Dangin is a small town in the wheatbelt region of Western Australia. It is located about 7 kilometres south-west of Quairading, in the Shire of Quairading. At the 2006 census, Dangin had a population of 283. Dangin is named after the nearby Dangin Spring, which is in turn thought to be an Australian Aboriginal place name meaning "place where the Djanja grows", "Djanja" being a species of Hakea that grows in the vicinity. The name is recorded for 1863 as the name of the farm of Edward Read Parker, son of the first settler in the region. Around 1900, Edward's son Jonah, into whose hands the land had passed, began subdividing the property, forming a townsite of sorts, albeit on private land. In 1902 the town was formally gazetted, but even then it was surrounded by Parker land, and the only access to the town was through a gate. Six years later, Quairading had been established, gazetted, and connected by rail, and thereafter Quairading rapidly took over from Dangin as the main regional centre. Dangin was the original town in the area, but the owner of the townsite did not allow alcohol to be sold and had a Temperance hotel. When the rail went through to the next town a pub was built. Gradually the town moved to the new site, especially after water was sourced from the Dangin supply at Taopin Weir. Quairading has grown into a moderate wheatbelt centre while Dangin these days, has only a handful of houses left.
Dangin Gate case
During the 1910s, Parker made public some of their lands from their farm into an allocation of a schoolhouse, but in 1912 a teacher wrote to the education department complaining that Parker was threatening to keep locked a gate in a fence that ran right through the grounds of the township, because people using that gate were leaving it open, allowing Parker's crops to be at risk. However this led to difficulty in accessing the township itself. This led to a petition from the townspeople in asking the government to take over the township. However after a public meeting a couple of weeks later the ratepayers repudiated this move. Parker then proposed to the board to fence certain roads into the town and he would fence off the town-site and remove the gate. This was rejected on the grounds of cost. In October 1912 the board removed the gate which exposed Parker's land to cattle. Parker responded by promising that if the gate were replaced it could be left open during the day, and he himself would pay for it to be closed at night. This was refused. In 1913 there was a Supreme Court decision affecting the Greenhills Road Board where they had removed a gate across the South Caroling Road. There was a dispute from Jonah, who owned the gate. But the court ruled against him, allowing the gate to be removed. With this precedent, in May 1914 the annual ratepayers meeting in Dangin announced that they would submit the dispute to the Federal High Court. When asked if the board first consult the ratepayers before submitting the case the Chairman declined "on the grounds that it did not concern them, this sapient remark aroused a storm of hilarious derision from the meeting". When the dispute was submitted to the court, it found that the Board was wrong in removing the gate, and in fact did not make a "landmark" decision and the Board had to pay £102.3s to the Parkers. All the members of the board responsible were removed on the exception of the Chairman after this scuffle. In 1920 when the Repatriation Department was looking for large holdings to create blocks for returned soldiers, the park estate was considered ideal when the property was divided into 19 Lots. It went before a board which included Thomas Richard. Charles Kirkwood, the 22 successful applicants were paid nine Shillings a day by the industrial assistance board to get them started that Lease was for 25 years. One reason why the park estate was particularly attractive to the reparation apartment was the reliable water supply that been established. Thanks were to Parker's enterprising schemes the Toapin Weir that was able to safeguard the growth of a thriving community and growing pastoral industry a constant water supply was the necessity and the Parkers had the means the resources and the determination to achieve this end. That is the rocky story on how Dangin became a public town, not one trapped within private landholders.
