Living and working in the Kimberley Part 1

PART 1

CAMBALLIN HOMESTEAD

     On the 16^th June we arrived and moved into our new home in the small town of Camballin, approximately 240km east of Broome and 120km southeast of Derby near the Fitzroy River. At the present Camballin is a small community made up of people like teachers, nurses, store managers and builders who work in the Aboriginal Community Looma which is 14km away. There is also a very small corner store come take-away shop which does most of its trade on a Saturday afternoon and Sunday which is when the Looma general store, that I work in, is closed. There is a caravan park here, if you could call it that. It is called the Camballin Campers Base and is under the care of the Aboriginal Community and an aboriginal family live on the base. For those who don't know much about how the aboriginals live let me just say that their camp looks like a wrecking yard! In all there would be about 20-30 homes in Camballin. 

     Our home is the actual Camballin Homestead and for what I can find out it was built in 1951 by Kim Durack, Frank Rodriguez and another man by the name of Dick. Slowly I am finding out the history to this house and soon I hope to add a section into the blog for our records but for now I will just show you around.

 I am writing this blog in late September and things have changed around our little home so I will show you the past and present.



 This is taken from a small hill behind our house and gives you a bit of an overview of the land.The track you can see leading away form the house on the right  is Pete's track he takes to work on the station, a  9km drive. You cannot see the station but its location  is just to the right of the track in the distance.

A closer view but it still cuts off our large shed on the very left where we
keep our camper trailer along with the other junk and  bits and pieces collected over the years of the house and its many owners. The township of Camballin is to the left we are the last house, there is a gap like a bush block between
our house and the others.

This is looking back towards town showing you our corner. The road straight ahead is Camballin Road, the road to the left is Durack Road, which goes through the small town meeting up again at the other end with Camballin Road. If you were to turn to your right you would go down Pete's work track ( photo below)and if you were to turn around and look behind you you would go down the road which leads you onto more of Liveringa property with a small creek called snake creek only 200 meters away from here which I will explain about later. This road is also a gazetted road which leads you down to more sections of the Fitzroy River where there is a very popular camping spot at the Barrage ( 70 kms away) which I will show you later. There is also more stations down this road.




  So now you have seen a bit of the house you may be wondering why the columns? We have an article on Frank Rodriguez who built this for and with Kim Durack and he was born in the village Frexio in Spain. The article explains Mr Rodriguez  has built a few houses throughout the Kimberley region and they all have some kind of Spanish influence on them so I guess this house got the collums. Frank passed away this year in March at the age of 91.
The house is also very interesting in its design for it is actually three separate buildings all under the one roof along with a large veranda. They call them breeze ways and we believe this is meant  to help with cooling the stone down.I am not sure it really works cause the stone absorbs the heat and really holds it and the rooms heat up very quickly. There is no way we would be able to sleep at night if we didn't have an airconditioner! 


Here are some close ups of our home before and after.......

Looking with Camballin Rd to the right. Notice the piles of rubble, they had just dug up
the garden to do the septic tanks and we were left to clean it all up.



Same view, we have started painting it to try to give it some life back. We found this old stone path on the right
so decided to expose it. This is looking out our bedroom and the white add on part is the laundry. Green Grass!



From the other end now you can see our wonderful old Boab tree.
This is now looking at the boys bedroom with the kitchen & family room
in the middle block. Yes that is an old flag pole to the left.



Same side as it is now, still need to finish painting.

This is looking at the same just from further away. The two very leafy green tress are mango trees and they
are currently loaded with fruit, you may be able to see them if you blow up the picture.
Cannot wait till they are ripe, yum!







This is the view from Durack street. There is a very large area between the stand of boabs and the front fence. From photos we
have found from back in its "working" days this area once had many large sheds on it, now we call it a car park.



The stand of Boabs on Durack Rd. I have heard a story that these 6 boabs
were planted by Jack Fletcher when he lived here I think in the 70's or 80's and they
represent each of his children. I am yet to confirm it but a nice thought.

