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WRITING ABOUT KIMBERLEY PEOPLE
On 6 February 2002 members and friends were privileged to hear from the authors of two books on relations between Aboriginals and Europeans in the Kimberley. Christine Choo, author of Mission Girls: Aboriginal Women on Catholic Missions in the Kimberley, Western Australia, 1900-1950 (details in the February 2002 Boab Bulletin) spoke not only about her own book but also about Ian Crawford’s We Won the Victory and Ambrose Mungala Chalarimeri’s The Man from the Sunrise Side.
All three centre on Kalumburu Mission but examine relations from different perspectives. In Mission Girls Christine looked at women from two communities – the Benedictine Mission at Kalumburu and the Trappist, then Pallotine, Mission at Broome and Beagle Bay. Kalumburu was isolated while missions in the Broome area had greater contact with outsiders. As a historian Christine used archival material as well as interviews with Aboriginal women, missionaries and lay workers on the missions. She looked at the women as survivors rather than victims.
Ambrose Mungala Chalarimeri’s account is autobiographical and provides details of life at Kalumburu and the people there that Christine only knew from archives and interviews. Ian Crawford’s book is based largely on oral history from his long contact with Kimberley Aboriginals. In using interview material and photographs Christine was meticulous in following protocols for oral history to ensure that she didn’t use any material or photographs that the people involved didn’t want published.
Mary Anne Jebb, author of the soon to be published Blood, Sweat and Welfare: a history of white bosses and Aboriginal pastoral workers spoke about the background to her book. The title refers to three phases of colonisation in the period 1903 to 1972: the conquering phase, the relatively benign pastoral phase and the changing scene in the 1950s to 1970s with the coming of welfare and equal wages. This book is in press, due to appear in April 2002, published by the University of WA Press at $34.95. It has already won the 2001 Western Australian History Foundation Award and an Australian Historical Association Centenary of Federation Award. This book, like Christine Choo’s, is based on the author’s PhD thesis.
Mary Anne spent time in Fitzroy Crossing in the 1970s. In the 1980s she spent time in Derby and along the Gibb River road studying relationships and interactions between Europeans and Aboriginals and particularly the impact of equal wages. She came to Perth with her young family and concentrated on the written records including 400 files on the records of Aboriginals on stations, held by the Native Welfare Department. She realised that these records needed to be fleshed out by personal stories so she returned to the Kimberley to interview many people, black and white, including Billy Munro in Derby and Howard Coate, a former missionary, who took Mary Anne up the Gibb River Road in 1989, stopping along the way to talk with Aboriginal communities. Her book concentrates on the Kimberley ranges and stations north of the Gibb River Road.
There were two major phases – when Aborigines moved on to the stations and then when they moved off and drifted into the towns. After World War II (about 1950) welfare payments started and influenced people to move off the stations to take advantage of services and pensions in the towns. However when Mary Anne visited Mt Elizabeth Station in 1989 there were few signs of change from the 1960s.There was still a ‘black’s’ camp, women working in the house, men in the stockyards with children watching, a scene of peace. While economic and political analyses stress the struggle for land and power between whites and blacks, a social analysis shows that, on some stations at least, Aboriginal people were very poor but lived in peace and comfort comparative to the town reserves. In response to questions Mary Anne said that one of the problems with oral history in a cross cultural context was the very different versions of stories, some of which became traditional storytelling and myth and difficult to integrate into standard historical accounts. 1972 was chosen as the end point of this history because that was the year that Kimberley Aboriginal people received citizenship, under the Whitlam Government, although in other places this had happened much earlier. Men were officially able to earn wages and to drink but there were no wages for women who worked in the homesteads and even as stock‘men’. Communities began to move to towns.
If you are interested in Kimberley history here are four books that taken together give a wonderful picture of Kimberley life in the first three quarters of the 20th century from several different perspectives.
Loisette Marsh
GEOMORPHOLOGY OF THE ORD RIVER
On 6 March 2002 Peter Sandercock spoke about the Upper Ord River Catchment and Lisa Cluett spoke about on-going changes to the Lower Ord River. Both speakers are Ph.D researchers in Geography at the University of Western Australia.
Peter, who spoke first, said that there had been many changes to Upper Ord Catchment in the last 120 years. Cattle and donkey grazing had especially affected the rate of erosion, and the construction of the dam has had an impact. The Upper Ord catchment extends to Halls Creek and into the Northern Territory, but most of his work relates to 10,000 sq kilometres of severely eroded land extending upstream from Lake Argyle. In the 1960s much of this land was quite bare of vegetation and extremely erodible. Concern about the threat to the viability of the Dam induced the Government to designate this area a Water Catchment Reserve and remove all people and stock.
The geology of the catchment is diverse, but the main factors leading to changes were:
1. The tropical monsoonal climate
2. The large proportion of the catchment which consists of very erodible lithologies
3. A flashy discharge due to high rates of precipitation
The study area was divided into four zones:
1. Ord - Panton River
2. Ord R Forest
3. Ord - Negri River
4. Ord R - Lake Argyle.
The Aims of his research were:
1. To characterise channel reaches and distribution of major sediment bodies
2. Channel adjustments and changes in sediment storage
3. Develop an understanding of the nature of river channels
Peter then went on to show slides. In the upper reaches the river bed is sandy. This changes to more gravel at the junction with the Panton River. Meanders over the flood plain are controlled by bedrock. The channel bed is slowly degrading with time. Fieldwork is done after big events.
In the eroded zones the alluvial flood plain was devoid of vegetation after the 1950s and 60s. Revegetation was started in the 1970s with varying success. Peter showed some startling pictures of the extent of gully erosion but said that gullies had always been there. Rates of deposition can be used to indicate rates of erosion.
In the Ord – Lake Argyle Zone, backwater from the lake together with increased vegetation causes deposition to occur in the river.
