Picture a couple thrust upon a remote beach, the wreckage of their ship just offshore and a pedal organ among the treasured possessions around them.
The heavily pregnant woman is in labour and gives birth on the beach.
No, it's not a Hollywood movie script. It was the reality in 1829 for one pioneering English family.
At the time, Elizabeth Dent had just reached the fledgling Swan River Colony aboard the Marquis of Anglesea.
But before reaching its destination, the ship ran aground on the rocks off what is now known as Fremantle.
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)Mrs Dent had gone into labour onboard the ship. When it was unable to land, her husband Thomas carried his wife through the shallows to shore.
Upon reaching the beach, Mrs Dent gave birth to a girl, Sophia, reputed to be either the first European child, or the first European girl, born in what is now known as Western Australia.
ABC Midwest And Wheatbelt: Samille Mitchell
)Today, the organ that bookended Sophia Dent's life sits within the collection of the Irwin and Districts Historical Society Museum in Western Australia's Midwest.
Its simple form belies its fascinating past, for the 200-year-old organ could play the melody of many of Western Australia's pioneering European families.
Harsh reality of a foreign land
Irwin and Districts Historical Society secretary Bruce Baskerville says the organ helps bring to life the story of the harsh realities for WA's European settlers.
The child born on the beach in 1829, Sophia Dent, began her life living in a tent in the sandhills, with the organ presumably amongst the newborn's family possessions.
Supplied: State Library of NSW
)"You can imagine that's in September, so the weather's getting hotter and warmer and it's all very strange and foreign to the people," Mr Baskerville said.
Mr Baskerville said he could imagine the pedal organ being played at Sophia's first Christmas in the tent community among the sand dunes, even though she would have been too young to remember it.
ABC Midwest and Wheatbelt: Samille Mitchell
)Tragedy, then a second marriage
At 17, Sophia married an American, William Ellery, who had jumped ship in Fremantle.
It is assumed she either had the portable organ in her possession at the time, or later became custodian of it.
ABC Midwest and Wheatbelt: Samille Mitchell.
)Mr Baskerville said records showed that the couple went on to have seven children together, but when their youngest child was just three weeks old, Ellery was killed after a ship boiler exploded, scalding him terribly.
With no government handouts to support Sophia, the then fledgling colony banded together to fundraise to help the young widow and her children.
But the funds were insufficient for the single mother to feed her family. So, just a year after Ellery's death, Sophia married William Mitchell.
They later moved to Toodyay with the organ, and together they had another five children.
Of Sophia's 12 children, just one died as a baby, which was quite remarkable for families of the time, as infant mortality rates were roughly 400 per 1,000 in the mid 1800s compared with today's rate of 4 per 1,000.
ABC Midwest And Wheatbelt: Samille Mitchell
)Music until the very end
After Mitchell died, an aging Sophia retired to Dongara to live with one of her daughters. She brought the pedal organ with her, gifting it to her daughter Amy.
Sophia died in Dongara aged 71, just a few weeks before federation.
"So she lived, in her life, the entire life of the colony of Western Australia," Mr Baskerville said.
ABC Midwest And Wheatbelt: Samille Mitchell
)While Sophia's story seems extraordinary, Mr Baskerville says it was everyday stuff for the state's earliest European women.
