CRUISING THE KIMBERLEY COAST
On 1 February 2006, Kevin Coate treated the Kimberley Society to an excellent overview of the development of cruising on the Kimberley coast. The following notes, which he kindly provided, summarise his illustrated talk.

In the mid 1970s when I first began taking tours to the Kimberley, I recall an old fellow in Derby peering up at me over a schooner of beer in the Spinni pub and saying “You’re wasting your time trying to get city people up here – they won’t like it”.  Tonight I’m sharing some of the attractions of the Kimberley Coast and talking about the progression of tourism to the present time, to show you how wrong he was.  Some of this will be from a personal perspective.
Although tourism along the Kimberley Coast is of a fairly recent origin, it is attracting more and more visitors every year. The coast’s rugged beauty, numerous inlets, rivers, and awesome tidal surges become a talking point for all who venture there.
Those with the most knowledge of the area were of course the Aborigines, as evidenced by numerous art and occupation sites along the coast dating back for thousands of years. There are many opportunities for more Aboriginal involvement in tourism along the coast, especially in interpretation of their culture. 
From the latter part of the 17th century to the start of the 20th century, trepangers from Macassar regularly visited. Remains of their processing camps are still visible, especially in areas around Vansittart Bay. During the 19th century, American and English whalers, guano miners and pearlers worked the coast.  Others who knew the coast very well during the 20th century were missionaries, wartime army personnel, beachcombers, crocodile shooters and those servicing navigation aids.
Workers from the Kuri Bay cultured pearl operation and Cockatoo and Koolan Island iron ore mines spent many recreational hours exploring creeks and inlets around the Buccaneer Archipelago, and up to the Prince Regent River, from the 1950s and 1960s. The latter group established very comfortable camps with iron-framed beds, crockery and cutlery ‘courtesy of BHP’, at places such as Gibbings Island, Crocodile Creek, Red Cone Creek, Sale River, Camp Creek in the Prince Regent River and St Patrick Island.
Tourism along the Kimberley coast began in a commercial sense in 1980, when Peter Sartori (a commercial fisherman with his 55-foot boat Piscean) began taking groups of 6–8 passengers, mainly fishermen. In 1968, he saw potential in the area after an unsuccessful attempt at prawn fishing and involvement in a prawn survey of the coast with Fisheries the following year. 
In the early 1980s, the Kimberley coast was about as remote as you could get and few people had any understanding of its potential, let alone its beauty. Tourism was very much in the pioneering stage. When I first began taking expeditions along the Kimberley coast, as an extension to my land-based tours, there were no surveyed (licensed) passenger boats available. 
In 1983, when planning trips for the following year to the Prince Regent and Hunter River areas (with 20 passengers), the only boat available was at Koolan Island, owned by the tug master, Boof Price. It was unsuitable in that it was small, unsurveyed, and only carried 4–6 passengers. However, Boof and his mate Ivan Brown gave me an insight into many interesting locations along the coast. 
Eventually, I persuaded a Jurien Bay cray-fisherman, whose 60-foot cray-boat Barbara Anne was surveyed to carry passengers, to go north to Derby on a proviso I guaranteed two trips to make relocating worthwhile. As he was not prepared to be involved in catering, I was required to provide food and provisions and employ a cook. I also supplied camping equipment as passengers had to sleep ashore. As four dinghies were required for transportation from boat to shore, I had to be sure there were those in our group who were prepared to operate them. These were exploratory expeditions in the true sense. Through a friend I found a person who had recently retired as a cook at the Graylands Psychiatric Hospital. Although not altogether suited to campfire cooking, he nevertheless turned out some excellent meals under very unusual situations. The overall cost of these 14-day trips was $1200 per person. This included airfares from Perth to Derby, accommodation with meals for one night at the Spinifex Hotel, and a half-day bus trip to Windjana Gorge or the 17-Mile Dam at Camballin. 
The success of these expeditions inspired me to run more trips to the area. I chartered the same boat for the following year to take two trips with 20 passengers per trip. However, six weeks before departure, I was advised that the boat had been sold, and the new owners were taking it to Queensland. This left me in a real pickle.  I had to refund passenger’s fares for the first trip, but luckily, I managed to salvage the second, having heard the ketch Opal Shell was available for charter. As with the Barbara Ann, the Opal Shell was only surveyed to carry 6–8 passengers with over-night accommodation. Fortunately, it could carry my required number during daylight hours, provided everyone slept ashore at night. 
During the mid to late 1980s other vessels such as Wave Spirit, Jodi Anne, That’s Life, D McD and North Star (fore-runner of True North) began operating out of Broome, taking fishing and scenic adventure trips. I concentrated on more hands-on nature-based tourism (or eco tourism as it is now known) ensuring my passengers had ample opportunity for exploring ashore and upstream of creeks. Sometimes we made base-camps over several days, for a more in-depth study of flora and fauna in the area. 
After the America’s Cup in 1987, tourism along the coast entered a new dimension.  A consortium that included Brian Coppin, Motive Travel, Lindblad Expedition (an American tour company), Warren Anderson, and Peter Sartori decided to modify the Motive Explorer (a large catamaran used as a viewing platform for the America’s Cup races), to take up-market tours along the North Kimberley Coast. They re-named the vessel the Kimberley Explorer. Although this venture proved unsuccessful, the publicity generated awareness and more interest in the area, altering world tourist perceptions of the Kimberley.
Another significant event that generated a huge amount of publicity overseas, after the America’s Cup, was the death of the American woman Ginger Meadows, who was taken by a crocodile at King Cascades in the Prince Regent River. I had a trip scheduled to go to the Prince Regent a few weeks after this, and received a number of inquiries from overseas people who had never heard of the Kimberley to see if I could take them to where the tragedy occurred.
Up to this time many waters along the Kimberley Coast were uncharted or relied on mapping done by early hydrographers, such as Philip Parker King. There was no GPS to mark a track. With the massive rise and fall of tides twice a day, poking around by boat or dinghy could be quite hazardous. An illustration of the dangers is that the luxury ketch-rigged yacht That’s Life had to be abandoned after striking an island one dark night, while travelling downstream on a falling tide from King Cascades (something few skippers in these waters are usually brave enough to do).  In another incident, in 2003, the luxury cruiser Seal, with twenty passengers and crew, struck an object and had to be abandoned. 
Another mile-stone for tourism was when Zegrahm Expeditions, an American company based in Seattle, picked up on previous advertising by Lindblad Expeditions for the Kimberley Explorer and investigated the potential for tourism in North Australia with the idea of extending their luxury eco-expedition tours.  Impressed with what they saw, in 1996 they charted the Coral Princess, a catamaran capable of carrying 48 passengers and crew in comfort, to relocate from the east coast of Australia to the Kimberley coast.  Zegrahm built a special tender to convey all 48 passengers from the Coral Princess in one operation, to the various points of interest. Although they only include two trips to the Kimberley per year or second year in their world programme (some in conjunction with institutions like the Smithsonian or World Wildlife Fund for Nature), the owner of the Coral Princess, Tony Briggs, found an ongoing demand for this type of boat in the Kimberley. In 2005 he launched an additional luxury cruise boat, Oceanic Princess, capable of taking 72 passengers. 
Other new luxury cruise boats to begin operation were the Orion carrying 106 passengers, and North Star Cruises’ new adventure cruise boat True North, which carries a helicopter and has a passenger limit of 36 with a crew of 18. Pearl Sea Coastal Cruises’ Kimberley Quest 2, also provide a helicopter service. Due to begin operations in 2006 is the 24-metre catamaran, Odyssey Expeditions. Most boats carry between 8 and 20 passengers, while smaller, more exclusive vessels, such as Red Sky at Night, range between 4 and 8 passengers.
From the early 1980s, when there were virtually no charter boats working the coast, there are currently twenty-nine in operation. This number is increasing with many tours booked a year or more ahead. Cruise boats are becoming bigger and there is a wider choice of tour, from small personalized trips to larger groups on more set itineraries. 
With the upsurge of cruise boat and private yacht numbers, there are associated problems with congestion at some of the more popular places such as King Cascades in the Prince Regent River Nature Reserve. While self-regulation works to a degree, it is not the full answer. Conservation and Land Management (CALM) have put in place rules and regulations for charter boat operators, as to where passengers may go ashore and where they may walk. 
On the table at the talk were brochures and a list with contact numbers, for all boats currently operating during the tourist season (March to November) although some local operators work off-season if necessary. The list does not include transient charter boats. Prices range from about $370 to $1000–$1500 per person per day, with most being in the $500 to $800 range.  As a promotion, The Kimberley Cruise Centre in Broome, an agency handling bookings for 16 of the 29 charter boats, offered Kimberley Society members at the talk, a free night at the Mangrove Hotel in Broome worth $205, should they take up their offer of a cruise.
Most cruises operate between Broome and Bigge Island; others travel from Broome to Wyndham. This used to be a long haul for boats with limited fuel capacity, but there are now places where fuel can be picked up - one being at Dog Leg Creek opposite Koolan Island. Some of the larger cruise boats also include Darwin, Bathurst Island, Timor and New Guinea on their agenda. At Bathurst Island in the Northern Territory, the Tiwi people make passengers welcome. They are given an opportunity to learn a little of their culture and buy artefacts and screen print materials. Overseas visitors love the interaction with Tiwi people and it is surprising that Aboriginal communities along the Kimberley coast have not come up with similar ventures. While most companies work from Broome, three work out of Derby, one from Wyndham, Darwin and Cairns, and one with no fixed port of call (where passengers fly in a float plane to a pre-arranged destination). The use of float planes or helicopters to transfer passengers to save costly fuel and travel time is becoming more frequent.
Before long, around-the-world luxury expedition type small ships, such as Clipper Odyssey, could include the Kimberley on their itinerary.  However, this may cause problems if too many vessels, not flagged in Australia and using low paid foreign crew, compete in Australia for passengers.  At present, Orion is the only cruise ship of this nature working the coast.
In conclusion, tourism along the Kimberley coast is alive and well despite what that old fellow said in the Derby pub. There is still plenty of scope for new operators, especially those prepared to specialize in nature based and cultural tourism involving Aboriginal people.

