The idea of finding a way of spending a wet season somewhere along the Gibb River Road had been a dream for a while.
We had loved our previous remote & isolated wet season experiences on the north west Kimberley coast , in Far North Queensland & up on Cape York, & the Gibb River Road seemed like a good spot in between those where although not being coastal we could still experience the dramatic & dynamic nature of the annual ‘re-birth’ the monsoons bring to country. Nev, who owns ‘Over the Hill Tyre service set just off the GRR between Adcock Gorge & Barnett River had sowed the seed back in 2019, by showing us photos of the lush green GRR & telling stories of life there in the wet. Since then the dream of a Wet on the Gibb had remained.
Almost 12 months earlier, from our home in Victoria, we had made contact with the lease holders of Mt Elizabeth Station enquiring whether they might be interested in having us as volunteer caretakers for their homestead & campground whilst it was closed for the wet, & had been excited when they said “Yes please” . We asked a few questions about what they required & were told that essentially it would be just looking after the homestead & surrounds & the air strip – no cattle work as all the cattle were on natural waters. We were to have use of a station ute & a roadworthy vehicle “And you can drive it down to Kilto Station for our Christmas celebrations”. We doubted we would want to take a 1200km round trip just for a party, but it was a nice offer. More importantly for us was that in addition to having comfy air conditioned accomodation & all our food supplied was that we would have a 4wd vehicle to explore the extensive & wild country surrounding the homestead, including the two main gorges & a variety of other swimming holes & points of interest. We also hoped that we would be able to re-visit part, if not all, of the Munja Track we had previously driven in 2019. Part of that track has been closed by the traditional owners but we were told some of it is still within the station boundaries and would be open to us.
Wet season conditions, we had learned in the past, are something we acclimatise to, but although this would be our 6th wet season, we were now older and we were uncertain about how quickly (or otherwise) we might re-acclimatise after a 2 year break down south in Victoria. Added to this was the uncertainty of just how much the lack of regular sea breezes would make acclimatising harder in this inland environment.
Despite our uncertainties we remained confident of our abilities, having learned already that not fighting the heat & humidity is the way to go, altering behaviours to suit the conditions, doing what needs doing in the cooler parts of the day & importantly that ‘talcum powder is our friend! 🙂 Knowing we had an air conditioned bedroom was reassuring. Always good to get a good nights sleep!
That latter point had become something we had definitely been looking forward to recently. The OKA is well designed for airflow, & has a couple of 12v fans, but over 30 degrees night after night had been quite hard going, a cumulative ‘challenge’. Still nights had been common. A few years earlier we’d have ‘breezed’ through it. Age changes things!
So here we were, committed, excited at the prospect of not only another Wet, but at the opportunities it would afford us to explore & discover.
This was Wandjina country & we had been led to believe there was much ‘out there’ which is never seen by tourists. We had hopes we could make connections with the people of the Dodnun Community, people from this country, & may be lucky enough to learn of ‘cultural’ places & to obtain permission to try to find them. These & many other thoughts were mixed with a sense of achievement that our journey of around 15,000kms over the past 7 months had brought us to our goal were with us as we turned off the Gibb River Road onto the track leading to the station homestead about 30kms north.
We were comfortable in the knowledge that as well as supplies already at the homestead we would also get regular fresh supplies on the weekly mail plane which would land on the air strip we would maintain, that if we became ill or were injured we could access the small aboriginal health clinic 62kms away at the Kupungarri community close to the Mt Barnett Roadhouse (at least until swollen rivers would prevent us driving there) but with the back up of the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). We would have access to a full RFDS medical chest (which we would manage & keep up to date) & phone access to medical assistance if in need. RFDS planes could land on the station airstrip in the event of medical emergency requiring evacuation. We would also have regular phone contact with the owners. All much the same as our time at Moreton Telegraph Station on Cape York.
It was 1st October.
Camping at Mt Elizabeth for a single night at each end of our Munja Track adventure in 2019 was a pleasant memory, and driving past the brown, dry airstrip into the homestead compound now felt familiar. Only now there was no-one in the campground. The sign back at the turn off from the Gibb River Rd had said ‘Open’ but the tourist season had finished & the place was now closed for the Wet.
On arrival there was no-one in the homestead, but we found a couple of young ringers out in the workshop, hot sweaty & with black stained arms & foreheads. They were preparing a bull catcher (an ‘armoured cut down Toyota ‘jeep) with a mechanical arm on the front for grabbing hold of bulls on the run. They pointed us to a small house ‘down the back to find the owner.
