by
Jill Campbell
Aboriginal History
Aboriginal populations within the Nullarbor region were considered to be sparse. Accord- ing to the anthropologist Tindale (1940) who documented tribal boundaries, the Aboriginal tribe called Mirning inhabited the coastal area from Point Culver in Western Australia to the head of the Bight in South Australia. Their neighbours are the Ngadjunmaia west of Point Culver and Naretha towards Esperance in WA, the Murunitja to the north-west, the Ngalea to the north and the Kokata to the north-east in South Australia.
It has been said that the Aborigines feared to enter far into the plains of the Nullarbor as they were afraid of the great serpent that lived there, but they did traverse it particularly in good seasons (Tindale 1940). Life would have revolved around small family groups as the climate and environment would have been too harsh to sustain a larger group, water being the major limiting factor. Rock-holes would have been their main source of water, though the water-holding capacity in Nullarbor rock-holes is generally small and as such would not have been able to support Aboriginal families for long. A rock was commonly used to cover rock- holes to reduce evaporation by sun and wind and also to prevent fouling by animals. It is hard to imagine how the small groups survived, with few trees and very small bushes to protect them from the elements and a scarce food source: kangaroos, emus, lizards, birds and a few berries and grasses. To the south in the timber line, possums were a common food source and there was water from the mallee tree roots.
Early European settlers and explorers’ reports on Aborigines in the Nullarbor region were generally that they were sparsely scattered throughout the area. Pastoralist Thomas Muir (1874) of Moopina Station at Eucla, having resided there for two years, recorded in his diary on 21 July 1874, ‘I believe I have seen all the natives that belong from Eucla to the Bight, 150 miles, and there are about thirty altogether’. His estimate should probably have been higher but with no census figures available it serves to highlight that the Aboriginal population appears to have been low (Muir 1874). Similarly, John and Alexander Forrest wrote to their parents from Eucla and commented on their low numbers while on their epic trip from Perth to Adelaide. In his diary John Forrest wrote: ‘The natives met with appear friendly and harmless; they are entirely destitute of clothing and I think not very numerous’ (Jeffery 1979).
More than 30 caves on the southern part of the Nullarbor Plain have yielded mammal remains. Bone fragments of one of the largest marsupials known, the Diprotodon, have been found on the western edge of the Nullarbor near Balladonia. Fossil records indicate they were up to 2 m high at the shoulder, 2.5 m in length and weighed up to 1.5 tonnes. It was believed to have looked like an oversized, long legged wombat, its nearest surviving relative (McNamara & Murray 1985).
The effect of increasing aridity, due to climatic changes, on the environment during the Late Pleistocene resulted in extensive changes to the vegetation, placing pressure on many species unable to adapt to the new conditions. During this period Aboriginal people arrived in Australia. Their impact on the environment is likely to have had a profound effect on the vegetation, especially through their use of fire. Such extensive burning practices would have radically altered the vegetation, contributing to the extinction of the large marsupials (McNamara & Murray 1985).
Early Coastal Exploration
The first recorded sightings of the south coast of Australia were by the Dutch. A Dutch recital states: ‘In the year 1627 the south coast of the Great South Land was accidentally discovered by the ship the Gulden Zeepaart (Golden Seahorse) for a space of a thousand miles on its outward bound voyage from the Fatherland’ (Lewis 1918). The Dutch vessel was under the command of Francois Thijssen and had on board the Honourable Pieter Nuyts after whom the stretch of land bordering the Nullarbor north of the Great Australian Bight was named. Nuyts’ Land stretches from King George Sound in Western Australia through to Denial Bay in South Australia.
In the year 1718 Jean Pierre Purry of Neufchatel published a memoir where he entertained founding a colony in the land of Nuyts. The memoir was published in Amsterdam to prove that Nuyts’ Land being in the fifth climate, between 34 and 36 degrees of latitude, ought to be, like all other countries so situated, one of the most habitable, most rich, and most fertile parts of the world’ (Lewis 1918). From present day knowledge of the eastern end of Nuyts’ Land, it is known to be unsuitable for an agricultural colony. Another reason for a voyage to the Southern Land was to search for certain ‘islands of gold’, and it is not within the realms of possibility that the idea of hidden gold had been revealed to the Dutch navigators through meetings with Aborigines along the coast (Lewis 1918).
In late 1792 the French navigator Joseph Antoine Raymond Bruni d’Entrecasteaux, in the frigates La Recherche and L’Espérance, charted the coastline around Esperance and to the south of the Nullarbor. In late 1801 a British expedition under Matthew Flinders surveyed the southern coastline in the 334 tonne sloop- of-war Investigator and was near Eucla in January 1802. Matthew Flinders described the area as the ‘Great Bight or Gulph of New Holland’ later to become the ‘Great Australian Bight’ (Collins 2008).