THE SAGA OF THE SHADY LADY
On 1 March 2006, Lindsay Peet captivated the Kimberley Society with the results of his years of research into a wartime incident on the Kimberley coast. The following notes, which he kindly provided, summarise his illustrated talk.
Shady Lady is the name given to a United States Army Air Force (USAAF) B-24 Liberator Heavy Bomber which, in August 1943, took part in the longest land-based bombing raid in the war to that date. By way of background, by early 1943 the Japanese thrust towards Australia had been halted. To the north-west of Australia an air war was mounted against the Japanese-occupied Netherlands East Indies (NEI). Because the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) did not have a long-range heavy bomber force an USAAF Heavy Bomber Group, the 380th, was based in the Northern Territory from May 1943. Targets of a strategic nature were sought by this Group. One was Balikpapan on the east coast of Borneo where there were refineries, storage tank farms and port facilities for loading tankers.
The date for the first mission to Balikpapan was set for Friday 13 August 1943. Late in the afternoon eleven B-24s were dispatched from Darwin at five-minute intervals, two turned back due to bad weather. Nine reached the target and bombed individually, with eight making it back to Darwin. The ninth one, the Shady Lady, ended up on the Kimberley coast. Its saga comprised the rest of my talk.
Before Shady Lady took off from Darwin it was assigned an addition to its ten-man crew, a RAAF photographic officer, Flying Officer H R Rustin from Perth, to take end-of-strike photographs of Balikpapan with a special aerial camera.
With extra fuel tanks in its bomb bay and carrying a heavy bomb load Shady Lady needed the whole of the runway at Darwin to stagger into the air. On the way to Borneo it entered an intense tropical storm near Makassar which it took two and a half hours to fly through. When it reached Balikpapan the weather was reasonably clear. The pilot, Lieutenant Doug Craig, made a bomb run from the east. Almost immediately Shady Lady was bracketed by a Japanese searchlight. Craig tried violent evasive manouvres but without success. During this run the intercom between the bombardier and the pilot stopped working hence no bombs were dropped. A second bomb run was tried and the bombs were successfully dropped on a tank farm. A third run over the target was considered an unnecessary waste of valuable fuel so Craig turned the B-24 homeward. 
Near Makassar a tremendous tropical front was encountered. Craig and his co-pilot battled with the storm whilst trying to find ways of getting around it. Eventually the pilots heeded the warnings by the Navigator and the Flight Engineer that too much fuel was being used and the course for Darwin resumed. After two hours Shady Lady came out of the storm and encountered a huge island across its track. The Navigator decided that it was Timor and recommended a change of course to a closer friendly airfield, that at the Drysdale Mission in Western Australia. Soon, on the new course, the B-24 approached another large island – it was realized that this was the western end of Timor and the previous island was actually Flores. It was estimated that there was just about enough fuel to make Drysdale. Shady Lady’s track was going over the Japanese Airbase at Penfui; to detour would use too much fuel so the risk of fighter attacks was taken. Two Zeros took off and soon caught up with the bomber and then commenced a series of co-ordinated attacks. As a defensive manoeuvre Craig started turning his aircraft into each attack – this unfortunately used up valuable fuel. The aerial fight went on for about an hour during which time the forward and upper gun turrets of the B-24 went out of action and one of the waist guns jammed. Eventually some low clouds appeared; Craig flew into them and the Zeros made their final passes.
Miraculously none of the engines or fuel tanks had been damaged and none of the crew had been hit. The amount of fuel remaining became their major concern. Craig announced that he would ditch Shady Lady in the ocean if land was not sighted within 30 minutes. Twenty-five minutes had passed when a very rugged part of the Australian mainland, probably Cape Bougainville, was sighted. The bomber was turned to the left in the hope of finding Drysdale. 
Flying over the Anjo Peninsula a large salt pan was seen near Mary Island. After consulting his crew, Craig decided to make a controlled forced landing there whilst the four engines were still running. He made his approach from the east touching down on the boundary between the white and grey areas of the salt pan. Shady Lady’s main wheels bounced once then settled on the ground as power was reduced. Craig kept the nosewheel off the ground for as long as possible; it touched down three times before it stayed down. As Craig could see a low ridge with bushes coming up rapidly he touched the brakes, the result was that the nosewheel broke off and brought the bomber to a screeching halt. The front compartment was flattened and the forward turret damaged. There was only one minor injury. Shady Lady had been airborne for just over 16½ hours and it was now Saturday morning.
The crew scrambled out quickly but there was no fire. They knew they were down somewhere in Australia, but exactly where were they, how would they be rescued, and how would they survive in the meantime? They only had a limited amount of food and water. The Navigator estimated their ground position and this was transmitted to Darwin. As the given position was erroneous it was afternoon before a RAAF Hudson bomber found Shady Lady and signalled to the downed airmen that a rescue party would reach them the next afternoon (Sunday). Meantime at Drysdale the RAAF was arranging with the Benedictine Mission Superior, Father Thomas Gil, for the Mission’s lugger, the Teresita Moa (or Little Flower) to be used for the rescue; it would be commanded by Father Seraphim Sanz.
By Sunday morning drinking water for the airmen was being rationed. Mid-morning they saw three Aborigines on the other side of the salt pan. In due course they made contact with them, finding that they were Christians from the Drysdale Mission. About this time, Rustin took a photograph of the American crew and three Aborigines. In response to the acute shortage of drinking water the Aborigines found a supply of brackish water in a creek bed further to the south. Later in the day, a party including Father Sanz, four RAAF personnel and about five Aborigines arrived at the salt pan.

The Shady Lady on the salt pan, with the American crew and the three Aboriginal men.
After another uncomfortable night the airmen and the lugger party were at the landing beach before dawn. Rustin took photographs at the beach. It took over five hours for Teresita Moa to sail around the tip of the Anjo Peninsula to the Old Mission at Pago. The airmen were trucked to the Drysdale airfield where the RAAF’s No. 58 Operational Base was stationed. Here they met the crew of the Hudson bomber which had assisted them over the previous two days. Later in the evening they visited the Mission to meet Father Thomas and to thank Father Sanz for his role in their rescue. The next day (Tuesday), the Hudson flew the airmen back to their home base at Fenton in the Northern Territory.
By the end of the week, Father Sanz had taken USAAF engineers out to Shady Lady in Teresita Moa. With the assistance of about 30 Aborigines the B-24 was raised off its nose for a detailed inspection. It was considered that the damage was repairable and that there was just sufficient length along the salt pan for a take-off.
The repair of Shady Lady commenced in earnest on 28 August. Because the Teresita Moa had sailed to Broome, the repair effort had to be totally supported by aircraft. A DH-84 Dragon and a DH-82 Tiger Moth were used to ferry personnel and equipment out to the salt pan from Drysdale airfield. The only item which could not be flown out was a wooden and canvas replacement nose for Shady Lady: this was carried some 65 km overland on poles by six Aborigines, taking two days. The repair was a race against time because local spring tides were due on 11 September and would flood the salt pan.
To make it as light as possible for take-off, all excess weight was taken from Shady Lady. This included removing its guns and clearing out all the used and live 0.5 in ammunition which was simply thrown onto the salt pan. Only the minimum amount of fuel sufficient to warm up the engines and then fly to Fenton was loaded. The crew was kept to two, both volunteers. There was to be emergency assistance, including a doctor, on standby on the salt pan in the event of a crash.
Two days before the spring tides the take-off occurred without incident except that the engines were damaged due to the use of excessive power because the B-24’s wheels were starting to dig in. The outcome of all of this effort was that once Shady Lady reached Fenton it was carefully inspected and it was decided that it was structurally unsound for further combat operations. It was sent to Townsville for return to the United States, but nothing is known of what eventually happened to it.
I put the saga of the Shady Lady together from a multitude of sources some of which I came across fortuitously. Apart from several books, there were two personal wartime diaries in Perth, archives at the Benedictine Community at New Norcia, RAAF historical records in Canberra, Japanese combat records in the Military History Department in Tokyo, material in two archives in the United States, interviews with several crew members, wartime photographs from veterans in the Unites States, and finally an initial inspection from the air and then two short visits to the site by helicopter. Interestingly, Shady Lady’s landing tracks are still clearly visible on the salt pan, due to a particular geological process. Much discarded wreckage is still there as is the discarded ammunition, making up an interesting archaeological site which has been classified by the National Trust.
As a final word, in the 1990s I found out that for many years the Coastwatch organisation had been aware of Shady Lady’s landing tracks, considering them to be made by a modern drug-running aircraft. I was pleased to tell them that it was only a 1943 military site!
Lindsay Peet
Further Reading:
Fain, J. (ed.), The history of the 380th Bomb Group (H) AAF, affectionately known as the Flying Circus, printed by Commanday-Roth, New York, 1946.
Horton, Glenn R. and Horton, Gary, L., King of the heavies, The Authors, Inver Grove Hts, Minnesota, 1983.
Horton, Glenn R., The best in the southwest, Mosie Publications, Savage, Minnesota, 1995.
Wright, J., The Flying Circus: Pacific war – 1943 – as seen through a bombsight, Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2005.