It was only then that we realised that the ‘homestead’ has not actually been a home for years. The original stone built homestead still stands, albeit with it’s original roof no longer in place, just a false ceiling. Over this a large shed roof has been built, and several rooms & a couple of bathrooms – used as accomodation for tourists during the season added, together with an open dining area, a small reception ‘cubicle’, & a fully equipped commercial kitchen where meals for guests are prepared. Inside the original homestead’s stone walls one room is a room used as a shop selling drinks, frozen meat products from the enterprises own brand , & a broad variety of Mt Elizabeth souvenirs. Two further rooms are used as store-rooms for all the sorts of things needed for maintaining the accomodation. More accomodation in air conditioned rooms are a short walk from the homestead. Some recently used , some awaiting much needed renovation. Out the back & still under the roofline was a laundry area , a staff sitting area plus a walk in cool room & a walk in dry food store as well as several large freezers stocked to the gills with cryovac’d meat products. We weren’t going to go hungry!
We were welcomed by one of the couple who are the leaseholders, Vicki & learned that the annual mustering on the station had just finished , but the team of ringers & her husband Jack were preparing for another muster up at Kalumburu, an aboriginal owned station where the family had the rights to muster. This was to mainly be bull catching. An exciting but dangerous undertaking, partly an end of season adventure but also an expected profitable exercise. The small team would be driving cars & a large truck carrying the bull catcher & enough steel panels to make a large but temporary set of cattle yards the approx 400 kms to Kalumburu. A second road train would also be driven up to carry the cattle back to the Mt Elizabeth yards, before they were taken off to a port and put onto ships for overseas customers. The mustering crew were expected to be returning in around a week . Jack, the lease owner would be flying a small helicopter up there & using the chopper to find the cattle.
Mt Elizabeth Station runs approximately 6000 head of cattle & musters them once a year. It is a ‘low input’ style of farming. The few mustering weeks each year are the only contact the cattle have with humans. No veterinary input just being rounded up, branded the first year, & subsequently rounded up again in following years to either to go onto the cattle trucks or re-released to breed. If they survive they survive, if they don’t they dont. Jack was keen to point out that the prime importance to maximise profitability was ‘minimal input’. This minimal input philosophy was yet to become far more apparent to us in many ways.
Also still on site were a few tourist season staff finishing up before leaving & it was one of these folk who was assigned to show us around & we think to inform us of the the expectations of us as caretakers. They were good people, but not completely familiar with either what our role ‘out of season ‘ should be, nor fully conversant with the working of ‘areas’ outside of the roles they had performed. We believe that most staff work a season, & new staff are sought each year, both hospitality staff & the ringers & the place runs with new managers hired each new tourist season. In hindsight this should have alerted us to potential issues of continuity. It also explains what was a less than adequate introduction & a rather loose & patchy job description, but we accepted that everyone was still busy & assumed that we would pick things up as we went along & would have the backup & support of the owners when required.
The mustering crew returned from Kalumburu having had a successful time. There was a sense of the buzzing excitement they had shared together, plus that end of season – ‘just wanting to just get finished up & leave’. Most would now be seeking new employment after a bit of a break. This went on for a few days & we found ourselves just wanting everyone to leave so we could ‘settle in’ by ourselves. But we were patient knowing how long we had ahead of us.
On one evening the crew were all sat around the table in the staff area with Jack at the head of the table. He seemed a man with strong & often contentious views, a rough diamond which belied the fact that underneath this appearance he was the head of quite an extensive empire far larger than just Mt Elizabeth Station. A man with fingers in many pies. He openly acknowledged that aboriginals disliked him & called him a racist, whilst at the same time expressing what I perceived as racist views, frequently resorting to mimicry of aboriginal pidgin english to make his points. He was the boss & no-one at the table contradicted him. I had the sense that he was enjoying what I perceived as his ‘lord of the manor ‘presence & judged that crossing him was not for the faint hearted.
As the person responsible for maintaining the airstrip & acting as an ARO (Aerodrome Reporting Officer) it was my responsibility to provide a written airstrip report each mail plane day to the pilot an hour or two before the plane departed on it’s journey. I had left the gathering around the table, leaving them all to their beers, and returned to our room where I received the expected call from the pilot flying in the following morning & requesting a strip report by 6:00am. This required me to be up at the air strip a couple of kilometres from the homestead to take observations before returning & sending in a completed observation form. Knowing that the Station ute was hooked up to a trailer full of temporary cattle yard panels I returned to group, waited for a pause in the conversations & requested a car to go to the airstrip early the next morning. The response from Jack was ‘Don’t worry about that they don’t need it’. I knew the request for the report was appropriate, & that I had the responsibility to provide it which I politely but assertively said when responding to Jack. It didn’t go down well! He spent the next few minutes ‘talking down ‘ to me in front of everyone like I was a naughty child, & I said nothing. At the end he said the car would be ready in the morning. I left seething, feeling I had been humiliated & bullied in front of the others present. This was not a good start.