Early European Exploration
In 1841 Edward John Eyre became the first European to make the epic 1400 kilometre overland journey from east to west. It took him nearly five months, from February to July, to travel from Fowler’s Bay in South Australia to Albany in Western Australia. It was an out- standing event of perseverance and endurance as it was made almost entirely on foot. Some two months into the expedition his only European companion, John Baxter, was murdered by two Aborigines who accompanied them on the trip and then deserted the party taking precious food and leaving Eyre and an Aboriginal companion, Wylie, to proceed alone. Desperate attempts to locate water and the lack of adequate food supplies left them weak and near death. In July 1841 they reached Albany.
In 1866 the squatter and surveyor, EA Delisser, seeking grazing land on behalf of the South Australian Government explored between Fowler’s Bay and Eucla. Earlier reports of promising land had aroused the interest of pastoralists in the eastern colonies. A Victorian syndicate addressed a petition to the government in Perth on 24 June 1862, requesting pre-emptive grazing rights to the vast area of land between Hopetoun and Eucla. Governor Hampton rejected the request, replying that the unsettled parts of Western Australia were only open to occupation for pastoral purposes defined in the regulations. Delisser took a more favourable view of the pastoral potential of the country than Eyre and PE Warburton, and the Delisser Sandhills a few miles east of Eucla were named after him. It was Delisser who gave the Nullarbor its name; from Latin he derived the name Nullarbor for the treeless limestone plateau north-east of Eucla (Jeffery 1979).
In 1870 the Western Australian Government commissioned an expedition to ascertain the route for an overland telegraph line from Perth to Adelaide. John Forrest led the expedition and was supplied by sea at Esperance, Israelite Bay and Eucla (Forrest 1875). Based on details provided by the expedition, work for the overland telegraph line commenced in 1874 and was completed in 1877.
The northern edge of the Nullarbor Plain was traversed by Ernest Giles’ expedition of 1875 that set out from Port Augusta in South Australia. The purpose was to search for potential pastoral country to the west of the Fowler’s Bay district. Six days of the expedition involved traversing the northern edge of the Nullarbor Plain proper whilst travelling through the Great Victoria Desert (Giles 1889).
In 1896 the Commissioner for Crown Lands appointed Arthur Mason to lead an expedition to ascertain the extent of the rabbit invasion from South Australia into Western Australia. Rabbits had been introduced into Australia in 1859 and were present in Eucla by 1896 (Mason 1897). During this expedition Mason commented on the rich pastoral potential of the country despite the lack of water.
Pastoralism
Explorers such as Edward John Eyre, John and Alexander Forrest, Major Peter Egerton Warburton, Ernest Giles, Arthur Mason and the many other men who traversed the Nullarbor Plain provided reports on the condition of the country, some proclaiming magnificent grazing land while others condemned it.
Following John Forrest’s favourable report for pastoral prospects in the region the whole of the southern section south of the Trans-Australian Railway line to the Great Australian Bight was taken up, though on paper only. The potential landholders didn’t realise water would be the determining factor. Three families did settle their leases in the Eucla area: Kennedy and McGill took up Mundrabilla Station in 1871, while John Muir took up Moopina Station in 1873.
By the early 1870s Moopina Station, 1300 km from Perth and a few kilometres west of the South Australian border, had been taken up by the Muir brothers. John Muir arrived at Port Eucla on the 142 ton brig, Emily Smith on
23 February 1872, having on board about 650 sheep, two horses, two sheep dogs, three European men besides himself, an Aboriginal boy named Jacky, plus a year’s provisions (Jeffery 1979). The Muirs later requested the Government to build a small jetty to facilitate the loading and unloading of their wool stating ‘in shipping wool, the men had to carry it on their shoulders and then were not able to put it on board dry’. Similar conditions faced Kennedy and McGill on Mundrabilla Station, 96 km west of Eucla and 27 km inland from the coast (Fyfe 1983). A Perth newspaper announced early in 1872 the likelihood of new settlement at Eucla ‘by our own squatters embarrassed as many are becoming for want of pasturage for their increasing flocks and herds’ (Jeffery 1979).
The Muirs claimed in 1883 to cut five to six pounds of greasy fleece, including bellies and locks, from over 4000 sheep. They did not mention the low yield inherent of the sandy country. In 1888 when the average price for their greasy wool was around six to seven pence a pound, a Eucla correspondent wrote to Robert Muir advising that there were kangaroo skins worth nearly fifteen hundred pounds awaiting shipment, representing greater value than the whole of the district’s wool clip in the previous season (Fyfe 1983).
During the 1870s and 1880s on the south-western fringes of the Nullarbor area other pastoral stations were becoming established such as Balladonia, Fraser Range and Noondoonia while in the south-east Madura (1876) joined Moopina and Mundrabilla.