Questions followed. The sediment stored upstream from Lake Argyle is considerable so it doesn’t all end up in the lake, which is good news. Sediment depths of up to 14 metres have been measured. Alex Forrest’s journals were used to describe the original condition of the catchment.
The President thanked Peter for his presentation. Then it was Lisa’s turn. She spoke about the on-going changes to the lower Ord River downstream from the Diversion Weir to the Gulf of Carpentaria, including the important role of plants in the channels.
Changes to the channels since the dam was constructed are not fully understood. There are multiple water users including irrigators, hydro-electric power and tourists.
Her research aims to document channel change and factors that might influence such change.
Factors to be considered are listed under a number of headings:
1. Boundaries - includes
· Local environment and
· Historical channel data.
2. Current System - includes
· Dam construction,
· Sediment interactions and
· Flood events.
3. Future change - includes
· Where and how and
· Environmental flows.
The study of Sediment interactions includes the effects of unregulated tributaries, cattle grazing, channel bedrock e.g. basalt outcrops, rapids and most importantly, vegetation.
Vegetation changes have been widespread and have been due to the
1. Change in the flow regime
2. Complex interactions with sediments
3. A range of ways plants affect interactions
Photographs illustrated stages of mid channel bar formation and stabilisation depending on vegetation getting a foothold, maturing and expanding and also how the river banks were able to resist erosion with stands of mature vegetation.
Lisa went on to show her model of the ecosystem on an idealised cross section of the Ord channel which she has divided into six vegetation zones. She has mapped these zones onto a plan of the lower Ord. The zones are:
1. Submerged aquatics
2. Floating emergents
3. Anchored emergents
4. Wet riparian
5. Dry riparian and
6. Abandoned i.e. Zone of flood plain no longer subjected to flooding.
When vegetation begins to change this will be documented together with the associated morphological changes to the river. Changes are slow but the vegetation is the indicator to the change.
Finally, in answer to a question, Lisa said weed infestations such as Cumbudgee (Typha) and Salvinia are problems.
Lisa would love to hear from anyone who has historical photos (before 1970) of the lower Ord River to help her determine how and where the River has changed. She can copy any photos and slides you might like to lend and will acknowledge their owners if she uses them in her thesis.
Daphne Choules Edinger & Gilbert Marsh
OIL & GAS EXPLORATION, PRODUCTION, AND POTENTIAL IN THE KIMBERLEY
On 3 April 2002, Greg Carlsen from the Department of Mineral & Petroleum Resources delivered a PowerPoint presentation to the Kimberley Society. No summary is available.
KIMBERLEY TIDES
On 1 May 2002 Kimberley Society heard from Associate Professor Chari Pattiaratchi, who is from the Department of Environmental Engineering, Centre for Water Research, University of Western Australia. He spoke about Kimberley tides in the context of the tidal environment off Western Australia and he structured his superb PowerPoint presentation of more than 60 slides by dividing it into the following segments:
How are tides generated?
– history
– Tidal theory
– Tidal resonance
Tides along the North West Shelf
Tides in Shark Bay
Continental Shelf Waves
Summary
The slides from Chari’s presentation can be viewed the UWA Web at http://www.cwr.uwa.edu.au/~pattiara/Presentations/kim_tidesl_files/frame.htm using Microsoft Explorer.
The presentation showed that WA has interesting tidal phenomena and that the higher tides in the Kimberley are due to tidal resonance and latitude. It also showed the extent to which continental shelf waves present connectivity between Kimberley region and other parts of WA.
In commenting on ancient theories of tides, Chari mentioned the following:
· Arabic explanation was that Moon’s rays were reflected off the rocks at the bottom of the sea thus heating and expanding the water, which rolled in waves towards the shore.
· Chinese supposed that water to be the blood of the Earth with tides as the beating of the Earth’s pulse or alternatively the tides were the results of Earth’s breathing.
· le Galileo (1565-1642): Proposed that rotations of the Earth around and sun and on its own axis induced motions which resulted in the tides
· Descartes (1596-1650): Proposed that space was filled with ether or invisible matter. As the moon travelled around the sun, it compressed this ether in a way that transmitted pressure to the sea: the tides.
· Kepler (1571-1630): was the originator of the idea that the moon exerted a gravitational attraction on the water of the ocean which was balanced by Earth’s attraction. However, none of the above theories account for the fact that there are two tides for each transit of the moon.
· Sir Isaac Newton initially proposed modern tidal theory.
The slides accessible on the UWA Web site include:
No. 29 - a dramatic satellite image of Tropical Cyclone Rosita,
No. 41 - a diagrammatic representation of tropical cyclones in the vicinity of the Kimberley in 1999–2000,
No. 42 - a satellite image of the wind field around a tropical cyclone off WA,
No. 53 - a depiction of the Cyclone Track of Naomi, which passed from north to south, crossing the coast south of Broome in December 1993,
No. 57 - a depiction of the Cyclone Track of Rosita, which passed from north-west to south-east, crossing the coast south of Broome in April 2000,
No. 61 - a depiction of the currents in the Swan River Estuary during Tropical Cyclone Rosita
No. 62 - graphs depicting the Effect of Tropical Cyclone Rosita in the Swan River Estuary in terms of salinity, temperature and water depth,
No. 65 - text that explains that, because WA is impacted on average by about five tropical cyclones per year, the resulting continental shelf waves, which last for about 10 days each, can exert an influence for about 50 days over a five-month period.
It is unfortunate that the information delivered verbally could not be captured to go with the slide presentation. The audience received excellent insight into the graphics and left the meeting much more aware of the physical attributes of both tides and tropical cyclones.
