Peter Warburton

Who was Peter Warburton?

Colonel Peter Egerton-Warburton CMG was a British explorer who sealed his legacy by a particularly daring expedition from Adelaide crossing the centre of Australia to the coast of Western Australia via Alice Springs in 1872.

A younger brother of Rowland Egerton-Warburton, Peter was educated at home in Cheshire and by tutors in France before being commissioned in the Royal Navy at the age of 12, serving as a Midshipman in HMS Windsor Castle.

Egerton-Warburton was seconded to the Indian Army and served in India from 1831 until 1853, before retiring as Deputy Adjutant-General with the rank of Major.

Egerton-Warburton married on 8 October 1838 Alicia, daughter of Henry Mant, a solicitor, however by the time of his arrival in Australia, he had apparently adopted the pseudonym of Peter Warburton. His father Rowland Egerton, who was in remainder to the Egerton baronetcy, assumed by Royal Licence, the additional surname of Warburton in accordance with the terms of his wife's inheritance, viz. the Arley and Warburton estates.

In 1853 Warburton visited his brother George and his wife Augusta, in Albany, Western Australia.