KIMBERLEY FROM SPACE: ART IN SCIENCE
On 5 April 2006, Dr Richard Langford gave a PowerPoint presentation on satellite images of the Kimberley. Richard works for the Geological Survey of Western Australia in the Department of Industry and Resources as a geologist.  He has previously worked in Hong Kong and the Solomon Islands, but the nearest he has been to the Kimberley is the Tanami!  However he has visited the area using images from space and this was the basis of his talk. His focus was on images as nature’s works of art but it included enough technical background to allow the audience to fully appreciate the effort expended on the space program over many years.
After a warm up with some hand-held photographs taken by astronauts on the Space Shuttle, Richard cooled down the tempo with some technical stuff on satellites. He then took the audience through the history of a few satellites of interest, focusing on the Landsat series. Then it was time to sit up again as images from around the Kimberley were shown, ranging in scale from hundreds of kilometres down to just tens of metres. The talk ended with a reminder that all the images could be freely downloaded over the internet.
Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken photographs of the Earth. The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/) hosts the best and most complete online collection of astronaut photographs of the Earth. More than 632,000 views of the Earth are made accessible on this website.
There are many Earth Resource Satellites operating in the optical spectrum, including Quickbird, IKONOS-2, Spot-5 and Landsat. In 1967, the Earth Resources Technology Satellites (ERTS) program was a planned sequence of six satellites. In 1975, ERTS was renamed by NASA “Landsat”. Landsat is the longest-running project for the acquisition of moderate resolution imagery of the Earth from space. Landsat 1 satellite was launched in 1972, and the most recent, Landsat 7, was launched in 1999. With a more than 25-year history there are now millions of Landsat images of the Earth. These have given scientists a unique resource for global change research, with applications in agriculture, geology, forestry, regional planning, education and national security.
Some of the images from around the Kimberley came from sources that we all know about such as Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/), and less well known sources such as Geoscience Australia, who have an excellent Mosaic of Australia (http://www.ga.gov.au/map/images.jsp). Simple views of the landscape of the Kimberley took on a new dimension with data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) – is this the map that changed the World?
SRTM data was acquired by the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on 11 February 2000 for an 11-day mission to produce digital topographic data for 80% of the Earth's land surface. SRTM made use of a technique called radar interferometry. Two radar images are taken from slightly different locations, and differences between these images allow for the calculation of surface elevation.
The ultimate tour of the Kimberley came from NASA’s WorldWind (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.html). WorldWind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, using Landsat satellite imagery and SRTM data for a three-dimensional effect.
The pictures from space of the Kimberley were fascinating – as Richard said, we see it from a totally new perspective.  As technology improves, he posed (in jest): do we really need to visit it? Alas, we can’t reproduce the pictures here but you can access them using the Internet (in some cases you may have to download enabling software).
There were lots of pictures and possibly not enough time. Anyone wanting to explore the Kimberley from space should therefore continue the search for themselves at the following sites:

Astronaut photographs – http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/
Google Earth – http://earth.google.com/
Geoscience Australia – http://www.ga.gov.au/map/images.jsp
SRTM – http://srtm.usgs.gov/index.html
NASA WorldWind – http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.html
Margaret Larke and Richard Langford

KEEPING KIMBERLEY CANE TOAD-FREE
On 3 May 2006, Winston Kay, Program Co-ordinator, State Cane Toad Initiative, Department of Environment and Conservation (formerly Conservation and Land Management) spoke to the Kimberley Society about the State Cane Toad Initiative and how we can help to keep the Kimberley free of cane toads.
Cane toads are native to Central and South America, ranging from southern Texas and Mexico through to Argentina and Brazil. They have been introduced to many countries around the world, especially islands of the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. In some countries such as Egypt, Thailand and Taiwan, cane toads failed to become established following their introduction. Despite that, they have been nominated by the Invasive Species Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) as among 100 of the ‘World’s Worst’ invasive species.
Cane toads were brought to Australia in 1935 in an attempt to control native beetles that were damaging sugar cane crops. One hundred and two toads (one died in transit) were imported from Hawaii (where cane toads were introduced in 1932) and released near Gordonvale, QLD.
At that time, the principal advocate for the cane toad importation was Dr Reginald Mungomery, Director of the Meringa Sugar Experiment Station. In 1935, he wrote:

Even at that time, the importation had its detractors. In 1936, Walter Froggatt, President of the NSW Naturalists Society, wrote in Australian Naturalist magazine:

Between 1950 and 1965, cane toads were widely used in Australia for pregnancy testing.

Impact of Cane Toads in Australia

All life stages of the cane toad, including the eggs, tadpoles, juveniles and adults, contain toxins that are poisonous to most native predators as well as to humans, cats and dogs. Cane toad toxin or bufotoxin is a cocktail of cardio-toxic compounds, which are primarily contained in the large (parotid) glands above the shoulders. Bufotoxin also occurs in glands in the skin along the dorsal surface.
Cane toads have a phenomenal reproductive capacity. A female toad may lay over 30,000 eggs in a single clutch and breed twice per year. The eggs hatch within 48–72 hours and the tadpoles metamorphose into juveniles within three weeks to six months depending on environmental conditions, especially temperature. They reach sexual maturity in 6–18 months and live for about five years in the wild.
Cane toads are generalists. They will eat anything they can fit into their mouths but they mostly eat ground-dwelling arthropods such as ants, beetles and termites. They can occupy and breed in a broad range of habitats.
Much of the scientific data on the impacts of cane toads in Australia is inconclusive. Cane toads are not known to have caused the extinction of any native animals since their introduction in 1935. Yet, cane toads can impact on native fauna by:

• Poisoning native predators;
• Competing with native animals for food and other resources; and
• Eating native animals.

Toxic ingestion: Cane toads have probably had the most significant impact on native predators by poisoning them following ingestion. Species at greatest risk include the northern quoll, large-bodied goannas and frog-eating snakes.
Competition: Toads are likely to compete with insectivorous reptiles, especially ground-feeding geckoes, for food. They are also likely to compete for shelter and breeding sites with some native species. They are known to use the nesting holes of the rainbow bee-eater and will eat both their eggs and chicks.
Consumption of prey: Toads can attain high densities, especially during the first few years after the colonisation of new areas. They mainly eat insects such as ants, termites and beetles, and may have significant localised impacts on these groups.
Cultural effects: Toads can poison a number of goanna species that are important bush-tucker for Aboriginal people.
Economic impacts and impacts on human health: Cane toads are likely to have had economic impacts and impacts on human health, though these are very hard to quantify. There is no evidence that cane toads adversely affected eco-tourism following their arrival in Kakadu National Park in the NT. However, toads are known to consume as many as 100 honey bees per day in QLD, which required the hives to be elevated above the ground on stands.
It has been reported that cane toads eat human faeces, though they may be attracted to the insects on the faeces. As a result, it is possible that they may be a vector for some human diseases.

Current status (As at 3 May 2006)

In the 70 years since their introduction, cane toads have colonised much of Queensland and spread south into coastal areas of northern NSW (as far south as Port Macquarie). They entered the NT in the early 1980s and are now on the outskirts of Darwin.
Cane toads are not currently established in the wild anywhere in WA. The nearest population is at Timber Creek in the NT, about 200 km from the WA border. Cane toads periodically turn up in freight from interstate. It is illegal to keep or import cane toads in WA but no penalties are imposed for inadvertently bringing a cane toad into the State. The authorities are more interested in identifying potential pathways into WA. Any sightings of cane toads in WA should be reported to freecall 1800 084 881.
The Victoria River is a major pathway towards WA and is the focus of control operations being undertaken by the State Government and community groups. The river has a catchment area of about 66,000 km2, which is larger than the State of Tasmania. The lower reaches of the river flow in a north-westerly direction toward the WA border. During the wet season the river at the Victoria River Bridge can rise 19 metres above its dry season level and the lower reaches have an extensive flood plain that can temporarily become an inland sea.
Toads are believed to have colonised the Sir Edward Pellew group of islands in the NT by being transported to them in floodwaters during a single but intense wet season. Some of these islands are up to 20 km offshore. They have also been reported as swimming short distances between islands in the Caribbean. It is therefore possible that toads could be transported along the coast into WA in floodwaters from the Victoria River.

Identification of cane toads

A significant problem that has occurred in the NT and QLD is that many native frogs become casualties of people who kill them in the mistaken belief that they are cane toads. It is really important to be able to accurately identify a frog as a cane toad before taking any action to destroy it.
Adult cane toads are large terrestrial amphibians with dry warty skin. They are much larger than most native frogs and have bony ridges above the eyes running down to the tip of the snout. They also have distinctive enlarged glands above the shoulders and behind the eyes that contain most of the bufotoxins. Their call is a distinctive high-pitched staccato purr, similar to a telephone dial tone. Cane toad tadpoles are different to the tadpoles of native frogs but can be difficult to distinguish for the inexperienced. More information can be found at www.canetoadbattle.com.

The State Cane Toad Initiative (SCTI)

The WA State Government has allocated $2.5 million since December 2004 for cane toad management and the Commonwealth Government has contributed $600,000. The Department of Environment and Conservation (formerly CALM) is the lead agency responsible for implementing the state initiative. The Department of Agriculture and Food is also involved, particularly in the areas of biosecurity and quarantine. The State Government is working cooperatively with community groups such as the Stop the Toad Foundation and Kimberley Toad Busters.
Four key programs are being implemented under the Initiative:
1.   Fighting the entry and establishment of wild populations in WA
2.   Biodiversity asset ID and protection
3.   Public awareness of cane toad issues
4.   Effective statewide coordination of actions against cane toads
How can you help?

• Familiarise yourself with native frogs in your area and remain vigilant.
• Report all suspected sightings in WA to freecall 1800 084 881 (take a photograph or catch the animal if possible but make sure it’s secure).
• Check your vehicle and gear if you’ve been camping in a cane toad area.
• Control cane toads in your backyard if you live in a cane toad area.
• Participate in community action with groups such as Stop the Toad Foundation or Kimberley Toad Busters.

Toad euthanasia: If you find what you believe is a cane toad and decide to kill it, first, make sure it really is a cane toad. There are good resources available on the Internet to assist with identification, or contact your local DEC office. Currently, there are two accepted methods for members of the public to kill cane toads:

• Pre-cooling in an ice bath or fridge, then freezing until rock solid or for at least 24 hours.
• Stunning then decapitation.

