Gascoyne Country
“…blazing summers and rampant floods…”
From “The Northern Times” newspaper, 1991:
When the pioneer pastoralist, George Gooch (1858-1923), first moved his sheep into the Gascoyne country in 1880 to establish Wandagee Station, his Aboriginal guide and assistant was a young man who had acquired the Biblical name of Jacob.
Having been engaged, and possibly reared, in the Irwin district, the young Aboriginal was probably well aware of the personal risk he was undertaking in leaving his tribal country to venture into the forbidden territories of strange Aboriginal groups.
Allied with this taboo, Jacob compounded his error by taking as his wife an Aboriginal woman belonging to the Minilya tribe.
Jacob and his illegal partner assisted the white man, Gooch, as drovers for about 18 months without incurring repercussions from his own people.
Then, a couple of years later, while Gooch was travelling his sheep down the Gascoyne River towards The Port – that is, Carnarvon – Jacob was quietly stalked and fatally speared by an Aboriginal called Koogyugooroo, in league with three companions.
Being without weapons, Jacob had virtually no chance against his attackers.
His wife, badly speared in the forehead, nevertheless managed to escape into the bush without detection.
Satisfied that he was dead, Koogyugooroo and the other three killers chopped off Jacob’s arms, cooked them in a campfire and ate them.
Writing to the Colonial Secretary from the Kennedy Ranges on March 5, 1882, to notify him of Jacob’s murder, an early settler, Walter Howard, wrote: “I recommend that they (the killers) should be tried and, if found guilty, should be hung at the place where the murder was committed and left there …
“This … would have a most salutary effect in bringing these natives into a knowledge of the laws by which they will eventually be governed …
“Trusting that these natives will be brought to the death they richly deserve …”
The little creek, nowadays known as “Jacob’s Gully,” which is approximately five miles west of Gascoyne Junction, is the site where Jacob was speared to death early in 1882.
Gascoyne Junction – or Killilli as it was known between 1913 and 1939 – is famed for its blazing summers and rampant floods.
The isolated little town is the focal point of 57,672 square miles, containing 27 sheep stations with an approximate regional population of 262 people and innumerable goats.
The explorer, Francis Gregory, led the first known expedition into the Upper Gascoyne country in 1858, accompanied by four Europeans and an Aboriginal offsider whose name was Dugal.
Although his report on the land was favourable, it was not until 1872 that Charles Brockman and Charles Fane decided to visit the area.
Separately, Aubrey Brown and Charles Collins moved towards the same country with 4,000 sheep.
The pioneer squatters met at the Kennedy Ranges.
Together, they drove their stock down river towards the Gascoyne River mouth where Brown established Mungarra Station (later re-named Brickhouse). Brockman founded Boolathana Station, and Fane launched Point Charles Station (later changed to Quobba).
By the late 1800s, the settlers of the Upper Gascoyne, who were renting their pastoral holdings from the government, believed they were entitled to a police station, a post office and political representation.
Their first representative in the Legislative Council was Maitland Brown, the first post office was started at Robert Bush’s Bidgiemia Station, and the original police station was constructed – all in 1883.
In 1885 the Anglican missionary, John Brown Gribble, travelled on horseback with an Aboriginal guide via Gascoyne Junction where he noticed “unfortunate natives chained like so many dogs to each other around the neck … the main chain connecting with a tree and, as though that were not enough, some of them were coupled by the ankles …”
A visitor to the Junction in 1925, “Snowy” Ammon, observed: “Situated on the slope of an eaten-out quartz-strewn hill, the township was another camping ground for the camel teams and consisted of a hotel, a police station, and a combined store and post office.
“As trade was spasmodic … keg beer had proved satisfactory. Consequently, every glassful of beer, spirits or cordials consumed, practically since the hotel opened its doors, has been carted there in bottles. The accumulation of these was mountainous, but the ingenious publican has devised a novel and useful way of keeping them tidy …”
The empty bottles – thousands of them – were neatly stacked to a height of about 6ft and a half that width across to form fences of several acres around the old pub, “sub-divided into horse yards, stables, fowl runs and gardens.”
Unfortunately, at some time since the unique bottle fence was demolished and the heaps of glass were pushed into a large hole and buried.
The same observer, a pioneer truckie, recalled: “On the southern bank of the Gascoyne crossing stood the remains of an old mud-brick police station and gaol. Its roof had long since disappeared, but the walls … still stood complete with rusted bolts and rings, grim relics of the days when native prisoners were chained there.
“According to reports, some pretty wild types of blackfellows saw the inside of that gaol …”
As a sideline, the resident policeman kept two camels that were used, for a small fee, to pull vehicles across the wide, sandy river bed, from one bank to the other.
Another observer in 1907, the out-spoken pioneer pastoralist from Minilya Station, George Julius Brockman, driving a horse and trap through Gascoyne Junction, noted: “There is … a police station with two constables, though to what good purpose they serve, it’s hard to say. They are well fed with no occupation.”
Slightly east of the hotel, branching off the causeway track, is the town’s old cemetery.
Records have not been accurately maintained over the years. Only three of the grave sites are identified, though there are believed to be other unmarked locations in the vicinity, including those of unknown Aborigines.
On the lawn to the rear of the Gascoyne Junction pub is a memorial stone marking the spot where the cremated remains of “a Gascoyne legend,” George Wansborough, rest.
“Just leave me alone,” was one of the old man’s favourite utterances, and these are the words immortalised on his little tombstone.
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