Cathie Clement
THE KIMBERLEY VOLCANO
On 5 June 2002 Mike Donaldson, a geologist with the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA), presented a copiously illustrated talk on “The Kimberley Volcano”. The talk began with “sorry, it’s a trick, there is no Kimberley volcano…. But you can see where they have been!”
Most people picture the Kimberley as the sandstone gorges of the northern rivers, the Windjana or Geikie limestone gorges, or maybe the Bungle Bungles. But much of the Kimberley is composed of ancient basalt lavas or their intrusive equivalents. Basalts and dolerites underlie many of the wide valleys between the high sandstone cliffs, and the breakdown of these rocks over time produced the fertile soils that support the Kimberley cattle industry.
The geological make-up of the Kimberley was broadly defined by systematic mapping programs by GSWA and the former Bureau of Mineral Resources (now Geoscience Australia) in the 1960s and 1970s. More detailed studies were carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but only in restricted areas around the margins of the Kimberley. This work included modern isotopic age determinations of the major igneous (ie either volcanic or intrusive) events, including the incredibly precise SHRIMP uranium-lead dates obtained from individual zircon crystals.
Regional airborne magnetic surveys also help to outline the distribution of the relatively highly magnetic basalts and dolerites. Some linear features that extend over hundreds of kilometres, such as the Prince Regent River, can be seen to follow dolerite dykes by the associated magnetic anomaly.
The oldest rocks of the Kimberley are some 1850 million years old. These are granites of the orogenic belts (roots of former mountain ranges) adjacent to the King Leopold Ranges and in the Halls Creek to Kununurra area. Following this there are at least 7 separate igneous events in the geological history of the area:
Ellendale diamondiferous lamproites (20 million years old)
Antrim basalts & dykes (515 million years old)
North Kimberley diamondiferous kimberlites (800 million years old)
Argyle diamondiferous lamproite (1150 million years old)
Hart Dolerite (1790 million years old)
Carson Volcanics (1800 million years old)
East Kimberley mafic-ultramafic intrusions (1840 million years old)
The east Kimberley intrusions are layered sills, which form spectacular concentric rings of hills such as in the Macintosh Intrusion near Halls Creek, and the nearby Panton Sill. These are being investigated as potential platinum-nickel-copper mines.
40,000,000 years later, the Carson Volcanics poured out onto a shallow sea floor over much of what is now the Kimberley Basin. These basaltic lavas weather to a rich brown soil, which covers the wide valleys that are the basis of the Kimberley cattle industry. Early settlements at Camden Harbour, Kunmunya and Kalumburu attempted to take advantage of these fertile soils, and prolonged tropical weathering of basalts produced the aluminium-rich bauxite ores of the Mitchell Plateau and Cape Bougainville. Although the geology of the Kimberley is complex in some respects, much of the Kimberley Basin area north of the King Leopold Ranges remains relatively undisturbed by tectonic forces despite its great age. The Carson Volcanics exhibit many features typical of modern basalt lavas: lava tubes (“pillows”), vesicles, breccias, and other structures in these dark green to black rocks indicate eruption into shallow seas, and this same environment is indicated by well-preserved ripple marks and mud cracks in overlying sandstones. The flows cover some 250,000 square kilometres, and at an average total thickness of about 500 m, the combined flows constitute some 125,000 cubic kilometres of lava. Quite an event!
Hart Dolerite is about 10,000,000 years younger than the Carson Volcanics, and it occurs as thick intrusive layers (“sills”) up to 400 m thick within most of the sandstone units of the Kimberley Basin. It forms distinctive black hills of blocky dolerite boulders, especially in the King Leopold Ranges and the eastern Kimberley. In the northwestern Kimberley it is more common as bouldery outcrops in the floors of narrow sandstone gorges. Columnar jointing (“organ pipes”) is common, resulting from uniform slow cooling of the molten intrusive lava.
The next lavas occurred more than a billion years later when the vast outpouring of the Antrim basalt covered probably all of the Kimberley and much of the Northern Territory. Although subsequently eroded off the Kimberley, the Antrim Basalts covered some 400,000 km2 and represent one of the world’s most voluminous lava fields. Again, quite an event! Some dolerite dykes in the west Kimberley have identical chemical characteristics and age as the Antrim lavas, and they probably represent feeder conduits for the overlying lavas.
The diamond deposits of the Kimberley represent the other spectrum of volcanism in the area. Diamonds occur in explosive volcanic intrusions (pipes or dykes) of kimberlite or its close relative lamproite. In the Kimberley, Argyle is the oldest such deposit at 1150 million years, and it is the largest diamond mine in the world (by volume of diamonds produced). Kimberlites in the King George River area also contain diamonds, but so far they are uneconomic. They are about 800 million years old. The youngest diamond deposits are at Ellendale, in lamproites a mere 20 million years old. Some of these pipes have recently been brought into production as Western Australia’s second diamond mine.
A postscript to the volcano story of the Kimberley is in recent discoveries of tiny gold nuggets in the north Kimberley. The gold is associated with distinctive quartz veins that are typically found in young volcanic environments. These discoveries have resulted in a pegging rush throughout the northern Kimberley. The association of gold, diamonds, platinum, nickel and copper with volcanic or intrusive igneous rocks emphasises the importance of volcanic processes in forming economic mineral deposits.
FROM FORREST TO SHAW: A CENTURY OF KIMBERLEY BOOKS
On 3 July 2002 Dr Cathie Clement spoke to Kimberley Society about novels and other Kimberley writing. Cathie is a consulting historian who specialises in the provision of information about people and places in Australia’s north-west. In 1996 she produced a bibliography titled A guide to printed sources for the history of the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. The bibliography was published by the Centre for Western Australian History and the University of Western Australia with support from Kimberley Society and other bodies. It lists approximately 1300 items, which include books, brochures, journals, newsletters, newspapers, papers, theses and typescripts. It does not list archives or manuscripts.