Dispose of the carcass by deep burial (so that native animals don’t dig them up and get poisoned) or incineration.
You will need to be careful to avoid contact with the toxins. If toads are treated roughly or feel threatened, they will exude toxins (thick milky liquid) from their parotid glands, so treat them gently. Wearing gloves and eye protection is advisable and washing your hands with soap and water after handling any toads is recommended. If any toxin gets into your eyes or mouth, wash the affected area thoroughly with copious amounts of fresh water (do not swallow) and seek urgent medical attention, or call the poisons information centre on 13 11 26 if medical attention is not readily available.
Animal welfare considerations: Toads are often vilified and mistreated in Australia but really are just another species of frog that happen to be in the wrong place courtesy of human error. If you do decide to kill a cane toad, do so quickly and in the most humane way possible.
An animated short film can be viewed at www.cane-toad.com
For more information:
Websites:

Books: Frogs of Western Australia (WA Museum)
Contact: Dr Winston Kay at DEC: email here

Chris Brenton, with input from Winston Kay

Editor’s note: Kimberley Society member Russell Gueho of Broome advises that the Stop the Toad Foundation now has an electronic newsletter available to anyone who wishes to receive it. You can subscribe (free) at http://www.stopthetoad.com/index.php where you will find lots of information and an audio of the cane toad’s call.

17TH CENTURY VISITORS TO THE KIMBERLEY COAST
On 7 June 2006, Dr Cathie Clement, a consulting historian, spoke to the Kimberley Society on a topic selected to mark the 400th anniversary of the first authenticated European sighting of the Australian continent. Her notes, which are presented below, provide an overview of the evening’s PowerPoint presentation.

When I proposed the topic “17th century visitors to the Kimberley coast”, one member jokingly observed that it would be the shortest talk ever. After all, how much could be said? Plenty! Those visitors contributed a lot to the writing, art, voyages, and maps that revealed Australia to the outside world.

Their arrival is best understood in the context of when non-indigenous people first set foot on the Kimberley coast. That context, by tackling the vexed question of who “discovered” Australia, highlights the challenges that faced the 17th century visitors.

Abel Janszoon Tasman and his men arrived in 1644 but, if we accept the claims made by some authors, they were far from early arrivals. In Pyramids of the Pacific, Rex Gilroy cites folklore, mythology, archaeological finds, and ancient texts as evidence that Bronze and Iron Age people sailed to the Kimberley from the Mediterranean. He maintains that the Sumerians used the placename Purnululu and undertook mining in the region before 1930 BC. He also points to the likelihood of the Kimberley experiencing:

• Colonisation by Phoenician miners (in King Solomon’s time),
• Colonisation by Japanese pearlers (in 9 BC),
• Visits from Indians (in about the 7th century) and Khmer (in the 13th century); and,
• Another Japanese visit (around 1425).

The date range for those activities extends beyond the indigenous peoples’ painting of Wandjina art and into the era of the earlier Gwion Gwion or Bradshaw art. It also covers the time when barbed spear points gave way to pressure-flaked stone spear points, with no sign of other introduced materials.

Gilroy’s work influenced Gavin Menzies’ book, 1421: The Year China discovered the World, but Menzies has the Chinese mining lead in Arnhem Land—with a slight Kimberley connection. Drawing on Kenneth Gordon McIntyre’s book, The Secret Discovery of Australia, he takes George Grey’s sketch of the Glenelg River Wandjina, transposes it to Arnhem Land, and links it to ‘the Chinese arriving in red robes reaching to their ankles’. In doing so, he ignores McIntyre’s premise that the painting could be evidence of a ‘man in holy orders’ accompanying a Portuguese expedition to the Kimberley in 1599 or 1600. Gilroy takes another tack. He likens the Wandjina ‘garments’ to ‘those once worn by ancient Egyptian and Phoenician seafarers’.

Other ‘evidence’ put forward as proof of ancient contact with Australia involves knowledge of things that are uniquely Australia. Gilroy and Menzies both claim the presence of kangaroos in the imperial zoo in China before 338 BC as proof of early visits to Australia. Gilroy also mentions the sighting and/or acquisition of kangaroo-like creatures by the Egyptians (before 2300 BC) and the Celts (before the first century BC). There is, however, a need for caution. As Ian Crawford and Ric How noted in the discussion that followed the talk, historical references to animals that jump and/or carry their young in pouches can apply to marsupials found in parts of South East Asia.

The various claims about early visitors to the Kimberley coast range from the carefully argued to the clearly fanciful. To test the credibility of those claims, it is necessary to examine a massive amount of documentary evidence. The ancient maps are fascinating but also open to a wide range of interpretations. In a 1421 Web site discussion of an early 15th century Venetian map, Menzies claims that the south-east segment of Albertin de Virga’s work shows:

He does not say which part of the map supposedly shows the northern coast. He is similarly vague in connection with his Web site claim that Australia is visible on a recently discovered Chinese map. It was reputedly drawn in 1418, and redrawn by Mo Yi Tong in 1763.

Maps from the early 16th century, eg the Portuguese work known as the Cantino map of 1502, show India and the mainland portion of South East Asia with outlines not unlike those on current maps. That change coincided with a decrease in the tendency to show the Indian Ocean, in keeping with the logic of Claudius Ptolemy, as an enclosed sea. Then, as the cartographic detail in the area of South East Asia became more detailed, major contradictions occurred. In 1541, a Mercator map, said to be inspired by the published tales from Marco Polo’s travels, showed a landmass identified as ‘Beach’ to the south of Java. The following year, Jean Rotz drew a different landmass—‘The Londe of Java’—to the south of ‘The Lytil Java’. Those depictions, and others that derived from the Rotz chart, gave rise to much conjecture about a possible Portuguese discovery of Australia. The position of the Rotz landmass was, however, about 2000 km too far to the west.

Bill Richardson, fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, studied the Mercator and Rotz nomenclature and concluded that errors had resulted in the mapmakers mistakenly placing information relevant to the coasts of Java and Vietnam too far to the south. Helen Wallis, a former keeper of maps at the British Library, concluded that the Rotz chart constitutes ‘impressive testimony’ within the inconclusive ‘evidence in favour of a Portuguese discovery of Australia’.

 
Section of the Jean Rotz circular chart, 1542. Courtesy of National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-f503. It is noted that Jean Rotz also drew a plane chart, which apparently shows in greater detail the northern portion of the land mass depicted here.

The assertions and denials relevant to a possible Portuguese charting of parts of the Australian coast warrant a separate talk. Here, it is enough to state that early charts and maps vary greatly in shape, nomenclature and cartographic detail. Drawn by cosmographers (depicting the world) and hydrographers (mapping the earth’s surface waters), they contain an array of outlines that may or may not depict parts of Australia. Within those outlines, some also contain illuminations (sketches) that are definitely not Australian.

Nicholas Vallard, Pierre Desceliers and others present superb examples of the cosmographer’s craft in their illuminated versions of the “land” shown on the Rotz chart. Desceliers (1550) extended that “land” almost to the Antarctic. Some of his illuminations, which George Collingridge copied to illustrate his 1906 book, The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea, show clothed people who were possibly at worship. Others show palm trees, rudimentary shelters, and animals that resemble elephants and camels.

The roughly contemporaneous Dauphin or Harleian map—also the subject of a Collingridge facsimile—adheres more closely to the Rotz outline. The people in its illuminations lack clothes but they have weapons, roofed huts, and a reined animal identified by Collingridge as a guanaco(Camelus huanacus). Also of interest, given Ian Wilson’s reference (Lost World of the Kimberley) to the “Reindeer Rock” painting, is that the Dauphin map shows deer-like animals adjacent to the bay that Collingridge equates with King Sound. Whether that bay corresponds with King Sound is open to debate but it is noteworthy that Wallis remarks on the Sumatran aspect of the Dauphin map illuminations. One is left wondering whether its deer-like animals, like those in the scenario that Wilson suggests for “Reindeer Rock”, represent Sambar deer from Asia.

Claims about the origin and the meaning of the information on the early maps usually reflect people’s beliefs about history. Collingridge, for example, argues that discoveries made by Portuguese and Spanish mariners informed the previously mentioned French cartography. Menzies attributes those discoveries to huge fleets of Chinese junks. When it comes to finding proof of a pre-17th century visit to the Kimberley coast, however, one scholar or another has discounted everything on offer.

McIntyre credits the Flemish cartographer Cornelis de Jode with producing ‘the only properly interpreted and correctly placed map of Australia before the coming of the Dutch maps in the next century’. He maintains that de Jode re-positioned the continent much further to the east in the 1593 edition of the atlas Speculum Orbis Terrae. Yet, if that map is compared to other maps of the period, it can be seen to show little more than a variation in the alignment of the northern extremities of the huge landmass surrounding the South Pole.

One other map that warrants comment before moving on to the Dutch is the Portuguese map drawn by Manoel Godinho de Erédia in 1602. It provides evidence of voyages in waters south of Timor. Whether it shows, as McIntyre argues, that Erédia or his colleagues sailed from Timor to Collier Bay and/or Brunswick Bay in 1599 or 1600 is open to debate. McIntyre equates Ouro (Isle of Gold) with those bays but Noel H Peters presents a persuasive case for Ouro being Melville Island. Peters argues that Erédia’s Luca.Antara (to the west) is Bathurst Island but my calculations suggest that it is just as likely to be the coast and the hinterland between the Victoria River and Collier Bay. If that were to be the case, the two islands shown to the west of Luca.Antara could be the land that defines the mouth of King Sound. It must be acknowledged, however, that “seeing” such things in the map drawn by Erédia may be as fanciful as “seeing” the Australian coast in the outline of Java-la-Grande or other cartographic compositions.

As Erédia drew his map, the Dutch established their East India Company and began to pursue riches in and beyond the islands of South East Asia. They would have believed in the existence of a “Southland” but whether they gleaned any information about it is unknown. The 1605/1606 voyage of the Duyfhen contributed to outside knowledge of New Guinea, the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York. Subsequent voyages that carried back additional information about Australia included those of the Eendracht (Dirk Hartog in 1616), the Zeewolf and the Mauritius (1618), and the Dordrecht and the Amsterdam (1619). Other vessels then arrived at intervals of up to three years before De Witt and others mapped 370km of the north-west coast (between Nickol Bay and Cape Londonderry) in 1628. Assigned the name De Witt Land, that country revealed nothing but ‘a foul and barren shore, green fields, and very wild, black, barbarous inhabitants’. The investigations continued, with Abel Janszoon Tasman claiming Van Diemen’s Land for Holland in 1642.