Next morning the car was still hooked up when I needed it & no-one was around. (I should add that as part of the observations I was required to drive down the air strip at speed – not feasible with the heavy load on the trailer). I found another car, one which had been up to Kalumburu, but which had had the drivers door stoved in by a bull making it necessary to enter either through the window in the drivers door or via the passenger side & decided to take it to the airstrip. Upon my return a couple of blokes were struggling to take the trailer off the station ute, with the trailer still fully loaded, an almost impossible task because of the weight. “Oh you took the silvertop then” Jack said. “Yep” I said with a straight face. That evening at mealtime Jack offered to get us a new set of tyres for our OKA in lieu of payment, acknowledging we were volunteers doing a job that usually they would pay ‘at least $500 a week on top of board & food. I thanked him but told him that I thought the offer over generous, & would be happy with just two new tyres, one to replace one we had sustained sidewall damage to (& which Nev the tyre man had advised it was a blowout waiting to happen) & the old hard & plugged spare we carried on the roof. He agreed to do this & would take the damaged tyre on the rim to Broome & get a new one mounted plus a replacement unmounted tyre for the roof. Also that they would be taking the Silvertop ute (a V8 Landcruiser) back to Broome “to give it some love” & would return it to us to use afterwards. it felt like I was talklng to a different man to the night before & I thanked him.
A day or so later all but one person had left & we felt like we could relax & begin to get a sense of what life would be like here alone for the next 6 months. Although at this stage no-one had ‘shown me the ropes’ for servicing & fuelling the diesel generator which provided 24/7 power to the homestead. Without that power supply everything stopped, freezers, fridges, cool room, lights, air con, water, communications etc . I had been told that the 2000 litre diesel tank supplying it had recently been filled & it should be good for a few weeks. I decided to check the fuel level & found it almost empty, no more than about a days worth of fuel in it!
Thankfully the one person still around knew how to fill it, but doing so is a good example of how most jobs worked ie. even the shortest jobs would generally take hours. The once well laid out & well stocked workshop (so he told me) was bereft of many tools, parts etc & finding something as simple as a pair of pliers could easily take an hour with no guarantee of success. The problem as it was explained to me was one of lack of continuity and associated lack of care. Different staff/ringers every season. Tools lost out in the bush & rarely replaced, let alone put back where they had been taken from. On this occasion filling the generator’s fuel tank is a story to illustrate how things worked & has similarites to many subsequent tasks undertaken. A much larger fuel tank had plenty of diesel in it, but it was several hundred metres from the generator. To get the fuel to the generator meant pumping fuel into a 300 litre portable tank, which first had to be found. Once found & finding it too heavy for two men to lift we needed to find a way of getting it onto the tray of the station ute. The tractor with it’s front end loader was about 3 kms away supported on a round of timber because one of it’s wheels had been removed for repair & taken to Broome. The only alternative was a huge old Loader, with a bucket at the front to which a pair of hay bale spikes had been attached. Once we had inflated one of it’s large but completely flat tyres, & found an old battery with some charge in it to replace the loader’s flat battery, we got the loader started. That was when we discovered it had no brakes, not bad brakes, ones where pushing the pedal to the floor did nothing at all! I had the job of driving this , having never driven anything like it before in my life , (with or without brakes!). Sliding the sharp pointy hay bale forks under the heavy plastic fuel tank was scary. Getting it wrong could easily puncture the tank, & no brakes only made the task harder, a punctured tank would mean there would be no means of filling the generator tank before it ran dry. Once the tank was on the back of the ute we filled it using the big tank’s fixed pump, & drove the fuel to the generator. The portable fuel tank had a 12v pump on it, which need connecting to the ute’s starter battery. We got about half the 300 litres into the generator tank before the 12v pump failed. Everywhere else we have undertaken remote caretaking gigs like this have always had spares of everything important – redundancy cover, but no spare 12v pump anywhere to be found here. Incredibly redundancy simply seemed foreign to the ‘on a shoestring’ ‘she’ll be right’ operation. However after around an hour of searching we found an old ‘el cheapo Ozito 240v fuel transfer pump hidden under a heap of other stuff, it didn’t look great with it’s plastic fan guard broken off …. but it worked & remained our only means of filling the generator tank for the rest of our time there.