Cathie commenced her talk by describing the guide and pointing out that it is organised by subjects and contains a 63-page index. The subjects are: Reference and General, Aboriginal People, Exploration and Later Expeditions, Social History, Economic History, Political History, and Local History. The Economic History section contains sub-sections headed General, Agriculture, Grazing, Maritime, Mining, Tourism, and Transport.
With her tongue not too firmly in her cheek, Cathie remarked that the incentive for producing the guide was that it would allow her to frequent second-hand bookshops without the risk of doubling up on purchases. Her copy of the guide and its electronic counterpart are continually updated with entries for books and other items of Kimberley writing that come to her attention. Hundreds of items have been added.
One of the first additions was a facsimile of Alexander Forrest’s journal of his 1879 expedition through the Kimberley. Cookwood Press released a limited edition (400 copies) of the journal in 1996. Previously available only as a parliamentary paper, an original can still fetch close to $400. The facsimile contains sketches from the expedition and a fold-out map of its route.
In discussing the Forrest journal, Cathie noted that the early publications on the Kimberley took the form of reports and papers rather than books. Their emphasis tended to be on resources and opportunities for their exploitation. Joseph Panton, a Victorian police magistrate and part owner of Ord River Station, presented two papers to the Royal Geographical Society. The first focused on resources while the second one, titled ‘A Few Days Ashore in West Kimberley, North-West Australia’ told of an 1884 visit to John Walkinshaw Cowan’s sheep station at Lagrange Bay. Joseph Panton called there in the course of a voyage on the steam yacht Cushie Doo, which belonged to his partner in Ord River Station, W H S Osmand.
Joseph Panton’s strong interest in the Kimberley also led to him presenting a third paper—one that had been written by John Forrest. Read on 29 June 1886, when steamers were busy carrying would-be prospectors to the Halls Creek gold rush, the paper gave an enthusiastic account of the district and its new goldfield. Five weeks later, the first credible reports told of the rush being a duffer.
Newspapers carried thousands of items and articles about the gold rush but comparatively little found its way into early books. Fred Burdett mentioned it in two books published in the 1930s and, around the same time, Barney Lamond wrote his reminiscences. In 1986 Hesperian Press published the reminiscences under the title Tales of the Overland: Queensland to Kimberley in 1885. Another volume of gold rush reminiscences and contemporary writing followed in 1991 under the title Kimberley Scenes: Sagas of Australia’s Last Frontier.
The 1890s yielded a Royal Geographical Society paper in which Joseph Bradshaw presented ‘Notes on a recent trip to Prince Regent’s River’. William Saville-Kent produced The Naturalist in Australia, which, like many other Kimberley-content books that appeared in the decades to come, was published in London.
Cathie spoke enthusiastically about E J Stuart’s 1923 publication titled A Land of Opportunities: being an account of the author’s recent expedition to explore the northern territories of Australia. It describes a 1917 expedition in which the author and others prospected for minerals and metals on the Kimberley coast and islands while William Jackson made a film and photographed people, buildings, wildlife and the landscape. The richness of the book was one of the catalysts that prompted Cathie to begin her study of the region’s history in 1980.
Another rich but little known area of early Kimberley writing is in the genre of novels. Richard Dehan’s The Sower of the Wind (1927) blended cross-cultural romance with a plan for the creation of an Aboriginal republic. The Hidden Kingdom (1932) presented a fanciful but supposedly true account of a doctor being kidnapped in New Zealand and taken to an unknown natural fortress east of the Ord River.
This was the era in which Ion L Idriess began writing about the Kimberley. Seven of his books are set in the region, and Cathie spoke about information from Tracks of Destiny having been cited last year in a public debate over the 1915 Mistake Creek massacre. She had dated the massacre and mentioned the Idriess reference in her East Kimberley Impact Assessment Project work in 1989, providing “facts” that others used to attack Sir William Deane, the outgoing Governor-General, for making a personal apology for a massacre that he believed had occurred in his lifetime.
Henrietta Drake-Brockman had Kimberley work published in Australia in 1934. Blue North: Being a Narrative concerning the Incidents and Adventures which befell John Fordyce when he went in Search of Freedom and Pearls in the Year 1876 was a novel set in the Lacepede Islands. The author’s knowledge of the Kimberley stemmed in part from time spent there when her husband was Commissioner for the North West. Geoffrey Drake-Brockman’s autobiography, The Turning Wheel, was published by Paterson Brokensha Pty. Ltd. in Perth in 1960.
Another relevant autobiographical account came from C Price Conigrave whose book Walk-about (1938) covered a natural history expedition to the north Kimberley in 1911. It also covered the author’s round-Australia motor vehicle trip in 1937.
Turning again to more fanciful works, Cathie mentioned Zane Grey’s Wilderness Trek: A Novel of Australia (1944) in which two American cowboys encountered hardship, treachery and romance on an 1883–1886 cattle drive from Queensland to the Kimberley. Dora Birtles’ The Overlanders (1946) followed, with the story of a family abandoning an eastern Kimberley station in the face of the feared Japanese invasion of northern Australia.
By the 1950s, Mary Durack was well established as a writer. Her novel Keep Him My Country (1955) was particularly adventurous for the somewhat staid Western Australia of that time. Like Katherine Susanna Prichard’s Coonardoo (1929) and Tom Ronan’s Vision Splendid (1954), it told of repercussions and soul-searching that stemmed from relationships between European men and Aboriginal women. The world-famous Kings in Grass Castles followed in 1959.
Tom Ronan’s Kimberley works ranged from The Pearling Master (1958), a novel dedicated to ‘the old-time foreshore rats and pearling masters of the port of Broome’ to Deep of the Sky (1962), a biography of his father. Autobiographical work included Packhorse and Pearling Boat (1964) and Once There Was A Bagman (1966). The latter mentions contact with German aviators Hans Bertram and Adolph Klausman.
