Around Straya
From Derby we travelled on through Fitzroy Crossing (which was a similar place to Derby, not a town we cared to stay in for too long), and because we had very little reception there we had to push on to Halls Creek, stopping for one night at Larrawa Station. This was a great place to stay. It was a working station with pigs, cows, goats and chickens. They also had an awesome veggie garden going. I kept forgetting to take my camera when we went to see the animals, so I have very few pictures of this station, but we were able to have a fire at night and sit around the campfire telling stories and looking at the amazing star constellations!
We got into Halls Creek the next day after driving past the beautiful Boab Trees and ant mounds. Halls Creek itself though had not changed since the last time we visited. It was a sad place. We stayed in the caravan park there and every night all we could hear almost the whole night was fighting, yelling, swearing, screaming and there would be burglaries to the caravan park in broad daylight. It was not pleasant!
However there was a lovely pool at the caravan park which was enjoyed and we did get to look into a bit of history of Halls Creek. Halls Creek is also about 150km from Wolfe Crater, however we did not make this trip as it was a very rough road going in and we did not think it worth the trip for us.
Halls Creek was named after Charles Hall, a gold prospector who, with his prospecting party in 1885, was the first person to find alluvial gold in Western Australia. This caused a Kimberley Gold Rush, the first gold rush in Western Australia and many trekked the hundreds of miles to make their fortune! Unfortunately some never made it and died from thirst, and some died from disease.
Unfortunately, due to the remoteness of the area, lack of appropriate tools and inability to find enough gold to make it worthwhile, the gold mining ended. A new town of Halls Creek was set up along the Great Northern Highway and what is the old Halls Creek is just ruins which are well preserved and interesting to look at.
We visited the old grave yard there which has the graves of prospectors and some little kids who died there in the early days. It also has the grave of James Darcy – another interesting, historical story which gave birth to the idea of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
James Darcy was a stockman who got trampled on by his horse while mustering cattle in July, 1917. He was fortunately found by his fellow horseman who managed to get him onto a cart and drove him 80 miles to the closest town which was Halls Creek. He clearly had internal injuries and, as there was no doctor in the town, the postman administered him some morphine, got in contact with a doctor from Perth via morse code who told him he had to operate on the man. The Postman was worried he would kill him but the Dr told him he would die anyway without the surgery. So he got out his scalpel, his alcohol to clean with and performed the operation under instructions by the Dr.
The operation happened to be a success, however Mr Darcy was not doing well. The Dr in Perth decided he had to make the trip to come and see him. He travelled by cattle boat to Derby (one week), took a Model T Ford car from Derby to Fitzroy Crossing (travelling through the bumpy desert) and then, as his car broke down, walked 2 hours to a cattle station and took a horse and cart through the night to Halls Creek. He arrived only to find that Mr Darcy had died hours before he got there. He had not died from complications of the surgery, but from malaria and pneumonia.
The story made headlines in the Newspapers and inspired Reverend John Flynn with an idea to create the Royal Flying Doctor Service to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.
It was a most interesting grave yard.
