John Whatley was a doctor, and due to the prevalence of scurvy, ophthalmia and dysentery in the colony, he was busy attending to patients, leaving little time for him to farm. The family had great difficulty establishing a farm due to the floods, bad soil and lack of knowledge of the local seasons. In September 1830, John Whatley drowned after capsizing a boat whilst trying to cross the river with a cow in Fremantle. Anne Whatley and her children subsequently left the Swan River Colony forever. Similar stories like this played out with the other landowners in Bayswater. The last colonists, the Drummond family, left Bayswater in 1836, leaving the area empty for decades.