Canarvon - Hamelin Station

8th August 2013

We had three days in Carnarvon to carry out our normal domestic requirements plus shopping and a look around. Friends of ours in Brisbane had a son working for North West Fisheries as a trawler skipper until he succumbed to a melanoma a couple of years ago. We made arrangements to visit the trawler base and meet some people who knew Russell well. What wonderful people the management turned out to be, they showed us over one of the boats Russell skippered, discussed his history with the company and presented us with colour photos copied from company photos showing the various vessels he had worked on and photos of him with the crews, they also pulled together a documented timeline of his history working with the company along with the company history, judging by their actions and comments they obviously held Russell in very high esteem. We came away from North West Fisheries feeling really good inside.

Sausage sizzle night at the caravan park, for $5 per head you got a couple of sausages, onions, two types of salad and a bread roll followed up with a chocolate coated ice cream on a stick, plus a draw of four lucky door prizes (no luck there). We sat at a table with a couple in a neighbouring caravan and another couple who asked to join us and our voices got louder as time progressed. After the lucky door prizes were drawn amongst a few laughs one of the elderly ladies running the show (older than us), started reading out jokes then told a couple of her own. I don’t know if it was anything to do with the ¾ of a bottle of wine I had drunk but I haven’t laughed so much for a long time she was a real classic, she even thanked us all for coming along, crikey I would have happily paid for the entertainment. 

9^th August

Leaving Carnarvon we have four days to fill in before we can get into a caravan park at Denham, Shark Bay where we have booked for seven days, we were lucky to get in even then. Once again the locality is booked out as some people are still here from the southern winter migration others are now gathering waiting to make their pilgrimage through the wild flower country, as we are (it’s going to be hell when we all start rolling). This is the country of Monkey Mia, Stromatolites, Francois Peron National Park, Dirk Hartog  History and hopefully Yellow Finned Whiting. More of that lot later, in the meantime we killed one night at a roadside rest area only 75 kls south of Carnarvon. This was one of the designated “Western Australia Main Roads”, responsible rest areas with a good clean eco toilet, plenty of rubbish bins (cleared daily), a proper caravan/motorhome cassette toilet dump, and plenty of flat parking areas amongst high screening bushes well off the highway, we spent a very quiet night there. Somewhere nearby was a very allusive bird with a most unusual call, one I had never heard previously. It was almost a bell like sound of three or four tones, very metallic sounding and echoing as if it was in a steel drum, for the want of a better description. Eventually after several hours of monitoring this bird I managed to identify it from several fleeting visuals and after reference to my bird book pronounced it to be a Chiming Wedgebill, (of the family Psophodidae and includes Quail-thrushes, Whipbirds and other Wedgebills). Just for the Ornithologists amongst us.      

10^th August

Once again we didn’t travel a great distance today, topped up with fuel when we got to the roadhouse marked Overlander on our maps and turned in a westerly direction towards Denham. Thirty kilometres in and approximately 110kls from Denham we checked into Hamelin Station for a couple of days on an unpowered site.

Hamelin Station is a working sheep property, the owners who live on the property have diversified into tourism by establishing a farm stay situation. We have stayed at a few of these sort of set ups and in most cases they leave a bit to be desired when it comes to facilities, however Hamelin Station is to be congratulated on its high standard particularly the toilet and shower amenities they are first class.

A few facts from Documents at Hamelin.

Hamelin Station is a medium size property of 200,000 hectares or 500,000 acres in the old terminology.

First settled in 1870’s and has changed owners 10 times, the current owners since 1978 are Brian and Mary Wake

Hamelin Station homestead bore was the first in the area and this actually led to pastoralism in the area.

The whole region is very flat probably an old sea bed or early river delta sparsely vegetated with salt bush, acacia and seasonal grasses.  

Hamelin homestead was originally situated near the coast 5kls away and was dismantled and rebuilt at its current location near the artesian bore, they generate their own electricity with a small hydro turbine driven by pressure from the artesian bore, surplus water then goes into a lake where numerous types of water bird have made their home.

The property runs 10,000 Merino sheep, 10,000 Damara and Dorpa South African sheep and 5,000 goats.

The animals feed on salt bush, acacia seed pods and whatever seasonal grass may be present.

Merino sheep are shorn once a year in December it takes two weeks with a team of 6 shearers, a wool classer and 8 rouserbouts/shedhands.

I spoke about the South African breed of sheep in a previous post (see: Quobba Station).

The goats are feral although they don’t call them that, they get rounded up and sold for goat meat presumably to middle eastern markets, the farmers were making good money out of them but the damage they do they really should be eliminated.

Annual rainfall is about 200mm usually in the winter months so far they have had 2mm.

In 2009 during a severe drought the property was invaded by plague of thousands of starving budgerigars there were so many of them they caused trees to fall over.

115 different species of birds have been identified on the property.  

Oh and by the way my so called exotic bird I identified as Chiming Wedgebill is everywhere on Hamelin Station, locally known as “squeaky windmill”.

Stromatolites:

A formation of these living fossils exists in what is known as Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay on the Hamelin Station coastline.

Shark Bay is one of two places in the world where these living fossils exist. They contain microbes similar to those found in 3,500 million year old rocks – the earliest record of life form on earth.

To us they look like small coral bombies nothing spectacular but we understand they give off oxygen bubbles which can be seen at high water from a viewing walk way.

The following is my version of what I read from plaques on the board walk, I trust my memory served me ok.

Millions of years ago when lethal gases were covering the earth theory has it that with the evolution of these Stromatolites giving off oxygen it eventually raised the oxygen level to 20% and life started to evolve. Outside of Hamelin Pool nature has pushed up a large sand bar resulting in the salinity of the area to be high enough to minimise other invading micro organisms and bacteria and that has allowed these particular Stromatolites to survive.

If the science theory is right we could certainly do with a few of these critters in our current climate.

Another interesting phenomena of the Shark Bay coastline, particularly Hamelin’s coastline is the presence of millions of tiny Coquina shells, these are little cockle shaped shells about the size of a ladies little fingernail (trimmed right down), time and tide has pushed these tiny shell up into dunes in places 10 metres deep, where rainwater has cemented them together into an almost solid mass. Early settlers used to quarry the Coquina shell cutting building blocks of Besser Block size with a cross cut saw these were then used like a typical building block and have good thermal qualities and are light to handle although over time weathering does effect them. Hamelin Homestead was built in this manner and several buildings including a church were built with these blocks in Denham. Now days’ quarrying of Coquina Shell is only permitted for restoration work and they are cut with a chainsaw.