Captain RG Meares formerly of the Second Life Guards (Household Cavalry) arrived at Fremantle in December 1829, with his wife, eight children, and his brother Peyton. Captain Meares had achieved distinction as an Officer under the great Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. Richard and Eleanor married in Newcastle on Tyne, England on 18 January 1808. The Meares family journeyed with Thomas Peel in the Gilmore, having paid Peel 500 pounds for supplies and land. He moved to Cockburn Sound, where he acquired 15 acres of land and he and his family camped on the beach in a large marquee near the planned site of the town of Clarence. Eventually he was able to obtain land at Guildford, whence he moved in 1832, and where he had built a house - 'The Bower'. The family owned several town lots at Guildford in 1830. In 1834 he was appointed District Superintendent for the Police for Guildford. The same year he, together with his son Seymour, was involved in the 'Battle of Pinjarra'. In 1837 he was appointed Justice of the Peace, and in 1840 Government Resident for the Murray District, where he had been allotted some 20,000 acres of land around the site of the present Pinjarra. About this time he acquired land at York which property he named 'Auburn' and gradually sold his interests in the Murray District. From 1841 until 1859 he served as Government Resident of York. He had been the first Chairman of the Guildford Road Trust, he was a Director of the Agricultural Society of WA., and the first Secretary of the Stud Club formed in 1839. His wife Eleanor died 20 July 1854 and Capt. Meares died 9 January 1862 at 'Auburn' York. Both are buried at the site of the old cemetery on Avon Terrace, York.