WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

In summary, the history of pastoralism in the west Kimberley is a prominent
part of the region's history. Thematic study of pastoralism in Australia has not
identified places of potential National Heritage value within the west Kimberley
area. While Kimberley pastoral stations have some potential importance as
examples of stations typical of Northern Australia under criterion (d), none has
been specifically identified in this analysis.
Droving stories
In the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, pastoral activities
supported the spread of settlement, provided wealth that was fed into other areas of
economic development and played a major part in forging an identity shared and
valued by many Australians today. The drover with his flocks and herds rode in the
advance-guard of settlement, and overlanders covered very long distances to open up
new country. Droving and overlanding became an important part of the development
of pastoral activities in Australia. As early as 1836, Joseph Hawdon moved 300 cattle
in 26 days from the Murrumbidgee River to Melbourne, a distance of about 480
kilometres. As droving developed, more challenging assignments were undertaken.
By 1863 drover George Gregory drove 8,000 sheep 2,100 kilometres from near
Rockhampton to the Northern Territory border, the journey taking seven months.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century the movement of large numbers of
stock over eastern and northern Australia became widespread. The story of Harry
Redford's overlanding of 1,000 stolen cattle in 1870 from Bowen Downs Station,
Longreach, Queensland to South Australia is an example, in this case using the wellknown
Strzelecki Track.
Despite Western Australian Government assistance, early attempts to set up pastoral
stations and settlements in the Kimberley at Roebuck Bay in 1863 and Camden
Harbour in 1864 failed. In 1879, the Western Australian surveyor Alexander Forrest
set out on an official expedition to look for land and gold in the northern part of the
colony, and his expedition reports identified the area's potential for cattle. As a result,
throughout the 1880s pastoralism became more widespread in the Kimberley, and
received significant levels of political promotion and support. The Western Australian
Government used the Melbourne Exhibition of 1880 as a forum to advertise for
settlers for the northern parts of the colony, with the aim of capturing some of the
enthusiasm for expansion. When in 1881 they offered land in the Kimberley by ballot,
promotion of the ballot sparked a series of epic overlanding expeditions by colonial
pastoralists from Queensland and New South Wales to the Kimberley. In 1881 Yeeda
Station was established as the first pastoral station on the lower Fitzroy River in the
west Kimberley, and by 1883 there were eight stations running a total of 22,000 sheep
along the lower valleys of the Mina, Fitzroy and Lennard Rivers. By 1889 over
100,000 sheep were grazed in the south-western Kimberley, almost five times as
many as there had been six years earlier (Pearson and Lennon 2008). This spread of
pastoral activity into the Northern Territory and the Kimberley provided the impetus
for Australia's greatest droving exploits.
Nat Buchanan was the first to take cattle into the Kimberley, crossing the Victoria
River country with 4,000 head to stock the Ord River Station in 1883. In 1878 he
drove 1,200 head of cattle over 2,255 kilometres from Aramac, central Queensland, to
Glencoe Station NT (between Darwin and Katherine), and in 1881 he drove 20,000
head of cattle over 3,220 kilometres from St George (Qld/NSW border) to Glencoe
108