When tools were needed it was inevitably easier to use our own that we carry in the OKA on most occasions, and even then any job would often take many time longer than normal . My farming background made me pretty good at ‘making do’ but here ‘making do’ often lacked needed resources. Minimal input, it seemed to us means running a place into the ground whilst making as much as possible from it. Not necessarily unreasonable, but it certainly made life more difficult than it needed to be. Add to this that the owners have never lived here, & staff change from year to year also means that when something goes wrong no one can advise how it is supposed to work because no-one actually appeared to know. Plumbing was a good example of this. I expect that the various repairs made over the years have required an understanding of the system to be worked out every time, & then complicated by whatever repair was made. In the longer term this means far more time & higher cost, but I suppose if it’s not your home & all you want is a fix now without consideration of the future it may make sense.
So, having accepted our lot we chose to make the best of things, & did our best with what resources we had, albeit with concern which grew over time, fed by what became a pattern of poor communication from the owners. When things weren’t clear about how best to make repairs etc, in light of not having spare parts or necessary materials we would do our best to let the owners know, by both written word & photos. As often as not we would receive no reply. When a matter was pressing (eg a badly leaking water pipe inside the homestead) we asked more than once, including suggesting of what we considered the limited solutions to be. Questions about stop valves, pipe runs, parts etc went unanswered, until we go a brief curt suggestion “Just have a crack at it” which in the context of the sparse communication seemed to be shorthand for “For goodness sake don’t bother us, just get on with it”. We did just that & sent photos & an explanation of what had been done but received zero response, & no acknowledgment when they visited. Not a thing said, so we never had any idea whether they felt we hadn’t done the right thing, or had appreciated what we had done, Or even that they didn’t care so long as it’ was a problem ‘out of their hair’. It was telling that we didn’t feel comfortable raising it with them again.
On occasions when Jack visited, it seemed common for nothing to be said about all the work we had done, and we certainly weren’t slack. Instead he would focus on what we hadn’t done, or more to the point what we hadn’t known was expected of us. There were several times we felt like we were being ‘told off’, but not once was any sort of Job description provided nor indeed a thank you offered. It was almost like we were supposed to be mind readers. Much we think was simply poor communication, combined with the style of an ’employer’ used to just getting new staff instead of addressing issues. Not that we were employed, but as volunteers we sure didn’t get the respect & support we have appreciated in most other places.
I could write about many more examples of grievances but I think I have provided the flavour of how things were & I hope that you might understand how we increasingly felt unsupported & undervalued over time.
However there were positives as I hope some of our photos show. We enjoyed the early rains & the impressively fast greening up of the country, the bird & wildlife around the homestead, being alone, building a relationship with someone from Dodnun Community, walks in & around the compound etc. We took pride in our input. We made our own list of tasks completed, many on a regular basis. It was quite a long list!
Two things however were significant & eventually brought things to a head.
- In previous similar remote & isolated caretaking positions owners have been explicit about our safety being paramount & have made it clear that they have a duty of care for us & that they ‘had our back’. The combination of unreliable, often ignored, communications, plus things we heard said & things we observed (which we prefer not to make public) whilst at Mt Elizabeth suggested strongly to us that we could expect no duty of care whatsoever and if we were injured or in urgent need of assistance we were on our own. We cannot know this for certain because it was never put to the test, but we both felt the same.