Whilst best known for his involvement with the island that would later honour his work, Tasman was also the first outsider to make a confirmed landing on the Kimberley coast. No firsthand reports have survived but early accounts show that his 1644 expedition visited localities that included today’s York Sound. Only one of his three known Kimberley landings warranted a detailed description of contact:

The description suggests that the indigenous people (around Carnot Bay) were not only well organised but also in possession of implements (bows and arrows) that were generally seen no closer than the South East Asian islands. The reference to the bows and arrows could be an error in transcription or translation. It could also, when taken in conjunction with several recorded sighting of bows and arrows on or near the northern Australian coast in the 18th and early 19th centuries, be a tantalising hint of very early Asian contact.

Further south (on the Eighty Mile Beach), Tasman encountered only the most basic projectiles (stones) but he still judged it best not to prolong contact. After five months, in which three yachts had carried 111 sailors and soldiers to the ‘Southland’, the expedition returned to South East Asia with little to show beyond an increased knowledge of seas, tides, coastlines, reefs, and islands.

Tasman’s superiors begrudged him having ‘done nothing else than to sail along the coast’ and ‘found nothing of importance only poor naked beachwalkers’. Yet, while his expedition did not identify new commercial prospects for the Dutch East India Company, Tasman had done a great deal. In charting much of the unknown northern and north-western coast between New Guinea and Van Diemen’s Land, he confirmed the existence of the continent that would, for almost two centuries, be known as Hollandia Nova (New Holland).

The Dutch disenchantment with Hollandia Nova curbed immediate interest in commissioning further exploration but a map inlaid on pavement in Amsterdam commemorated Tasman’s work. A copy of that map, published in Paris in 1663, showed the extent of the Dutch exploration and, thus, the extent of outsiders’ knowledge of the continent. Similar maps appeared elsewhere, eg in De zee-atlas of water-waerelt by Hendrik Doncker, published in Amsterdam in about 1669. Further detail became available in 1678 when Jan van der Wall, in the Vliegende Zwaan, charted the coast from North West Cape to Roebuck Bay.

 
Hollandia Nova detecta 1644 ; Terre Australe decouuerte l'an 1644. Map attributed to M. Thevenot, published in Paris in 1663. Courtesy of National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm689a.

It was around this time that a young William Dampier sailed to Java and back to England. Further voyages took him to Jamaica and Mexico, back to England, and then out to Jamaica again with intentions of becoming a trader. Persuaded instead to join a fleet of privateers at the end of 1679, he embarked on the adventurous life that would result in his visit to the Kimberley coast in 1688.

The privateers—up to 400 men and boys—caused English-sanctioned mayhem in and around South America and the South Seas. They also fought amongst themselves. In October 1684, the armed trader Cygnet arrived in the hands of yet more privateers. The fleet continued to attack Spanish ships and towns on the Pacific coast and, in 1685, Dampier joined the predominantly English crew on the Cygnet. The following year, the Cygnet and a barque sailed to the Philippines carrying 150 privateers, seamen, carpenters, strikers (harpooners), and slaves. There, operating without official sanction, their status changed from privateer to buccaneer. In 1687, discontented crewmembers absconded with the Cygnet, leaving Captain Swan and about forty others stranded at Mindanao. With Dampier aboard, they then spent a year pillaging, fighting and fraternising in South East Asia before deciding ‘to touch at New Holland, a part of Terra Australis Incognita, to see what that country would afford’.

Much has been written about Dampier’s visit and his opinion of the Aboriginal people of the Kimberley. Yet, to appreciate what that visit entailed, one needs to read Dampier’s account. It shows that between 80 and 90 hard-bitten men and boys spent months on the east side of King Sound and adjacent islands. They antagonised and occasionally seized people there but they also seem to have had some amicable contact. Dampier recorded that the local people, who had ‘no Boats, Canoes or Bark-logs’, sustained themselves by collecting cockles, mussels, and periwinkles at low water and maintaining stone ‘wares’ that trapped small fish in tidal inlets. The buccaneers fared much better. The highly skilled strikers on English privateering vessels tended to come from the Moskito Coast (Nicaragua and Honduras) and they did nothing but use small canoes to harpoon fish, turtle and other marine creatures. Their skill was such that one or two strikers could provide meat for one hundred men. With work of that calibre, the two or three Moskito men from the Cygnet would not have escaped the notice of the local people. It is therefore tempting to associate their techniques with Aboriginal people riding King Sound tides on light log rafts that doubled as platforms from which to spear turtle and other seafood.

The buccaneers left New Holland in March 1688. Dampier and six others were set ashore at the Nicobar Islands en route to the Coromandel Coast (India) and, years later, Dampier wrote the book that made him famous. Published in London in 1697, A New Voyage Round the World helped to have Dampier placed in command of a British expedition that would reveal more about New Holland. With the Roebuck carrying a crew of fifty and a chart compiled by Tasman, Dampier sailed up the west coast in August 1699. The ship anchored in what is now known as Lagrange Bay and, in trying to catch people who might lead them to fresh water, Dampier shot an Aboriginal man who looked as though he might overpower one of the sailors. That sorry incident was the most memorable part of the last of the 17th century visits to the Kimberley coast.

A great deal more could be said about the 17th century visitors but, to gain any real sense of their outlook, their prospects, and their activities, it is best to read the books devoted to such things. This talk has not covered the visits of Macassan fishermen because, like some of the others who have looked into the history of those visits, I believe that they commenced in the 18th century. A brief summary of those visits is available in Dr Ian Crawford’s talk titled ‘Kayu Jawa: The Kimberley of the Indonesians’ (April 1995).

Further reading
Dampier, William. A New Voyage Round the World: The Journal of an English Buccaneer, James Knapton, London, 1697, edited and revised edition, hummingbird press, London, 1998.
Peters, Noel H. ‘Eredia Map 1602: A Case for determining that Ouro and Luca.Antara Islands shown on the Eredia Map are, respectively, Melville and Bathurst Islands of the Tiwi Islands of Australia’, Cartography, December 2003. See http://users.tpg.com.au/papag/EREDIA2.html for a copy of the paper.
Richardson, W A R. The Portuguese Discovery of Australia: Fact or Fiction?, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1989.
Schilder, Günter. Australia Unveiled: The share of the Dutch navigators in the discovery of Australia. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum B.V., Amsterdam, 1975, translated from the German by Olaf Richter, 1976.
Wallis, Helen. ‘Did the Portuguese Discover Australia?’, History Today, Vol. 38, Issue 3, March 1988, pp. 30–5.

OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE OFFSHORE KIMBERLEY REGION
On 5 July 2006, Bill Tinapple, Director of Petroleum and Royalties at the Department of Industry and Resources, spoke on the oil and gas outlook for the Browse Basin offshore from the Kimberley. He reviewed the petroleum exploration history which had resulted in two major gas and condensate resources, which are world class in size. Condensate is the liquid petroleum recovered when gas is produced.
Bill also spoke about the outlook for further future discoveries in the Browse and how the area is one of Australia's most prospective areas. He then reviewed the outlook for oil and gas in Australia and discussed how important these resources will be for the national economy.
Our arrangements for providing a summary of Bill’s talk unfortunately struck a snag. The map below, published courtesy the Department of Industry and Resources (Western Australia) from Western Australian Mineral and Petroleum Statistics Digest 2005–06, shows Australia’s Gas Resources (with trillion cubic feet measurements) at the end of 2005. The graph, which also comes from the Digest, shows the speed at which the quantity of Western Australia’s crude oil and condensate resources came to match, and then overtake, the quantity found elsewhere in Australia.