A closer view. You can  make out a rock garden edge I have done just behind the front fence. The fence has been painted along here as well.

 

This is a close up now looking across our lovely large veranda. The garden bed along
here was full of weeds and grass and didn't have a border. This was my first garden rock edge I did.  I also pruned the bougainvilleas ( the bush on the right) who got  their revenge on my arms! ( Very large thorns.)
This photo was only taken 2 weeks ago.



Here is our spectacular old boab tree, just like on old man leaning over having a rest,it has to be over 500 years old. It is a great climbing tree for the boys. 



Just another picture of our boab! You can tell this was taken
not long after we got here, no green grass!



Looking out from the veranda. When we first arrived here this dirt patch was a mess, there were bits of concrete pipe, foam and junk everywhere. In December 2010 a very strong storm blew through here and knocked over a
very large tree which then landed on an old shed which had a cool room in it and a carport. The mess was never
really cleaned up till now.  



This is what two truck loads of dirt and compost, a big front end loader, manual raking , a pack of grass seeds and lots of water can do! Over in the corner is another rock feature built by mainly myself, Pete marked it out!! ( a close up below)



Our fire pit. We did get to use it when Tony, Cate, Daniel and Sarah came but I hadn't totally finished it then. Now it is
way too hot at nights to have a fire, but it makes a nice feature in the garden.

Shows the fire pit a bit better. Many trips to the rock collecting hill were
made to build this because we had to hand pick flat rocks. Tom and Charlie were
good helpers.



This is the gap between our bedroom on the right
 and the kitchen. It is the same the other side for the boys bedroom. You do get a bit sick of having to open doors all
the time.






 
 

This is our veranda.

Looking into our bedroom, the door at the other end
leads to our bathroom and the laundry.





The laundry.






























The family room and kitchen.



Our kitchen.






Our eating area beside the kitchen, that cupboard is my pantry.



Tom and Charlies room. They are enjoying having
 their own room with their own bathroom as well.
The door to the right is to the kitchen the other is their
bathroom.

 


So that is Camballin Homestead as it stands today, looking green, neat and tidy. Unfortunately it may not stay that way because this land is very prone to flooding, along with this house. There is a mark on the wall from the 1996 floods which reached 1/3rd up the wall. Last year it also got wet inside but only about a foot of water. The kitchen is new and they have thought about it and done it  in stainless steel so hopefully they won't have to keep fixing it when it gets wet next. They have also put drain holes through the walls to assist with the clean up when it gets flooded. Those holes are stuffed with foil at the moment to stop the vermin from getting in!

Below are a few photo's of the wild life that have visited us since we have been here......




Green Tree Frogs were a constant find in the toilets
and showers when we got here, We kept putting them out
they kept coming back in. Slowly we won the war. Now the
weather is changing and becoming hotter we are getting
frogs of all sorts everywhere!!! 























  

A small children's python which Tom saw
going into their bedroom as they were just
about to go to bed. Of course he made it hard
to get him out because he went behind the boys wardrobe!!
It was only about a meter in length.

The bigger calf somehow made it into our yard so Pete herded the little one in. We thought them cute till
we left them for the day in the yard while we went to work/school and got back to find they had eaten
my plants, so out the fence they went. We told the station to come and get them but they didn't.For days they hung around and we gave them water. I have seen that a lady up the road has let them into her yard, probably fattening them up for Christmas dinner!!!!

This is our new pet, her name is Kitty. The boys brought her home from school
on the bus one afternoon, luckily no one else was on the bus. She is a very
affectionate cat and yes she will be staying here!!

Some of the lovely birds around here.

So now you have seen where we live. It is a lovely place very peaceful and now very green. The sprinklers run off a bore so we can have them on all day. We have 14 boab trees on our patch of land all different sizes and shapes. 