The second thing which was really getting under our skin was that the promise to provide us with a trustworthy & roadworthy vehicle was a promise never kept. For us this raised an issue of trust as well as feeding into our sense of the lack of duty of care. For us the ‘safe car’ issue was hugely significant. The tracks out from the homestead are remote, & far more remote when the only people out there on half a million acres were us. Commonly these tracks are high clearance rocky tracks , often with steep climbs & descents . They need a car in good condition suitably equipped . To leave the homestead to travel even just to Dodnun, let alone the 62kms the clinic at Kupungarri also needed a vehicle we could trust. Travelling in our own vehicle with no spare wheel was a possibility to get to the cllnic if we had to, but the risk of becoming stranded somewhere should we have a puncture made this unwise. Taking the OKA on the remote station tracks or out on the Munja track was not only impractical because of lots of low tree branches, but again with no spare tyre it would have been reckless. This is very remote country. The Station ute , an old 75 series 6 cylinder Toyota was pretty reliable, always started on the second turn of the key, but it’s tyres, including the spare were both bald & heavily cracked & split around the side walls. And there was no jack anywhere we could carry in case we had a puncture. The steering was also badly worn. OK for around the compound, going to the air strip or the rubbish dump, but that was it. No further from the homestead than we were prepared to walk back from in the heat
Another car was promised several times, (usually ‘next week’), but failed to materialise until we had been there for 3 months. With the monsoon onset getting ever closer the window of opportunity for exploration was getting shorter & shorter. When the car did eventually arrive in late December it wasnt the Silvertop, but a 2010 Hilux. We were excited for a day or so until we first used it to go up to the airstrip. We found the brakes were in a dangerous state. Pressing the pedal did sort of brake the car but pushed the pedal right to the floor, & pumping the pedal firmed it up briefly but it would fall back to the floor under very light pressure within seconds. I examined the car for brake fluid leaks & found none. The brake fluid reservoir was full. This excluded a brake fluid leak that I could have fixed. Two possibilities. Either the brake master cylinder seal was leaking internally with the risk that it could fail completely at any time the brakes were used, or the ABS system had failed. Both can produce this symptom & the ABS brake Warning light on the dash stayed on all the time. Every internet search I did about both of these issues said ‘DANGER – DO NOT DRIVE’. So again not suitable for leaving the immediate homestead area. And although the fitted tyres & the spare were good, again there was no jack!
For us this meant we had been there for 3 months & had never been further from the Homestead compound than to the Airstrip, which was hugely disappointing & not at all what we had signed up for. The only swimming hole in walking distance from the homestead was close to dry.
When the Hilux was brought up our OKA wheel & tyres still didn’t come as promised (if they had we would have considered leaving then), but the tractor wheel came back. In the meantime I had mowed the entire 2km airstrip with the ride on mower, but it was in need of another cut after rains). So getting the tractor back into use with it’s slasher fitted was welcome.
Then came the ‘big day’ . A large Ponciana tree split in half falling on the roof over the kitchen with a huge crash. A lot of weight precariously balanced but minimal damage done. A mangled ‘whirlybird’ extractor, but no penetration to the roof. On the same day one of the 3 blades on the ride on mower came off because the special shouldered bolt holding it on had stripped it’s thread. I rescued the various parts & tried what I could with what I could find to repair it, but it was clear that a specialised bolt was required.
I messaged the owners with photographs & details saying that I wasn’t prepared to risk cutting the tree on the roof alone but happy to assist if someone could come to help whilst saying I didn’t consider the removal urgent, & that the mower needed a specific bolt from a Kubota dealer. I also explained the braking issue on the Hilux & requested they take whatever action was required to ensure we had a safe & roadworthy vehicle as promised. We hoped for a timely response particularly regarding the mower as grass was growing fast ‘getting away’ & putting a bolt onto the following weeks mail plane would be simple.
We waited two weeks for a reply. The message had been sent via whatsapp, so we knew it had been received & read on the day we sent it. Christmas came & went, & when a response eventually came we were shocked.
“You can leave tomorrow, we are sending someone up to relieve you, he will bring your spare tyre so you can leave. We want you gone immediately before the rains come & prevent your departure”. As it panned out it was more than a week before the chap arrived. And our spare tyre (not the 2 tyres as promised) was the damaged one returned to us. We had been told back in October that a tyre place in Broome was ordering the new tyres and we would have the tyres next time someone came up. Since being in Broome we have bought tyres ourselves & it took less than a week for them to get them in.
We left feeling like we had been treated much like the cattle.
Anyhow – this has been a hard post to write, I had wanted to present a balance between the good & the bad, but this has proven difficult despite my having been quite restrained in what I have included
In the 3 months since we left I have mentioned in conversation with several locals that we had been caretaking at Mt Elizabeth station but that it ‘hadn’t worked out’ without any further detail. A common response from a number of locals has been “Mmmm Jack Burton has that place doesn’t he.?… say no more” or similar, making it clear that he had a reputation they were aware of.
More ‘hindsight’. We should have taken more notice when we told someone we were going to be caretaking at Mt Elizabeth prior to our arrival there & their response was “Watch your back”
Our next 2 posts which I plan to write quite soon to bring us up to date will be more positive… I promise. As a friend has said to us in recent times ” We all have ups & down’ but you always seem to land on your feet”. It never actualy feels like that during the ‘downs’ but I think it’s right.
Thanks to all of you who continue to ‘stick with us’.
Cuppa & MrsTea.