JOURNEY OF A MASTER PEARLER, 1886–1942
John E de B Norman & Verity Norman (2 August 2006)
The two speakers were welcomed by the President of the Kimberley Society, Mike Donaldson.  The meeting was well attended and distinguished guests included Rev’d Fathers Kevin McKelson SAC, AM, LL.D, and Michael MacMahon SAC, both of whom have an enviable experience of the Kimberley its history, polyethnicity and languages.  There was Anthony Male, a childhood friend whose father ran Roebuck Plains station, Mrs Margret Bullock whose father ran deGrey in the old days, and her daughters Mary Charnley and Jennifer Anthony, who grew up on Kooyna with brother John represented by Cathy Rowe.  Mr JL Stewart’s great-granddaughter, Trina Glover, an experienced teacher, took charge of the audiovisual presentation with her characteristic élan.  Aviation was represented by a 95 year young Frank Colquhoun who was in Broome when Kingsford-Smith christened Café Royale.  Robert Hawkes, serving in the Australian Army, had the distinction of mining the jetty, courthouse, airstrip and numerous pearling luggers.
Dr Graham Blick was represented by his grandson, also Graham Blick, and Dr David Paton by his granddaughters, Mesdames Margaret Hector and Jane-Anne Williams with her daughter, Mrs Fiona Weston.  Mrs Hector in turn posed pertinent questions about the life of those early doctors, and in particular women’s business. Whilst there is much on the record of the life of Dr (later Professor) Tadashi Suzuki, it is contained in the Japanese language and the Japanese Journal of Paediatrics.  He was the first Broome doctor to establish a medical journal.
Allan Richardson, son of William, was encouraged to hear that his uncle, Hugh (pearler of Moss & Richardson), was a fine man and highly regarded in the community.
Kim Thorson, a military historian whose kinsman Andy Stewart, late of the 10th Australian Light Horse Regiment and Mrs Nerina Coopes, daughter of Lt. Pompey Gull MC, also a Broome pearler, who survived the charge at The Nek and rode with the Anzac Mounted Division on the march to Damascus was in the audience; further and vital links with the past.
The first speaker adverted to the Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives (1905) and this report from the Royal Commissioner, Dr Walter Roth, was reported verbatim.  The evidence was adduced from divers members of the community including a number of police, pastoralists, priests and pearlers. Dr Roth noted “The boats’ crew suffer a good deal from venereal disease and the loss of their labour is severely felt by the pearlers [812-3].”  Much has been made of the incidence of loathsome disease and the reality was that mariners the world over had a higher incidence and for all the usual reasons.
The earlier report by Resident Magistrate, Michael Scales Warton (1901-1902) whilst less substantial and in respect to quantity but not quality, reflected on the Nor’West pearling industry at the turn of the century.   He referred to “these fat years” and whilst the zenithal of “a ton-a-month” was not often achieved, in its heyday pearling brought prosperity, employment and much-needed revenue for the colony.  Most importantly it established a European bridgehead in the north of the state and pearling was the engine of the town’s economy.
In 1901 sixty firms or individuals, mostly resident in Broome, controlling twenty-three schooners and 177 luggers, employed 1358 crew at sea or on the shore stations.
The exploitation of Aboriginal Australians on the boats had been proscribed by earlier legislation and it was only in Thursday Island that they continued to be exploited, albeit not by European pearlers but by Japanese who were dummying boats.
Much has been written about the early days and  perhaps some more recent aspects of scholarly and popular literature has tended to ignore James Battye. A trio of Royal Commissioners within a short period of 15 years provided a wealth of material in regard to pearling, taken largely on oath.  In regard to the early Western Australian settlers, pioneers, pastoralists and pearlers it is to be hoped that historians will be further encouraged to present a disinterested and even handed account.
With this introduction and with support of a Powerpoint presentation the first speaker provided a brief overview of the nascent pearling industry noting, inter alia, that the title of the lecture was an understatement and there were 5 pearling masters in the family, Hugh Norman and his brothers George and Tom, their sister Emily who was not a pearler and William Robison, and subsequently in 1910 Hugh Norman’s son Ted, the speaker’s father.
Robison & Norman started in a small way.  William Robison was, like Fleeming Jenkin an engineer, and part of the Scottish diaspora.  He first became interested in pearling in the early 1880s and along with Captain William Kirkpatrick, a master mariner, sent a few boats and a schooner to the Torres Strait shelling grounds.  In May 1886 Hugh Norman [my grandfather] had been far from well, with a chronic cough and indigestion, and his doctors gave the usual prescription, not uncommon in those days, to “take a long sea voyage.” 
Ernestine Hill was my mother’s friend and a frequent visitor and she described my grandfather, Hugh Norman, as “A quiet little man with the King Edward beard, who looks like a Presbyterian church elder, and is, has been pearling here among the rabble of the world’s end since 1887.  The rack and ruin of romance, as such, have strangely passed him by, but his name will be written in historic records, and on three of H.D. Norman’s schooners the Mist, the Mina and the Ena, a Jew, a Norwegian, and a Hindu from Allahabad were done to death in three of the goriest pearl murders of the coast.” 
In truth Mark Liebglid, a dealer in jewels, diamonds and the odd snide pearl, sustained a fatal head injury on Mist, but Dr Graham Blick described his postmortem findings of water-logged lungs and froth in the air passages and opined death was due drowning.
Christian Kanstrup Christiansen was not a Norseman, but a Dane, and he was Hugh Norman’s fleet captain.  Whilst schooner Mina was anchored in Beagle Bay, he was attacked by one of the crew, sustaining a compound fracture of the skull.  He died some weeks later in Perth of a cerebral abscess.
A surgeon in Brunei has opined that Dollah bin Kassim, murdered on schooner Ena, may very likely have been a convert to Islam, albeit from Allahabad.  The skeletal remains uncovered by a cyclonic wind in the tiny cemetery adjacent Norman’s lugger camp at Bulla Bullaman Creek in Beagle Bay might have been his.  They might as easily have been those of George Norman’s diver, Benacio Eradora, disembowelled on his lugger Heath.  The Rev’d Fathers at Beagle Bay, originally Trappist and subsequently Pallottine, would have officiated at non-Christian burials in this remote outpost of Empire.  Rev’d Father Michael McMahon a priest in Broome for nearly 25 years confirmed this.  There were other episodes of mayhem and mutiny on the pearling fleets in those early days, to be expanded and illustrated from primary sources in the forthcoming publication.
Contemporaneous records show that the Robison & Norman fleet of thirty boats and two schooners was operated by over 250 crew, and the majority living at Beagle Bay. Upwards of fifty per cent were Muslim, and Hugh Norman recognising their spiritual need, set aside a prayer area. Many pearlers other than our family revictualled in the bay, collecting firewood and water and to the chagrin of the Mission Fathers and Hugh Norman et al, cohabiting with Aboriginal women, whose men exchanged their favours for flour, sugar and tobacco.
William Robison and Captain Kirkpatrick offered Hugh Norman a job in 1886 and a partnership was accepted, and he became a shareholder in the 94-ton schooner Mist. The schooner was my grandfather’s “verandah” from 1887 – 1902, and he lived on board, as did many of the early masters. The original owners were Robison, Norman and Kirkpatrick, and whilst fiction has Mist owned by another pearler, be reassured that from a few months after it being launched on the Clarence River, it was owned by Robison and Norman until the day it was beached in 1902 and converted to a shell store.
Their little fleet of four 38-foot lug-sail rigged double-ended boats painted white sailed from Sydney to Thursday Island.  They operated there for a few months and then heard the news of the rich grounds on the northwest coast.  A number of places were tried for shell and they made for Bonaparte Gulf, described by my father as “uninviting,” and thence to Cape Londonderry, Napier Broome and Vansittart Bays, thence down near the Osborne Islands (made famous by the Paspaley Pearling Company), and eventually entered King Sound to careen Mist and the four boats, scrape bottoms and give a thorough overhaul before the commencement of the new season.  That was in 1887 in Cygnet Bay on the western shore of King Sound, near where William Dampier careened Cygnet in 1688.
When schooner Mist arrived in Roebuck Bay the only sign of habitation was a rude tin shed, encircled by chain, used for stores landed on the beach for one of the inland cattle stations.  Within a few years a town was established and grew and Wishart’s built the Mangrove Point Jetty in 1898 to serve both the pearling and cattle industries. 
Cossack was the economic centre of the pearling industry in the 1880s and the pearlers thought little of sailing down to Cossack to purchase stores, take on water and maybe engage and discharge crew.  They would stage a rendezvous at sea with a ship trading between Fremantle and Singapore.  After business was completed in Cossack, schooner Mist rejoined the fleet. In 1888 24 tons of shell were fished from the King Sound grounds, and twice that in 1889.  At the end of the season in December 1889 Hugh Norman realised he must have somewhere more convenient and protected for the lay-up and decided on Tapper’s Inlet, but the following year set up in Bulla Bullaman Creek, Beagle Bay, which proved most suitable for a large fleet, and continues to this day with the Arrow Pearling Company.
Camp buildings were erected over the next few years and by 1900 the fleet had grown to 14 boats and they ordered schooner Ena which was built at Fords’ yard in Berry Bay Sydney and she was sailed north about to Broome by Captain Henry Lee.  Between 1890-1900 the firm built double-ended boats at Bulla Bullaman Creek, and the Japanese shipwrights completed one or two boats every year, and by 1912 they had increased the fleet to 28.  Over the next few years Hugh Norman started a timberyard, and continued to import ships’ chandlery, diving equipment, ropes and canvas and other requirements and these also transshipped via Singapore.  The Broome Jetty and the horse-drawn tram could not come soon enough.  The tram was replaced in 1912 by a small steam train with an open carriage for passengers and flat cars for crew and freight.  In 1942 it served as a hearse after the air raid and Robert Hawkes, here this evening, then a young soldier, recalls that he and six others mined the jetty with high explosive and drums of petrol within days of the raid.   By late 1942 it was somewhat belatedly fortified.
My father, writing to his nephew Commodore Neil Boase in 1976:
 “From time to time further additions have been made to the fleet, until at present it numbers 28 operating pearling boats and two schooners, one of which is continually in company with the boats on the pearling ground, whilst the other plys continually to the fleet with stores, wood and water, returning to Broome with shell.  This fleet comprises the largest owned by any one business.  In the year 1900 Robison and Norman opened a store at Broome, which has grown year by year, until at present it occupies its present proud position.  In addition to a full stock of all requirements incidental to the pearling trade. ….  The Company acts as agents for many pearlers in a small way [one and two boat admirals] – packs and ships their shell to London.  They are also large purchasers of M.O.P. shell, and, with their own produce, handle about one quarter of the total export of M.O.P. shell of Western Australia.”
My grandfather valued greatly the cordial relationship with the Reverend Fathers and the Sisters of St John of God.  They provided fresh vegetables and meat, and the lugger camp and our shipwrights repaired their mission schooner and its sails, provided fish and transport to Broome if the mission schooner was not available, and also repaired the boats of other small pearlers.  It was not uncommon to see on a Sunday 100 or more boats in Beagle Bay.
It was quite a fleet with Ena, the mother ship and floating station, and Mina, acting as tender, running between the fleet and Broome with water and stores on the outward run and taking pearlshell on the home run, and not solely for themselves.  The floating and shore stations of pearling and trucking system of victualling were described by the speaker, and the masters recognised the “floating station” system was superior to the shore station.  Ena carried two 20-foot motor launches and clerks took the launches around the boats collecting shell, packed into bags.  A wet and miserable job, according to Ted Norman, Lou Goldie, Jack Howe et al.  The shell bags or baskets were stacked on Ena’s deck and at 6 am the following morning all shells were opened by clerks.  Captain and Mate then cleaned, weighed by individual boat’s take, then packed shell in cases marked “ready for export”.  These cases were taken by Mina to Broome and landed at Broome or Streeters Jetty.  Bagged shell was also landed directly from lugger to dinghy and onto the shore at the back of the Dampier Terrace shell shed and it was heavy work lifting these [300 lb] bags onto the beaches, as the photograph showed. 
By 1912 there were over 350 boats working out of Broome, but by 1915 this was reduced by about 50%. The white shell openers, masters, mates, clerks, divers and spare divers numbered 250 prior to the Great War, but the majority enlisted at the outbreak of hostilities, and the stealing of shell and pearls increased greatly.