Sunrise



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Derby 1st June - 15th June

DERBY 1^ST JUNE – 15^TH JUNE

Derby is the entrance to the Kimberley’s and with that comes the Boab Tree, only found in this region of Australia. We never get tired of seeing these amazing specimens and you will probably get bored of seeing the photos of them but too bad. I will give you a bit of a history lesson on the Boab Tree.



This is a classic Boab Tree. This one was
outside the visitors centre at Derby.
The brown mark on it is stains from the
bore water sprinklers.



The botanical name is Adansonia Gregorii and they are related to the Madagascan and African Adansonia species known as Boababs. It is thought that seeds from Africa have floated across the ocean landed and grown here. They can withstand flood and fire therefore they can grow very old, over a thousand years.  They are hollow trees with their inner lining being fibrous which is what soaks up all the water and expands giving it the wide birth and enabling it to store enough water to get through a dry season. They are deciduous, bare in the dry season and are known to grow their leaves before the first rains of the wet season. They have flowers and fruit/ seed pods. The seed pods are commonly known as boab nuts because they are hard shell, mostly oval in appearance and can vary in size. The nuts have a velvety feel and when broken open white pith is found covering the seeds. The locals eat this white pith, no we haven’t tried it yet! Another name for the Boab tree is a bottle tree and you can see why. So now you know all about Boabs. 

Here is a selection of  different shaped boab
nuts with a tennis ball to give you
an idea of  the size of them



The inside of a boab nut, that is the white pith some
people eat.



Derby is a dead end town and by this I mean the same road that takes you in also takes you out. Others would think I actually meant it is a “dead “town and I can sort of see why they would think that for it doesn’t look like much BUT, now that we have stayed in Derby for two weeks while Pete worked and the fact I am writing this after 2 months of living on the station and Derby is the closest thing to a “town” that we get, I do not think that at all.  It has most things that are needed to get by just don’t have the need to buy many clothes and you will be alright; Broome is only 220km’s away and they have a good range!




There is only two C.P's in Derby and only one likes kids! So we stayed at The Kimberley Entrance Caravan Park which was quite a nice park and especially when it came to using one of their shower blocks which was newly refurbished. It was very well done, modern, bright and great shower heads; lovely!  There was a resident white peacock called Percy ( of course) and there was also these lovely Tawny Frog Mouth owls.

"Home Sweet Home"

 These owls were in the C.P. not far from us. This was their tree and everyday there were 3 or 4 owls "trying" to sleep and get some rest for the next nights forage. Many people in their vans who camped right next to the tree didn't know they were there till you pointed them out.


"You can't see me!"




"What are you looking at!"



  



The trees in the back ground are the caravan park we were
staying at. The jetty is about 500meters behind
 me( I am taking the photo) .



One of the really interesting things about Derby is the huge mud flats that surround it. Going out to the jetty you get a good view of how vast they are. The mud flats around town get wet when Derby is having one of its       11 meter tides, which are the highest tides in Australia.






This is looking further to the right, a whole lot
of nothing!!!! 

   

The water in King Sound (which is the name of the bay) is brown as far as you can see out to sea because of the shallow waters and the mud flats. People say you need to go the jetty at high tide then back at low tide and that will give you a real sense of the volume of water that gets moved around, we kind of did as you can see below. The jetty is a "D" shape with driving only allowed one way on it.



Looking at the left half of the jetty where you drive on. That is a BP road train driving on it. You can see the brown mud and  brown  water. This is at mid tide, it is actually coming in, take note how low the water is on the pylons. 









This is the right side of the jetty where you drive off and now the water is at high tide, we just missed seeing the mudflats with water on them, they were still damp when we came down. The tide was going out as we sat and had our fish and chips.

 When we were sitting on the jetty at sunset eating our fish (barramundi) and chips, (yummy) we were amazed at how fast and strong the water was as it was going out, it was swirling around the pylons of the jetty.

Our yummy Barra and chips!



