WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

Hicks wrote: 'We found ourselves near the coast again in some of the most rugged
country one can conceive… Nothing but disaster and disappointment attended our
efforts' (quoted in Edwards 1991).
Forrest named the whole region he explored 'the Kimberley' after the Secretary of
State for the Colonies, the Earl of Kimberley. On his return to Perth, via the Overland
Telegraph Line and Port Palmerston, Forrest claimed that the Kimberley had great
potential for tropical agriculture, and his report of the journey foreshadowed the
possibility that gold would be discovered there (ADB 1981b). He also noted that
Aboriginal people who lived in the region might provide a source of labour to
support the development of colonial industries (Bolton 1958). His descriptions,
particularly as used subsequently in promotions by the Western Australian
Government, led to a wave of interest in the Kimberley from southern squatters and
investors. According to Forrest's account, his party had surprisingly little contact with
Aboriginal people, despite the length of time they spent in the Kimberley. His records
note that encounters between his party and Aboriginal people near Beagle Bay were
friendly (Clements 1990). Oral history accounts by Kimberley Aboriginal people
report that assistance was given to European explorers like Forrest as a way to
manage their incursions. Aboriginal people would guide explorers through their
country so as to lessen the strangers' impact upon traditional ways of life, and to
ensure their time on country would be as brief as possible (Jebb and Allbrook 2009).
But the strangers would not be leaving. Throughout the 1880s, pastoralism became
more widespread in the Kimberley, buoyed by significant levels of political
promotion and support. The Victorian gold rush had resulted in a period of economic
prosperity and rapid development in the southern colonies. Despite the early failures
in the region, 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 available capital and enthusiasm for expansion.
Alexander Forrest's expedition reports were used as evidence of the area's potential. In
1881 the Western Australian Government followed up on the interest it had created by
offering land in the Kimberley by ballot. By 1882, 77 people held leases to eighteen
million hectares of Aboriginal lands (Bolton 1958). From the early 1880s, based on
both increasing movement of pastoralists into the region, and the growth of the
pearling industry, the number of permanent European camps and settlements in the
Kimberley began to increase dramatically. In 1880 pearlers made their base at Minyirr
(Roebuck Bay) on the land of the Yawuru people, and in 1883 they renamed the site
Broome. A little north, on the mudflats of King Sound, the township of Derby was
gazetted that same year.
Most of the early settlement of the western areas of the Kimberley took place by sea,
with new arrivals landing with their flocks or herds at makeshift ports such as Derby
and Point Torment before traveling inland. In 1881, the first pastoral station on the
lower Fitzroy River in the west Kimberley, Yeeda Station, was established by a group
who formed the Murray Squatting Company. By 1883, there were eight stations
running a total of 22,000 sheep along the lower valleys of the Meda, Fitzroy and
Lennard Rivers. Stocking the stations with sheep was seen as a quicker way of
complying with the pastoral lease conditions: land leased from the Crown had to be
stocked within two years at a rate of either twenty sheep or two cattle for every 1000
acres (around 400 hectares) (Schubert 1992). Initially, a relatively small number of
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