WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

and wealth to the west, the government offered twelve month's free pasture in the
north of the colony for settlers who wished to select a 'run'. After the first year, those
who stayed were able to take up as much as 100,000 acres of land (more than 40,000
hectares), and were eligible for three years rent free (Edwards 1991). Despite this
assistance, early attempts to set up pastoral stations and settlements in the Kimberley
failed. Settlements at Roebuck Bay in 1863 and Camden Harbour in 1864
encountered sustained Aboriginal resistance.
Camden Harbour and Roebuck Bay
The settlement of Camden Harbour by shareholders of the 'Camden Harbour
Association' was short-lived: settlers sailed from Melbourne and began to arrive in the
district in December 1864 and they left, defeated, less than a year later. The Camden
Harbour Association's choice of location for the founding of a pastoral settlement had
been based on their reading of Grey's enthusiastic assessment. However, they failed to
take account of his record of the many and severe difficulties he and his men had
faced: the discomfort, sickness and danger. The settlers arrived on the Kimberley
coast at the worst time of year, just as Grey had done, during the build-up to the wet
season. Stock began dying as soon as they were disembarked, and so did people.
Captain Brown described the Calliance's arrival in Camden Harbour on Sunday 25
December 1864:
* * * *
'Air close, sun very hot. Thermometer 89 deg. About 5pm Mr Hart, passenger, found
insensible, having had a sun-stroke; at 7pm buried him on Sheep Island, the Rev. Mr
Tanner reading the burial service at 7am. Found from the report of the passengers
previously arrived on the Stag and Helvitia, there was apparently very little food, and
no water within a few miles of the ship for the sheep' (quoted in Edwards 1991).
* * * *
To add to the difficulties, the ship Calliance was wrecked only a few days later while
being careened, when it was caught in sudden strong winds and blown onto rocks on
the shore. More ships arrived, bringing with them thousands of pure merino ewes.
Shortly after they were landed, the sheep began dying in droves.
People also suffered from the difficult conditions. A graveyard was established on
Sheep Island, and by the time the settlers withdrew, nine people had been buried
there. Some settlers died of fever or heatstroke, others drowned, or were speared and
died of their wounds. One grave belongs to Mary Jane Pascoe, who died on June 4 th
1865 of an infection after giving birth, aged 30 years; her headstone still stands on the
island today, a grim reminder of the difficulties faced by women and children in such
early settlements. Her baby only survived her by a short time.
Resident Magistrate R. J. Sholl, who was sent by the Western Australian Government
to administer the new settlement, left at the end of October 1865, by which time
Camden Harbour had all but been abandoned: all the stock had perished and most of
the supplies had run out. He described the place as 'an ungodly hole' (Edwards 1991).
In 1866 Cape Villaret, near Lagrange Bay, a small inlet located in the southern part of
Roebuck Bay, was the scene of the region's first recorded massacre of Aboriginal
people, in retribution for the killing of three European explorers (Battye 1986; Skates
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