations (2018) it is illegal to feed them.⁷¹ Fishing line and abandoned gear are real dangers: a calf born in 2019 drowned after becoming entangled in an abandoned crab pot.⁸⁷