WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

1989). Oral traditions of the Karajarri people, whose traditional country extends from
just south of Broome to the Anna Plains station at the northern end of Eighty Mile
Beach, preserve stories of the massacre. It took place to avenge the killing by
Karajarri people of three explorers: Fredrick Panter, James Harding and William
Goldwyer who were in the area looking for good pastoral country on behalf of the
Roebuck Bay Pastoral Company. These traditions speak of the explorers meeting their
deaths because they desecrated a sacred place and ignored warnings to leave the area
(Battye and Fox 1985; Skates 1989). The subsequent punitive expedition led by
Maitland Brown exacted a fearsome revenge on the traditional owners of the area, and
an unknown number of people were killed.
The Forrest expedition
In the 1870s grazing runs were tenuously established in the Fitzroy Valley, Meda and
May River areas. In 1879, the Western Australian surveyor Alexander Forrest was
sent on an official expedition to look for fertile land and gold in the northern part of
the colony. Unlike Grey, Forrest was a bushman of much experience. He had been
born and grown up in Bunbury, Western Australia, and had done long trips before
through difficult terrain, including surveying the route for the Overland Telegraph
Line with his brother John. He was methodical, and well prepared for the conditions
he would encounter. His party included his brother Matthew Forrest; a cadet from the
survey department; a government geologist from Victoria; and two Aboriginal men,
Tommy Pierre and Tommy Dower, who were outsiders from Nyungah country in the
south, and who accompanied the expedition as trackers and horse men. Forrest also
hoped that they would help his party to negotiate passage through country with
Kimberley traditional owners .While Pierre had accompanied both Alex and John
Forrest on previous expeditions, as far as can be known this was Dower's only such
venture. Tommy Dower is also notable as an important spokesman for his Ngyungah
people around Perth and is the subject of a number of photographs. Alex Forrest paid
for an elaborate gravestone to mark Dower's grave after he died in 1895.
The expedition lasted for six months, and resulted in the mapping and naming of
much of the Kimberley district. They found fertile land surrounding the Fitzroy River,
and followed the river north for almost 400 kilometres before reaching a place where
they could cross with their horses – today's Fitzroy Crossing. Forrest was very
impressed by the promise of the Fitzroy to support future settlement. Hicks, a member
of his party, wrote:
* * * *
'Our arrival at the Fitzroy was heralded with great rejoicing. Its bank being covered
with eucalyptus, banksia, and acacias Mr Forrest described it as a magnificent river…
Ducks, turkeys, and cockatoos were there in countless numbers. We were able to
economise in our provisions with the help of our guns. When game was plentiful and
on the menu, our flour and bacon remained intact' (quoted in Edwards 1991).
* * * *
After turning north, the men found themselves in very different country. Hicks wrote
that the mountainous region of the Central Kimberley seemed to 'completely shut us
in with bold, high, ranges.' Forrest named the Oscar and Napier ranges and the King
Leopold Range. Supplies ran down and his men began to fall sick, and they could not
find a pass through the mountains: no European would until Frank Hann in 1898.
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