The box of books into which Cathie dipped yielded still more novels. There was Randolph Stow’s To the Islands (1958), G M Glaskin’s Flight to Landfall (1963) and Lucy Walker’s The Gone-Away Man (1969).
The 1970s brought us to the Shaw in the title of the talk. Bruce Shaw and Jack Sullivan published “‘They same as you and me”: encounters with the gadia in the East Kimberley’ in Aboriginal History in 1979. The paper presents slightly abridged reminiscences in which Jack Sullivan recalled both the stories he had heard about the early days and the conditions he experienced as a mixed-blood worker on cattle stations in the eastern Kimberley.
Cathie spoke of Bruce Shaw’s prolific body of work as a completion of the circle begun by Alexander Forrest. In a century, the focus of writing about the Kimberley had shifted from a view in which Aboriginal people were seen as a resource to one in which they were portrayed as the backbone of the cattle industry. Bruce Shaw’s later works include My Country of the Pelican Dreaming: the life of an Australian Aborigine of the Gadjerong, Grant Ngabidj, 1904–1977 (1981); Banggaiyerri: The Story of Jack Sullivan (1983); Countrymen: the life histories of four Aboriginal men (1986); Bush Time: Station Time: Waddi Boyoi and Johnny Walker Reminiscences of Eighty Years (1991) and When the dust come in between: Aboriginal viewpoints in the east Kimberley prior to 1982 (1992).
In discussing only a tiny portion of the books that deal with aspects of the Kimberley, Cathie provided many fresh insights into a region that has clearly fascinated writers from all walks of life. Whether she will publish an expanded version of the Guide to Printed Sources for the history of the Kimberley region remains to be seen.
DRIES, WETS & TROPICAL CYCLONES – WEATHER PATTERNS IN THE KIMBERLEY
On 7 August 2002, Glen Cook from the Bureau of Meteorology in Perth presented an illustrated talk to Kimberley Society. He has been a weather forecaster for 12 years, including 3 years in Katherine, so he had had direct experience of weather similar to that in the Kimberley.
The Kimberley starts at 20° South, the weather being hot and humid with dominant summer rainfall. The vegetation is tropical savannah in the north and grassland in southern parts with a winter drought.
Glen showed how the Kimberley climate is driven by the global pattern. In the Southern Hemisphere there tends to be a westerly surface airflow between the equator and the north of Australia in the wet season. Below this, a high pressure ridge centred roughly on Australia exists around the world forming a succession of anticyclones, and below this a belt of low pressure circles the world, the top reaching the southern part of Australia. These belts are situated further south in summer than in winter. In our summer a low pressure trough tends to form, bringing the Wet to the Kimberley. In winter, the anticyclonic winds of the high pressure ridge through Australia bring dry south-easterly overland winds to the Kimberley.
In the past, forecasters depended heavily on weather information from ships. With fewer ships this source of information has diminished greatly but has been offset to advantage with satellite images of cloud patterns. For instance, the whiter the clouds the colder and higher they are. The pattern changes in springtime with heat lows forming in the Kimberley. The wet season begins with the resulting clockwise rotation of wind around the low, which draws moisture in from the Indian Ocean. Thunderstorms are frequent.
The wettest month is January and the driest is in August. It is hottest in November, frequently over 39° C, as there is little cloud and the air is dry. At night, December is hottest with a mean maximum of 24° C. The coolest mean maximum and minimum temperatures occur in July.
The first Kimberley weather observations were from Derby in 1883.
Extremes from the Kimberley are:
· Highest Maximum Temp: 47.9° C at Fitzroy Crossing on 1 January 1969
· Lowest Maximum Temp: 11.4° C at Halls Creek on 19 July 1975
· Highest Minimum Temp: 33.5° C at Cadjebut on 1 March 1998
· Lowest Minimum Temp: -1.3° C at Mt Elizabeth Station on 26 June 1998
· Highest daily rainfall: 635 mm at Kilto Station NE of Broome on 5 December 1970
· Highest monthly rainfall: 1321.7 mm on Roebuck Plains Station in January 1917
Most cyclones cross the Pilbara coast rather than the Kimberley coast as they usually form to the west and move south. The formation and tracking of cyclones is done via satellite and radar. Radar stations are at Wyndham, Halls Creek, Broome, Port Hedland, Dampier and Learmonth.
Glen thought the biggest threat to life from cyclones was the storm surge. At Thangoo Station the surge from Cyclone Sam breached the old vegetated line of sand dunes 2 kilometres inland creating two wide gaps carrying a large volume of sand further inland. Wind of course can be extremely damaging, stripping branches and all the leaves off trees and demolishing buildings such as the Tourist Resort at Eco Beach.
Glen completed his talk by advertising a booklet: Kimberley Climatic Survey costing $12.95.
In discussion that followed Glen said the effect of El Nino and La Nino are important for the Kimberley. El Nino suppresses the wet season so it is often drier with fewer cyclones, though even one cyclone can bring more than average rainfall to a large area. La Nino has the opposite effect. The early stages of El Nino are apparent at present and it is expected to develop by the end of this year.
Satellite information is free to all and it is important for the world forecasting that it stays that way. Small meteorological stations such as the one in Perth could not afford to pay for such information. The satellite presently providing such information is at the end of its life but a new Japanese satellite is due to replace it.