The arrival of the fortnightly Singapore ship was a social occasion in the isolated Nor’West and the town turned out. The cargo south would include passengers and those on business, returning civil servants, children en route to school, those undergoing surgery in Perth and even men destined for trial in Perth or the final journey to Fremantle Gaol and the short early morning walk.  Justice in those days was Biblical, rarely protracted.
The scholarship of the late Professor Frederick Goldie, Syracuse University NY, was strongly endorsed to the audience.  He was Broome born and commenced his education, like the first speaker, at the local school. 
Professor HD Turner (University of Tokyo) reminded the speakers that 18th century Japanese woodcuts showed the use of women abalone divers.  The photograph used this evening was from the Kurabyashi Archive (1950), and shows women divers were employed in large numbers.  In the Torres Strait in the 19th century South Sea Islanders described as bare pelt divers were employed. The use of Aboriginal women divers was much criticised and was proscribed in the closing years of the 19th century.  The stories of “Black Ivory” recounted to Ernestine Hill by the redoubtable Mrs Hilliard were, according to the late HV Howe, an early pearler, grossly exaggerated, and this opinion was widely shared.
The dressing of the apparatus diver was illustrated and Mr Hiroshi Hamaguchi, a successful post war pearling master, identified the various pieces of the apparatus, commencing with the Dreadnought drawers (long stockings) and the blanket shoulder padding.  The diver was shown wearing VP Heinke twill dress with 18 lb boots with brass toes, leadened soles and heavy straps.  The term hardhat was never used prior to 1942, and was always referred to as helmet and corselet.
Dr Joanna Sassoon has pointed out that the admirable EL Mitchell image used so frequently in earlier publications was taken aboard Jackie Pryor’s lugger, a mile or so out of Broome.  The shell opener, attired in immaculate whites was smoking his Meerschaum and opening shells on an equally spotless deck with the piscine neck of the shell bag at full gape.  A laughing Japanese diver can just be seen in the background.   This was not the reality, and that was shown in the 1896 image from John Oxley Library, and the desultory nature of pearling was well illustrated – shell opening one day and schooner mate, diver’s tender or cook the next.
There were many successful white divers in Torres Strait, as in the Nor’West, and the suggestion that Europeans were not physiologically capable of diving was wrong.  The first speaker noted that the later white divers failed for a number of reasons.  The early white pearlers had lived for years in the Torres Strait and Nor’West, often the only European on the boat but speaking the local lingua franca, familiar with the customs, the harsh equatorial climate and the food.   Logbooks extant from this period describe the day to day activities of successful white divers who made their fortune and elected to demit while they still had their health. The later white divers of Broome, although highly trained Royal Navy divers, senior sailors in the Royal Navy, used to warship diet and serving under King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions, regular medicals, discipline and a common language were not accustomed to working under the harsh and cramped conditions on the pearling grounds.  They lacked experience of pearling and their presence was resented by other members of the crew.  A detailed account was written by John Bailey, and Rod Dickson has offered another theory.
Hugh Norman wrote to his Member of Parliament on 22nd June 1912:
“White Divers. You no doubt heard of the death of Messrs Moss & Richardsons man, Webber.  Divers paralysis took him off.  It is a very sad case indeed.  He had an experienced white tender who came out with him.  No one to blame except the unfortunate man who lost his life.  The Diver was working in about 19 fathoms of water remaining down 1 hour.  He signalled his Tender that he was about to ascend.  When he ascended to the 10 fathom stage his tender signalled him “stage”.  The reply came haul up.  He then reached the next stage & his tender again signalled “stage,” but again received the reply haul up; which was complied with.  When the diver reached deck, he gave orders to undress, which was being done, when he fell back unconscious.  When he recovered consciousness his tender wished him to be put down again for decompression, but he absolutely refused remarking that he would blow himself up from the bottom.  This can be done of course by closing the valves.  After the refusal to be put down again, he became unconscious for the second time and never rallied.
The funeral of the unfortunate man was attended by nearly every white man in Broome.  The sad occurrence cast quite a gloom over the Town.  I venture to say that the most promising man of the whole importation of White Divers has lost his life.  I candidly assert, although we are anxious to comply with the Federal Governments wishes & have white Divers & Tenders, “this is no white mans employment.”  Robison & Norman Ltd, our company imported two Divers & one Tender.  They have been trying with very poor results.  They do not like the work, but do the pay £13 per month & Keep.  One of them remarked to Capt Harrison our skipper, “Would you work if there was no occasion” or words to that effect.  The boat that they are working is costing our company about £60 per month, with little or no result.”  Contrary to some popular opinion, grandfather and his contemporaries wanted the white divers to succeed for commercial reasons.
Diving was a dangerous occupation with a mortality and morbidity and Gracey & Spargo’s important paper identified the causes of death in Broome between 1883 and 1994, although those deaths due the air raid of 3rd March 1942 were not entered on the Broome register.
 “There were 1041 deaths recorded on the Broome register from 1896 to 1915, of which 94 per cent were males and 6 per cent were females.  No aboriginal deaths were recorded in the first five years of the register and only 45 (4.6 per cent) of the deaths from 1896 to 1915 involved Aboriginals.  Three-quarters of the deaths recorded were of persons aged 20 to 40 years.  Two-hundred-and-twenty-eight deaths (23 per cent) were attributed to drowning, 373 (38 per cent) to heart disease, 241 (25 per cent) to infections and 47 (5 per cent) to suicides or homicides.  .....  From 1896 to 1910 there were 147 deaths from drowning, and 307 others (41 per cent) were attributed to ill-defined heart disease of disorders, almost always after diving incidents.  Most of these deaths occurred in young Asian males who had recently arrived in Broome, often only days before their deaths.”
Some pearlers and divers continued to ignore the risks, and even when the physiological basis of decompression illness was understood, and the Admiralty tables were widely available, they too were ignored.  The claim that the boat always returned to Broome for the burial is not correct.  In the tropics it would have been impractical and there was an unknown number of coastal, island and deep sea burials.
The lessons learned nearly a century ago at the principal Royal Naval School of Diving, HMS Excellent, Portsmouth continue to be relearned by both professional and recreational divers the world over, from the Barrier Reef to Sharm-el-Sheikh.  The first speaker concluded with remarks on the racial riot of 1920/21 and the air raid of 1942, and chapters describing both are based on original material and photographs from men and women who were in Broome at that time.
The second speaker, Verity Norman, introduced the audience to her mother-in-law Catherine Mary Norman (née Nicholson), known as Rene, by way of painting a picture of Broome as she found it in 1925  as the newly married wife of Edgar de Burgh Norman, known as Ted.
Thanks to a large family archive and her experiences related over thirty years, a clearer understanding of the lives of pioneer women in the Kimberley has been chronicled.  Handwritten notes and the oral histories gleaned by Mrs Jennifer Vickers and Ms Trina Glover, the JS Battye Library, the Girl Guides Association, and conversations with her Broome friends gave the opportunity to relate the following:
I would like to take you back to her arrival at the Mangrove Point Jetty in 1925 aboard the Centaur, to describe an isolated small town and a life quite different to the one she knew in Perth.   At that time the town was divided, with a commercial area including a distinct Asian quarter, known then as Japtown, and an outlying residential area. A tramline ran from the Mangrove Point jetty to end at Streeter’s jetty, circling the commercial area and passing the shell sheds nearest the shoreline along Dampier Terrace.
Their home on the corner of Louis and Walcott Streets had been built for a solicitor and sometime Mayor, Walter Clark Hall.  There was a large garden with room for a goat, chickens and a vegetable plot, thanks to Ted’s tutoring by Brother Augustine Sixt who grew vegetables at the Beagle Bay Mission.  A photograph shows Rene at the front of the house standing near a square water tank on a high platform.  The hard artesian water was filtered through beach sand, shell grit and charcoal in an effort to make it a little softer for laundry and bathing.  Unique photographs of the interior of the house clearly show the nature of the furnishings, not packing case furniture as has been frequently described, but made by a Perth cabinetmaker. Rene was the proud owner of the New Perfection “Blue Flame” kerosene stove making the kitchen a little, but not much, cooler than with the old wood stove.
Housekeeping was a challenge, and it was a constant struggle to keep food fresh in this climate.  Without electricity the icebox needed replenishing twice a day, and the Coolgardie safe was merely a stopgap. There was fresh fish aplenty brought to the door on an oar, also oysters were sold for a shilling a mug and live mud crabs with claws pinioned, a delicacy. Meat safe legs stood in tins filled with kerosene and salt to keep ants at bay.  Carbide lamps were needed in the house after dark, and one carried a lantern to light the way if visiting friends.  The plumber supplied the Jason’s wood chip heater in the bathroom, and a large bath with standard Broome plumbing, as succinctly described by Mrs Rosemary Hemphill (née Goldie).
A photograph showing Mrs Sophie McKenzie, who was with the Normans for 16 years, and her sons, William and Frank, with whom John grew up until 1942 was shown, with the permission of the family. The two women, Rene and Sophie, shared the domestic duties.  The ironing was a seemingly endless chore, with Mrs Potts’ irons with removable handles heated on the wooden stove, quite a feat in the dusty climate. 
There were many hardships and uncertainties for the women and families of the pearlers, long separations and the many dangers of a maritime industry.  The numbers of small graves to be found in the Broome cemetery reflect the high infant and maternal mortality rates and the difficulties and hazards of childbirth in that climate at the time.  The importance of the “mantle of safety” provided by the Royal Flying Doctor Service continues today, and Jennifer Vickers has written a sensitive chapter on the years that Dr and Mrs Allan Vickers lived in the Nor’West.
This was a précis, a brief condensation of material from a richly illustrated chapter and there was not time to touch on the lives of other women of the Kimberley or the many women who held pearling licences in the latter years of the 19th century and the first 20 years of the 20th century, and that is for another day.
Appreciation and thanks are due Dr Catherine Clement for her sensitive editing of the report. The speakers would encourage the members of the audience and those interested in the subject  to contact them at PO Box 3633  Broome WA  6725,  Australia;  telephone:  61 8 9192 1418;  fax: 61 8 9192 1540;  email here 
References
1.   Royal Commission. on  The Condition of the Natives Report, Perth, Government Printer 1905, op cit. Rodriguez F, 7th October 1904, Broome Pearler Q806-808 page 66.  Aborigines on the boats.
2.   Australia. Parliament of the Commonwealth.  House of Representatives.  Pearl-Shelling Industry in North-West Australia. Report by M.S. Warton Esquire, Resident Magistrate and Sub-Collector of Customs, Broome, on the. Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1901-2.  Robt. S. Brain, Government Printer for the State of Victoria. A43-F8049. page 8
3.   The History of the North West of Australia embracing Kimberley, Gascoyne and Murchison Districts. Illustrated. Edited by Jas.S. Battye BA, LLB with Descriptive and Biographical Information compiled by Matt.J. Fox.   Perth, WA:  VK Jones, 1915.
4.   Royal Commission on the Pearl-Shell and Bêche-de-mer Industries.  Report, Brisbane, Government Printer, 1908.  Appendix XVIII, summary of Appendices XV, XVI, XVII.  PP. 276-277
5.   Royal Commission on the Pearl-Shelling Industry.  Report and recommendations  [Melbourne], Government Printer 1916.
6.   Hill E.  The great Australian loneliness.  Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens Limited,  1945.
7.   Clement C. Notes on some of Broome’s heritage structures and their links with the Mangrove Point stock jetty and tramway.  Mt Lawley,  WA:  National Heritage, 1999.
8.   Goldie LFE. The occupation of the sedentary fisheries off the Australian coasts.   Sydney Law Review 1953;  1:84-95.
9.   Bailey John, The White Divers of Broome The True Story of a Fatal Experiment, Pan Macmillan Australia, Sydney 2001
10.  Norman HD to Hugh Mahon MHR, NAA Series A1/15 item 25/5576
11.  Gracey M, Spargo RM.  Deaths in Broome, Western Australia, 1883 to 1994.  Aust NZ J Public Health 1996;  20:  505-11.

