WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

traverse of the region he declared 'auriferous country' in the East Kimberley, though it
was not until the following year that a group of prospectors following the lead found
payable quantities of gold. The rush brought thousands of men from across Australia
to the Kimberley region, most travelling through the ports of Derby or Wyndham.
Fred Cammilleri was in Derby at the time, and recalled what it was like there when
the Fitzroy was in flood and men couldn't get through to the diggings:
* * * *
'Things were fast and furious and the pubs did a roaring trade… The flies and
mosquitoes were damnable. The breaking-in of horses that had never had a collar on,
and others that had never had a saddle on, or packsaddle, was a daily amusement for
the crowd; also scratch races, and buck-jumping contests were well patronised'
(quoted in Edwards 1991).
* * * *
At its peak, there were reported to have been up to 3,000 men on the incredibly
remote diggings at Halls Creek, but the finds there had largely petered out by the mid
1890s. Although the gold stopped flowing, the infrastructure it had required and
helped to create remained: police stations and post offices, an extension to the
telegraph line, and much improved port facilities at Derby and Wyndham. A number
of people claimed the government reward for the discovery of gold, including
Hardman, but because of the conflict that arose the Western Australian Government
decided not to pay it to any of the claimants (ADB 1972b; Edwards 1991).
A final frontier
Pastoral expansion into the area north of the Napier and King Leopold ranges took
much longer than it had in the south-west of the Kimberley, and it was not until the
late 1890s that stations were established at Leopold Downs and Mount House (Jebb
2002; Pedersen and Woorunmurra 1995). Stations came still later in the very north of
the Kimberley, and it was only at the end of the 1920s that most of the region was
subject to pastoral lease (Jebb 2002; DIA 2004). By 1929, Kimberley pastoral stations
were on average between 50 and 250 per cent larger than other Western Australian
stations.
This final expansion was largely made possible by Queensland cattleman and
bushman, Frank Hann, who in the winter of 1898 found a long sought after passage
through the King Leopold Ranges. Hann's station in the Gulf Country had become
worthless in 1894, after a series of poor seasons and low prices for cattle. He had set
out for the north of Western Australia in search of new opportunities. What made his
exploration of the region particularly remarkable was that, at the time he undertook
this difficult feat, he was over 50 years of age and was suffering from the painful after
effects of a broken thigh bone. The King Leopold Ranges had previously formed a
formidable barrier to European expansion, their rugged and difficult terrain halting the
northward spread of pastoralism and, like the limestone cliff terrain of the Oscar and
Napier Ranges, offered a tactical advantage to Aboriginal people who were able to
use the ranges as a base to maintain their resistance against European settlement. In
the course of his expedition, Hann named the Charnley and Isdell rivers and identified
some areas he considered to be promising pastoral country. Hann himself took up a
lease of over 2,590 square kilometres, but because of his poor finances he was not
able to stock it. The area he had identified and made accessible was ultimately
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