WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

markedly in the face of competition from plastic buttons (Sickert 2003). In 1949 a
major and much-needed breakthrough in the industry occurred. With Japanese advice,
the CSIRO established a cultured pearl station in the Torres Strait. Researchers
demonstrated that, whereas pearls took four years to mature in the smaller Japanese
oyster, in the large Pinctata maxima oysters endemic to northern Australian waters,
cultured pearls would mature in just two years (Edwards 1983). Seven years later,
Australia's first pearl farm was established at Kuri Bay north of Derby (Bach 1955;
Edwards 1983). In the 1960s, pearl farms were established near Exmouth and at
Cygnet Bay between Broome and Derby. Many of the farms that are still well known
in the industry today were established in the 1960s and 1970s. Eighty Mile Beach,
south of Broome, is now a significant pearling area.
In the years following the Second World War, changes in technology and
infrastructure also affected the Kimberley pastoral industry. Kimberley pastoralists
sought to develop the local beef export industry by improving infrastructure. Three
brothers – Gordon, Douglas and Keith Blythe – who owned and operated several
pastoral leases in the east Kimberley, constructed a meatworks including an abattoir,
carcass freezing facilities and an aerodrome at the remote Glenroy Station on the
Mount House lease, about 100 kilometres east of Imintji Aboriginal Community, near
Derby. Beef cattle were brought in from a 160 kilometre radius to be slaughtered,
quartered, boned and chilled overnight, and the following day air shipments were
made to the port of Wyndham – a 290 kilometres, 75 minute flight. The beef was
frozen at Wyndham, and shipped from there to the United Kingdom. The plant had a
capacity of 300 head of cattle per week, and in an average season (from May to
September) would process around 4,000 cattle. During its operation from 1949 to
1965, the Air Beef Scheme boosted the economic development of Wyndham and
Derby, and strengthened the Kimberley pastoral industry. It was hoped that the
scheme would spawn a network of inland abattoirs throughout northern Australia,
however this did not eventuate; plans for a similar facility at Fitzroy Crossing came to
nothing.
In 1949 the Commonwealth Government passed the State Grants (Encouragement of
Beef Production) Act which provided funding for the construction of roads and other
infrastructure to support the beef industry. It was accepted by that time that, in the
long term, air freighting was not going to be economic. By 1953, the southern section
of the Gibb River Road to Derby was completed and the first live cattle were trucked
from the east Kimberley. The Derby Meat Company was established in 1959, and
from then on, shipments were made to the closer destination of Derby. The
construction of the road and the completion of slaughtering facilities in Derby in 1965
signalled the demise of the Air Beef Scheme, and the abattoir was closed later that
year.
It was not only infrastructure for the pastoral industry which received increasing
Commonwealth government support at this time. From the 1960s, station bosses were
the recipients of a range of Aboriginal welfare payments that were credited directly to
the station store, which they deducted for their Aboriginal workers' living costs – a
system that was open to abuse (Kolig 1987; Smith 2000). These payments contributed
to the profits of the station, but Aboriginal people rarely received anything more than
a small amount of pocket money.
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