Sunset over King Sound Bay



Today’s jetty was built in 1964, replacing the old wooden one from 1894. It used to be a T shape and was used to export pearl shell and wool. Back in the 1800's there used to be a horse drawn tramway crossing the mud flats via a cause way which is now the road to the jetty. In the 60’s live cattle was exported with fuel, oil and provisions being the main imports. This would have been a huge effort for it only would have been possible to load onto barges when the tide was right. This would be the same for getting out of the bay they would have to wait for a high tide.  Cattle are no longer loaded  from this jetty it all goes to Broome or Darwin. I think the jetty is now only used for local supplies in and out.

The main attractions around Derby are the Boab Prison Tree, Frosty’s Pool and the Mayall’s Bore and Cattle trough, they are all within 500 meters of each other and just before you reach Derby.

The Prison Boab Tree



The Prison Boab Tree. You can see the hole left which used to be the door.



The Boab Prison Tree is said to be over 1500 years old with a 14 meter circumference. The information at the tree tells a good story about what went on between the Aboriginals and the first settlers so I will relay some of it. Before Derby was established in 1883 Aboriginal people were kidnapped from the West Kimberley by settlers who were connected to the pearling industry, they were looking for divers and workers on the pearling boats. These kidnappers where named "blackbirders". They rounded people up, put them in chains and marched them to the coast and it is believed they may have held the prisoners captive at the Boab Tree while they were waiting for boats. When the early pastoralists came along they helped the blackbirders because they thought that by removing the young men it would guarantee peaceful behaviour from the older ones left behind, how wrong they were, the Aboriginals resisted. In 1887 a gaol was built only 5 km from the prison boab tree, then later in 1906 a new one was built in the then established town of Derby. Over the following decades hundreds of Aboriginals were held in the jails charged mostly with killing and eating livestock. Prisoners were made to walk anywhere from 24km to 84km a day and they came from all over the Kimberley and as far away as Fitzroy Crossing with the prison tree being a staging point along the way. 
A small insight as to some of the things that went on.



The sun on the back of the tree making it look almost purple in colour.

This is the  board I got all the information off, it shows the prisoners chained
around their necks and I think it is the Prison Tree behind them.

Alfred Mayall Bore and Cattle Trough

Alfred Mayall sunk a well here in the early 1890’s then in the 1910/11’s a bore was sunk to 322 meters deep. Around 1917 the cattle trough measuring 120 meters long was built and could feed 500 bullocks at a time all from the natural flow from the bore. I am not sure when but eventually the flow from the bore slowed and now a windmill pumps the water into the trough.

The 120 meter long cattle trough with the bore at the other end where the windmill and our car is.

 Frosty's Pool

Frosty’s Pool was built during the Second World War in 1944 by the troops in the 3^rd General Transport Co. who were stationed in the area. They would bath in it and get some relief from the hot weather although being bore water it wouldn’t have been that cold but just nice to have a rinse off I suppose. They nicknamed it after one of the platoon members Charles L.V. Frost.

Peter was working for Spinifex Cabinets owned and operated by Scott and his wife Felicity, they also have a young son; a very nice family. Scot only employed one other young man Nathan and he just wanted a helping hand to get a few fit outs done on some new houses; so Pete helped put in kitchens and bathroom cupboards. He enjoyed his time and the company of different people to talk to, he even picked up a few tips on cabinet making. He rode his bike the 4km to work and back everyday leaving at 6am and getting back just before dusk cause he had no lights on his bike. Scott said he had at least 3 weeks of work for Pete but judging by how busy he was I think he would have had more if we needed to stay. While Pete was working for Scott we finally heard from the Kimberley Station job which was for the maintenance/ gardener job till December. The station is towards Fitzroy Crossing and about 100km out of Derby and the manager was coming into Derby so he wanted to meet Pete and have a bit of an interview, which he did. All went well so they asked for us all to come down and see the station, the house they were offering and to check out the Aboriginal community and the school. Scott very kindly gave Pete a Friday off so we could go down and check it all out. We were all happy with what was on offer and the boys were quite excited and apprehensive about the school so we said yes to the job and so our next adventure begins……..