The Dimer Family of Nanambinia expanded their enterprise by taking up water leases, resulting in them having stock to the north of their Nanambinia lease at Emu Point, First King and later Seemore Downs. In dry years they were known to shepherd their stock ranging as far as Loongana and northwards of the now Trans-Australian Railway.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the western Nullarbor became the region for the last major pastoral expansion in Australia. Prior to this time the only established pastoral stations were those mentioned above in the country to the south. Seemore Downs Station running cattle around the railway siding of Rawlinna was the only enterprise on the Nullarbor Plain proper. Gunnadorah and Cocklebiddy started in the late 1950s, followed by Rawlinna Proprietors, Kanandah, Moonera and Arubiddy. A few years later Balgair and Kybo were established.
All these northern properties started off running sheep and the country produced some large framed, heavy wool cutting sheep. However, in the late 1960s the crash in the price of wool and low commodity prices led to some properties diversifying into cattle, which once adapted, did extremely well on the vast Nullarbor Plain.
One of the biggest wool clips under single management in Australia came off the Nullarbor from Rawlinna Proprietors. The Nullarbor is prime pastoral and breeding country when seasonal conditions are good. In the past when seasonal conditions have consistently remained above average the combined stations of Rawlinna Proprietors ran over 40,000 to 60,000 sheep and produced 1100 to 1700 bales of wool (Reardon 1996).
European Development
Work for the overland telegraph line was completed in 1877. At Eucla, halfway along the line, a repeater station was constructed. This locality evolved and in 1885 was proclaimed a townsite. The access track of the telegraph line served as a stock route for the southern Nullarbor pastoralists. In 1941 the track was upgraded and became the Eyre Highway and was later bituminised.
To gather information for the proposed Trans-Australian Railway John Muir led a survey in 1901 into the Nullarbor Plain, covering 1760 km by camel (Beard 1975). During World War One work on the railway line commenced, then known as the Commonwealth Railway, and was completed in 1917. The railway is famed for its straight section that runs for nearly 500 km without a bend. The railway gave development in the region a huge impetus as direct access to construction material for infrastructure and stock movement became available. Small railway siding settlements also developed along the railway line where water was available. Rawlinna and Forrest are two of the better known sidings. In recent times with the advent of privatisation of the railway these services were lost. Compounding the issue for the northern Nullarbor pastoralists is the lack of an all-weather road. Road transport has become a major problem for those pastoralists once supported by the railway, who relied on meeting export shipping schedules and marketing of their wool via rail.
Besides pastoralism and railway settlements another industry that thrived on the Nullarbor was that of the rabbiters. By the 1940s rabbit numbers were so great there was a substantial commercial trade, with up to 20,000 rabbits a week trapped in the Cocklebiddy area alone (Parsons 1970). The release of the virus myxomatosis in 1954 devastated the industry. Any revival was similarly affected when the rabbit calicivirus was released 1995. Both viruses greatly reduced rabbit numbers across the Nullarbor.
Due to the predominance of limestone the Nullarbor region has not been greatly influenced by mining other than local quarrying for building and road material. Presently there is only one active mining enterprise on the Nullarbor. Near the Rawlinna siding high grade limestone aggregate is extracted. In more recent times there has been extensive exploration for a variety of minerals.
Jill Campbell, Nullarbor Land Use History, An inventory and condition survey of the Western Australian part of the Nullarbor region, Technical Bulletin No 97, Department of Agriculture and Food, South Perth, Western Australia, 2010.
References
Beard, JS 1975, Vegetation survey of Western Australia: Nullarbor, 1:1 000 000 Vegetation Series, Explanatory notes to sheet 4, University of Western Australia Press, Perth.
Collins, N 2008, The Nullarbor Plain: a history, Woodside, South Australia.
Forrest, J 1875, Explorations in Australia, Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Searle, London.
Fyfe, C 1983, The bale fillers, Western Australian Wool, 1826–1916, Nedlands.
Giles, E 1889, Australia twice traversed: The romance of exploration, being a narrative compiled from the journals of five exploring expeditions into and through central South Australia and Western Australia from 1872 to 1876, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London.
Jeffery, C 1979, ‘Eucla’, Early Days Journal, vol. 8, pt 3, pp. 76–83.
Lewis, J 1918, ‘The annual address of the President (The Hon. John Lewis, MLC, JP) to the Royal Geographical Society of Australia, South Australian Branch’, delivered at the Annual Meeting on 31 October 1918, Proceedings of the RGSASA, 31st Session 1917–18.
Mason, A 1896, Report of an expedition in the south-eastern portion of Western Australia, to inquire into a reported incursion of rabbits, by authority: R Pether, Government Printer, Perth, WA.
McNamara, K & Murray, P 1985, Prehistoric mammals of Western Australia, Western Australian Museum, Perth, WA.
Muir, T 1874, Taken from Thomas Muir’s diary at Eucla, entry dated on 21 July 1874, based on life at Moopina Station.
Parsons, RF 1970, ‘Mallee vegetation of the southern Nullarbor and Roe Plains, Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 94, 227–242.
Reardon, M 1996, ‘The Australian Geographic Book of the Nullarbor’, Australian Geographic, Sydney.
Tindale, NB 1940, ‘Distribution of Australian Aboriginal tribes: a field survey’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 64(1), 140–231.