BIRDS OF THE KIMBERLEY ISLANDS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE BIRDS OF CHRISTMAS ISLAND
On 6 September 2006, Ron Johnstone (WA Museum) spoke to the Kimberley Society about Birds of the Kimberley islands and their relationship to the birds of Christmas Island. At present, no summary is available for his talk.

MARINE PLANTS OF THE KIMBERLEY
On 4 October 2006, John Huisman spoke to the Kimberley Society about his ongoing taxonomic studies of the marine plants of the Kimberley, these forming part of his wider studies of Western Australian algae. John is a seaweed taxonomist who received his Ph.D from the University of Melbourne but has spent most of his working life (22 years and counting) living and conducting research in Western Australia. He is the author of Marine Plants of Australia (UWA Press), a colour guide to some 300 species, with most of these photographed underwater.
John’s presentation concentrated on the results of a recent WA Museum survey of the Rowley Shoals, Scott Reef and Seringapatam Reef, the ‘shelf-edge reefs’ located some 300 km offshore. The north-west of Western Australia is virtually unknown with regard to its marine flora. Prior to the current studies, less than 30 species of marine algae had been recorded from the region. Considering the very rich seaweed floras of, for example Rottnest Island (ca 400 spp.) to the south, and the Philippines (ca 700 spp.) to the north, it is highly likely that the marine flora of north-western Australia will be of a similar order. This is proving to be true, and the results are being compiled into a book describing the marine benthic flora (the ‘attached’ seaweeds and seagrasses). This will hopefully be completed some time in 2007 and be published in 2008.
The Museum expedition included a team of taxonomists, examining the fish, corals, molluscs and crustaceans, as well as the marine plants. For the majority of the marine fauna, this survey supplemented earlier records and greatly enhanced what is known about the atolls. For the flora, this represented the first opportunity to systematically collect and describe the species. Prior to this survey, only one algal species had been recorded from the reefs, and that was collected during a Russian survey and described in a very obscure publication. The results are still preliminary, but some 150 species have been recognized in the collections. Included are many species never before recorded from Western Australia. The alga described from the Russian survey (a crustose red alga called Rhizolamellia) was also collected and the specimens will allow a reappraisal of the genus. One surprising feature of the reefs was the total absence of the brown seaweed Sargassum, a genus that is generally typical of tropical regions. It is not known why the alga might be absent.
John presented a series of photos taken on the trip, many of the marine plants (naturally), but also several of interesting and stunning fish, corals, sea snakes, and sharks. The seaweed flora included a surprisingly diverse array of species, many as colourful and dazzling as the more well-known fish and invertebrates.
The results of the survey (both plants and animals) will be compiled into a special volume, which will be published by the WA Museum in late 2007.

A HISTORY OF GUANO MINING ON THE LACEPEDE ISLANDS
On 1 November 2006, Tim Willing visited Perth to share his research findings with the Kimberley Society. Tim works out of Broome—as an expedition guide with Pearl Sea Coastal Cruises—where he is well known for his familiarity with the flora, fauna and history of the Kimberley coast. That work, and his skill with a camera, enabled him to include lots of superb images in his PowerPoint presentation. The following notes, generously provided by Tim, convey the essence of his talk.
The Lacepede Islands lie some 20km west of the Dampier Peninsula coast, 150km north of Broome. They comprise four sand cays, perched on an extensive coral reef, although the two larger islands (West Island, 107ha, and Middle Island, 54ha) have significant exposures of beach rock and limestone.
The Baudin Expedition named the Lacepede Islands in August 1801, when the northbound sailing ships Geographe and Naturaliste sighted them. In recognition of their abundant seabirds, the islands were named for Bernard-Germain-Etienne De La Ville-Sur-Illon, Count Lacepede (1756-1825), a Paris-based zoologist and taxonomist. During the period 1820–1850, American whalers from New England are believed to have hunted Humpback Whales around Lacepede waters, although surviving records are sketchy.
In May 1876, the WA Colonial Government authorised the Melbourne firm of Poole, Picken & Co to commence the export of guano from Middle Island, for use as agricultural fertiliser. On 26 June, a band of adventurers sanctioned by the American Vice-Consul-General in Melbourne, Samuel Perkins Lord, raised the Stars and Stripes on a flagpole there. It appears that Lord was acting on his own commercial initiative, as a merchant, as much as on behalf of Uncle Sam. The Perth press referred to the Lacepede claim as ‘another piece of Yankee audacity’ because the Catalpa had famously liberated six Fenians from Fremantle Jail the previous April. A polite war of words ensued as Governor William Robinson corresponded with Downing Street, while Lord—based at Perth’s Weld Club—maintained that Britain had failed to formally claim the Lacepedes. In May 1877, the Governor received advice that US President Ulysses Grant had repudiated Lord’s annexation.

A sub-adult Brown Booby, one of the seabirds found on the Lacepedes
Image courtesy of Tim Willing (Copyright, 2006)
In November 1876, the colonial administration sent Irish-born Richard Wynne to the Lacepedes with a constable, three boatmen and a Chinese cook. Wynne’s main job was to ensure that the guano deposits were worked in a systematic manner, royalties were paid, and law and order prevailed. He was to wear many “hats” as Harbourmaster, Customs Officer, J.P. and Postmaster, but slept in a tent. After numerous letters to Perth, Wynne was rewarded with a two-room limestone office cum post office cum gaol—known rather grandly as “Lacepede House”—for which PWD plans still survive in State Archives. Nearby, a fifty-foot flagpole with a hoisted lantern and daytime signal flags assisted dozens of sailing ships to locate the dangerously exposed anchorage offshore. Arriving barques brought bundles of cornsacks for loading guano from open boats: a tediously slow process. The barques were invariably in ballast, which was often casually dumped in the anchorage, much to Wynne’s displeasure. Several surviving maps show that Melbourne-based rival contractors (WA Guano Co and F.E. Beaver & Co) laid down trolley lines across Middle Island. Horse-drawn trolleys hauled the guano along the lines to makeshift wooden jetties on the northern shore.
Wynne wrote a hair-raising, eyewitness account of the catastrophic cyclone of 16 February 1877, during which the barque Aboyne was driven ashore and wrecked in minutes. Six lives were lost, and three other vessels (Albert Victor, Helen Malcolm and Isabellas) were also wrecked. Several graphic—and rather gothic—lithographs of this event appeared in Melbourne newspapers of the period.
Richard Wynne was nominally responsible to the Resident Magistrate in Roebourne, R.J. Sholl of Camden Harbour fame, while Captain Pemberton Walcott supposedly delivered his supplies (including water and firewood) every two months in the Government Revenue Cutter. The closest reliable water supply was from springs at Beagle Bay. On his visits, Walcott assisted Wynne with the administration of justice.
In April 1878, Wynne wrote to Perth that there were 165 persons on the island digging guano, but they were on strike, insolent and drunk. At the same time, the Surveyor-General reported that 57 vessels had received guano licences and paid £12,357 royalty on 24,715 tons total. While some guano went to Mauritius, the principal export destination was Hamburg in Germany, where demand was high. In May 1878, the Colonial Government called for a sole guano tender for the remaining 40,000 tons, to take effect from 1 January 1879. This was awarded to London-based contractors McDonald & Mockford, who were later irate on being advised that, in reality, only 15,000 tons remained! In August 1888, the Colonial Government finally agreed to pay £9,783 damages to McDonald & Mockford.
With all the commercial guano gone, Wynne left the islands with his party in November 1879. His former boatman, J.W.S. Kelly, was appointed caretaker. Taunton, in his book Australind (1903), alleged that Kelly, widely known as “Shiner”, was responsible for faking the unique cross arrangement in the Southern Cross pearl. In January 1880, another cyclone washed Lacepede House, along with its stock of postage stamps, off Middle Island. The W.A. philatelist Brian Pope has humorously detailed how a dubious Postmaster-General had Kelly investigated for the missing two quids worth of stamps! Kelly was dismissed in March 1884 for taking bribes from pearlers and allowing the Lacepedes to be used as an illegal depot for Aborigines kidnapped for pearl diving.
In 1970, the Lacepede Islands became a Nature Reserve, in recognition of their enormous colonies of nesting seabirds (the source of the guano deposits) and Green Turtles. In 1986, turtle researcher Dr. Bob Prince successfully eradicated the Black Rat population, which apparently had become established during the guano era a century ago.  Smaller nesting seabirds, such as Bridled Terns and Common Noddies have been the principal beneficiaries.