Daphne Choules Edinger & Gilbert Marsh
HISTORICAL KIMBERLEY FILMS
On 4 September 2002 Gerard Foley of the State Film Archives addressed the Society on the subject of “Historical Kimberley Films”. He told us something about the history and function of the State Film Archives and the challenges of preserving historical films. He then showed five films from the collection. The State Film Archives is housed in the Battye Library in Francis Street in Perth along with other Western Australian historical collections – pictorial, private archives, books, ephemera etc. The impetus for the State Film Archives was a disastrous fire that occurred in the mid-sixties to stock held by Fred Murphy. Nevertheless the State Film Archives collection is possibly older than the National Film and Sound Archives in Canberra. The collection started in the Education Department and transferred to the Battye in 1979. It is the largest regional collection and WA is the only State with a dedicated film archives (to Western Australia). There are about 3000 films covering the period 1907 to the present day. Films about the Kimberley are well represented in the collection perhaps because it was a tourist destination and there was an urge for promoting development there.
Nitrate film, which was used before the 1950s, can spontaneously combust and these have been sent to Canberra. The collection now comprises mainly acetate; commonly known as safety film but that too is beginning to deteriorate at an even faster rate than nitrate. All film deteriorates and after a certain point the process is irreversible so it may be necessary to transfer to new film such as polyester. It is difficult and expensive to preserve film; and a transfer may cost up to $10,000. Transfer to video can lead to loss of quality, and digital is an unknown quantity. The State Film Archives is presently concentrating on preserving the film it has. But, while it is not actively looking for film, if it hears of any that is interesting it will have a look at it.
Films made by or commissioned by the Government of Western Australia make up the bulk of the film collection but there are some personal films and these include some of the earliest personal films (or home movies) in Australia. There are also films made by commercial companies and television news footage shot by TV channels 7 and 9. The ABC has its own archives. Films taken into the collection relate to Western Australia and were selected to show the history and life style of the period. Films can be viewed at the Battye; very few can be borrowed.
Gerard selected five films to show at the meeting and he said it was not easy to make a choice considering the number available. He had prepared a handout that gave details of these five films and advised that care was required in showing the film to members of Aboriginal communities because the footage included images of people now deceased. State Film Archives seeks ongoing consultation with Kimberley communities to ensure sensitive management of relevant materials under the provisions of the Library and Information Service of WA’s Aboriginal Plan of 1998.
The first film showed station life at Mt Anderson, Myroodah, Liveringa, Quanbun, and Noonkanbah stations. William McLean, a wool buyer who travelled with George Maxwell, a wool classer, had shot the film in 1929. It was in black & white, silent, 8 minutes long and it had been transferred to video for showing and was somewhat grainy. Nevertheless it was possible to pick up the people, buildings, station scenes and social activities which included catching fish from flood channels, cooking them on coals and eating them washed down with billy tea.
The second film, also in black & white, was about the pearling industry at Broome produced by the Australian National Film Board for the Department of Information in 1949. It ran for 10 minutes and had a good commentary covering the arduous work of the pearlers from the diving for shell from a lugger, stationed two days out from port, to packing the cleaned shell for export to New York. Two divers worked together from the boat, spending three-quarters of the working day under water six days a week, going overboard in their heavy suits and coming up slowly, to avoid diver’s paralysis, with an occasional break of 10–15 minutes and a cup of coffee to warm the bones. Meanwhile the crew on deck prepared the mother-of-pearl shell for the supply ship that came out every two weeks, checking them for pearls (which were put into a wooden box with a non-return hole!).
Then there were two films on the Ord River Irrigation Scheme –The Dam-makers, black & white, sound, 7 minutes, shot by TVW7 in 1963 on the occasion of the completion of the first dam across the Ord, and Breakthrough in the North, colour, sound, 15 minutes, made by Bryan Lobascher in 1970. Together they gave a good picture of the development of the Scheme, first conceived in the 1940s, to use the vast supply of water in the Ord during the wet season to produce food for a hungry world on irrigated farms. The latter film also showed life in the new town of Kununurra.
The last film – All Points North – was made by WA Government Films and MacRobertson Miller Airlines (MMA) in 1957 in colour and ran for 21 minutes. It was a promotional film taken on the MMA flight route from Perth to Wyndham and it had a commentary about the country traversed and the local industry and attractions at intermediate points. For instance in the Kimberley it covered the pearling industry and lovely sunsets at Broome, Beagle Bay Mission, the port of Derby, Yampi Sound, Balgo Mission on the edge of the desert, the estuary of the mighty Ord River etc. and also showed the difference air-freighting made to the cattle industry.
All five films were of great historical interest for members of the Society and were well received.
Dorothy Perret
NATIVE TITLE IN THE KIMBERLEY – FROM A MINING PERSPECTIVE
On 2 October 2002, Bruce Larson gave Kimberley Society some promotional details of his company; Rio Tinto. It is a very large organisation with 34,000 employees worldwide. It has strong policies regarding indigenous affairs and environmental matters. It is structured around world wide commodity operations.
The Chairman, Sir Robert Wilson, is based in London. In 1995 CRA and RTZ combined operations to form Rio Tinto to provide a more efficient organisation to compete internationally. Whilst in Australia, exploration and WA operations are based in Perth and those principally of bauxite and alumina are based in Brisbane. All other operations are based in London. Australian (45%) and North American (40%) assets dominate, the remaining 15% being located in South America, Indonesia, Europe and Africa. Assets total $13 billion. Rio Tinto is third behind BHP Billiton and Alcoa in market capitalisation of mining companies. Sales to North America dominate at 28% with Europe 23% and Japan 22% making up the bulk of the rest. Turnover amounts to $10 billion annually with a profit of $2.2 billion.
The Headquarters of Rio Tinto operations in WA: Rio Tinto Iron Ore, are centred in Perth. There are 4000 employees in WA conducting 20% of the Rio Tinto worldwide operations. Iron ore comes from several mines in the Pilbara. Salt is produced at Lake McLeod, Dampier and Port Hedland.
Argyle Diamond in the Kimberley is the largest diamond mine in Australia, producing mainly commercial diamonds. Present Argyle operations will continue until 2007 and then could continue until 2020 by going underground.
Rio Tinto reached an agreement with local Aboriginal groups over 20 years ago when Argyle was first being developed. This agreement is currently being renegotiated with the traditional owners and their legal representatives, the Kimberley Land Council. At present 13% of Argyle’s employees are indigenous.
Diamond exploration is continuing within the Kimberley area. Mitchell Plateau bauxite is awaiting the right economic climate for development.
In all areas across Australia, Rio Tinto undertakes heritage surveys before they conduct any exploration or land disturbing activity to ensure all Aboriginal sites and areas of cultural significance are protected. In areas where mines are operating or being developed, Rio Tinto will negotiate agreements with the traditional owners. This approach is based on the Rio Tinto good neighbour policy and provides such benefits as health, education, training and employment opportunities. Sporting programs are also well supported with the Rio Tinto group of companies within Australia.
Daphne Choules Edinger & Gilbert Marsh
ASPECTS OF KIMBERLEY ANTHROPOLOGY
On 6 November 2002, Pat Vinnicombe spoke to Kimberley Society about work conducted on Moola Bulla Station over three successive visits in 1989, 1991 and 1993. Her emphasis was on Aboriginal oral history and, being chiefly interested in recording the recollections of Aboriginal people who lived and worked on the station, she has not tried to cross-reference her work with European history.
Pat started by giving a brief background to events leading up to the formation of Moola Bulla. In the mid-1880s the traditional way of life for Aboriginal people in the eastern Kimberley was severely disrupted by the influx of European settlers. Pastoralists came into the region with mobs of cattle in 1884/1885 and then thousands of prospectors went to and from the Halls Creek gold rush in 1886.
The introduction of cattle severely affected the traditional food collecting patterns of the Aboriginal people and complaints arose from pastoralists about hunters killing livestock. At the same time the pastoralists recognised that Aboriginal people could fulfil their need for station labour.
In 1901 a progressive government official suggested that some Kimberley land be set aside for a station on which indigenous people could live and raise stock to feed themselves, but it was not until 1910 that the government purchased Greenvale, Mt Barrett and Nicholson Plains Stations to create a reserve for the use of Aboriginal people. It was a very large area, some 1.3 million hectares, and was renamed Moola Bulla.
Two brothers, known by their European names as Whisker and Captain, lived with their families in that area. Captain and his family had their camps on the Upper Panton and Margaret River not far from the present day homestead, while Whisker and his family were centred in the very rough country up in the ranges around the O'Donnell River.
Aboriginal people from all over the Kimberley region were moved, some forcibly, on to Moola Bulla, which meant that Whisker and Captain faced not only a European invasion but also an Aboriginal invasion of their lands. A system of authority was eventually worked out between the indigenous people themselves resulting in Whisker being in charge of allotting camp areas for people coming onto the station. He was also acknowledged as the ritual expert and led all the ceremonies. Whisker was much liked and respected. Captain, on the other hand, effected all law and order and was in charge of administering punishments for crimes, usually in the form of spearings. He was much feared and was generally regarded as a much tougher individual than his brother. Both men had two wives who each had three children and it was their grandchildren from whom Pat obtained their family history. In fact it was a granddaughter, Josie Farrer, who initially contacted Pat with this idea in mind.
Moola Bulla had many changes of pattern over the years including a period when it was used as a penitentiary for Aboriginals. Then, for reasons unknown, the Government sold Moola Bulla to a Mr Goldman. He was reputed to have a violet temper and the people on the station at the time remember a dreadful argument between Goldman and a government representative, which resulted in the Aboriginal people being given 24 hours notice to quit the station. Approximately 280 people were forced to move and they had to leave a lot of their possessions behind, including their dogs, which was particularly upsetting for them. Halls Creek was unable to cope with the influx of refugees and, when the overflow was packed off to Fitzroy Crossing, many of the families were split up. Old Whisker, for instance, died in Fitzroy without ever returning to his own country.
In the period leading up to Pat's anthropological work with the traditional custodians of the land, the white owners of Moola Bulla would not permit any Aboriginal presence on the station. It was only after much negotiation that Pat was able to gain permission for the first of her three visits with the descendants of Whisker and Captain. Strict guidelines were issued which included a ban on taking alcohol and guns onto the property. In turn, the owner allowed them to move freely about the station where they camped out at the old sites without having their every move monitored.
Pat illustrated her talk with slides and transparencies including some wonderful photos taken during the early years. The photographs depicting large gatherings for ceremonies on Moola Bulla showed some of the men wearing no covering at all, while the women were in European dress.
During the course of the visits, the descendants relocated Whisker's old camp - easily identified by a young baobab tree grown from a seed and the humpy made out of paraffin tins - and found much evidence of former usage by the family. Memories of the creek lines and waterholes of their grandfathers' time bore little resemblance to the current state of those landmarks. In the old days, bamboo and palms had surrounded most of the waterholes, which were refreshed by running water and filled with waterlilies. Unfortunately the destruction of the habitat caused by the continued presence of cattle had resulted in virtually no bamboo or palms remaining and, in one case, the spring was no longer evident at ground level. The construction of turkey nest dams on the water holes and the use of pumps had lowered water levels, while the harvesting of the palms for building the stockyard had resulted in their disappearance. The timber railings had been replaced with metal, and the palm trunks lay decomposing on a dump.
Pat and the traditional owners discovered the area where the Aboriginal men used to sit and make implements from porcellanite (quartz), a procedure that was well documented and published by Tindale in the 1950s. Photos were also shown of gravesites, which, with the exception of one belonging to a European who was a bookkeeper on the station, were all of Aboriginal people known to the party. One of these was old Whisker's wife, who pined sorely for her country and indeed managed to return there after her husband died. Her daughter (Josie Farrer's mother) had also wanted to be buried in the Moola Bulla cemetery, but this was not permitted by the Halls Creek authorities.
Many of the old station buildings are still in existence. At one time there had been saddlery, tannery and butchery workshops together with a school all set up to teach Aboriginal people the basics of a western education. There had also been an extensive vegetable garden but all that could be found of that area on their visits was an old hoe in the grass!
Pat was keen to end on a positive note and mentioned that recently Moola Bulla station, together with 34,000 cattle, had been sold for the record sum of 18 million dollars. On 1 July 2002, the new owners had held an Open Day for all Aboriginal people who had an association with Moola Bulla. The new owners have also indicated they are interested in employing Aboriginal people and in holding discussions about native title issues. It is early days yet but the feeling is positive. The Aboriginal people are no longer shut out from their traditional land.
Susan Clarkson
MIMBI CAVES: GEOLOGY AND GEOMORPHOLOGY
At the meeting of 4 December 2002, Dr Phillip Playford, a founding member of Kimberley Society, gave an informative talk about the Devonian reef belt and the processes which led to its present remnant form including the extensive and little known Mimbi Caves. He has visited and studied the reef every year since 1956 except for two years. He is working with CALM who are negotiating with Aboriginal interests in seeking to jointly manage the Mimbi Caves area, which is expected to become a major tourist attraction in the Kimberley, rivalling or surpassing Purnululu in interest. He has remapped the Devonian Reef with Roger Hocking, producing seven new maps, and is working on a bulletin for the Geological Survey of WA.
The remains of the reef belt, which was formed 350 million years ago, now forms a rugged belt of limestone ranges 350 km long known as the ‘Devonian Great Barrier Reef’. This stretches from the Napier Range northeast of Derby to the most southerly outcrops on Mt Pierre Station, forming part of the Lennard Shelf, which separates the main part of the Canning Basin to the south from the mountainous Kimberley Block region in the north. In the past the reefs are believed to have encircled most of the Kimberley, for a smaller but similar formation occurs in the north Kimberley, at the Ningbing Range. During the Permo-Carboniferous era, when Australia was part of the Gwondana supercontinent in the south Polar region, a series of ice caps believed to have been more than 4 km thick in some areas, planed WA flat as the ice moved northwards. Polished pavement areas, typical of glaciation, with grooves and striations, are still in evidence on the top of the reefs and in other parts of WA today.
A feature of thick ice caps is the presence of areas of subglacial meltwater due to intense pressure and raised temperatures caused by heat from the rock below. The colder the water, the greater the solubility of limestone. The cold water under high pressure underneath the ice attacks limestone, forming dolines (large flat bottomed depressions), tower karst, karst corridors, caves and tunnels as the meltwater is forced towards the ocean beneath the ice cap. The karst features of the reef belt were formed some 290 million years ago. The Mimbi Caves system forms one of the most striking features of the subglacial karst.
Larger karst channels (or Nye channels) are evident in the reef limestones as gorges along which there is no stream to account for the channel formation, although some active gorges, such as Windjana Gorge through which the Lennard River flows, are also believed to have originated as Nye channels. More recent karst erosion of parts of the reef have given rise to karren which consist of sharp ridges separated by furrows forming a jagged tooth-like formation, parts of which are almost impossible to cross on foot.
Eroded faces in the limestone reveal fossil stromatoporides, corals, ammonoides (like pearly nautilus) and conodonts. These are used to distinguish strata. The famed Kimberley fossil fish were discovered in shales adjoining the reefs. The nature of the ancient reef edge is revealed in Windjana Gorge where horizontal strata of the reef platform are fronted by strata dipping at 30 to 40º, which formed as talus slopes in front of the reef. In other parts, masses of conglomerate were poured into the ocean adjoining the reef, as torrential rivers eroded the uplifted mountainous regions of the Kimberley Block.
Hydrothermal activity during past geologically active times formed valuable orebodies containing lead and zinc within the reef. Mining operations at one orebody exposed a magnificent glacial pavement on top of the reef.
Mimbi Caves are at the southern end of Lawford Range, where they form an interlocking maze of narrow caves and karst corridors several kilometres long, through which Mimbi Creek winds its way. Much of the cave system is under water during the wet season. The caves and corridors follow major joints in the limestone, forming one of the most remarkable cave systems known in the world. They were well known to Aboriginal people, but as far as more recent history is concerned, they were “discovered” by David Lowry of the WA Geological Survey in 1963.
Much of the system was mapped by the Illawarra Speleological Society during the 1980s. The caves and tunnels contain interesting stalactites, stalagmites, speleothems glinting with calcite crystals, rimstone rock pools, cave pearls etc. Many horizontal caves elsewhere in the limestone ranges were used by Aboriginal people for dwellings, paintings and tombs of the dead, though because of the darkness within, penetration was not great. Ghost bats live in some caves where deposits of bones of the animals they eat have accumulated.
The main area of the caves is not yet open to members of the public. The Gooniyandi people are the traditional owners of the area, and at present the area of Mimbi Caves is within Mt Pierre Station, an Aboriginal pastoral lease. Dual responsibility for management and development of the caves with CALM has been proposed. If agreement is reached with the Aboriginal interests a Ranger needs to be appointed and access controlled. Further exploration and research into matters such as subterranean fauna are needed.
Daphne Choules Edinger & Gilbert Marsh
Postscript
Prior to presenting this talk to the Kimberley Society in Perth, Dr Playford presented it to the sixth regional meeting of the Society, which was held in Derby in July 2002. Dr Playford was in the Kimberley at that time leading a field excursion for the International Palaeontological Congress. An audience of some fifty people enjoyed the presentation and the event resulted in profit of $100 over costs. The Derby members donated that money to the Kimberley Society’s Old Halls Creek Post Office Appeal, which was responsible for generating much of the money used to put a protective roof over the ruins of the mud brick post office.
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