Finally! Our first camping stop for this trip, and for this, we did not venture far out of Kalgoorlie, just as far as Rowles Lagoon. There’s actually four wetlands in this reserve, which somehow, due to some marvellous feats of hydrology, manage to hold fresh water for most of the year, which does seem remarkable in this arid landscape.
Rowles Lagoon is the largest freshwater wetland in the region, so it is not hard to imagine that this was a really important place for the Wongatha people. Tim found (and then put back in place) a rock shard that definitely looked like it had been worked and shaped.
It has been a wet year in Western Australia, and the rain had obviously made it up this far, because the lakes were full of muddy pink-brown water.
And the edges of the lakes, with drifts of round teatree seeds, and the mud and algae, showed us that the water level had recently even been a little higher.
We had expected mobs of birds, but perhaps they were sheltering out of the wind on the other side of the lake. Or maybe this year had been so wet that the birds had more water sources to choose from? But there was a resident pair of raptors who were beautiful to watch as they whirled out over the lake and then back to their roosting and nesting trees on the lakeside.
It wasn’t necessary to look skyward to detect their presence. Underneath their nesting trees was a graveyard of yabby shells and rabbit and lizard skeletons.
This reserve is part of a larger conservation reserve – Credo – a former pastoral station purchased by DPAW. There was an old homestead and shearing shed, and set away from that, an excellent campground (empty at that point) that looked out over a classic Great Western Woodlands scene. Tall salmon gums glowing in the sun, with the low grey shrubby understorey, over a mostly red soil. Definitely going to get back here to camp another time.
This kind of country is so excellent for exploring, it is so open and easy to walk out into. Which we did. And we came across an area of old rubbish – rusting tin mostly. When we found the long saw blade, and the spikes for securing rail lines, we knew we’d come across a camp for the woodlines, the vast timber harvesting effort to supply fuel for the gold mining industry.
The WA Museum describes the woodlines:
A rapidly growing population soon began to wreak havoc on the environment. At first timber was cut for domestic use and to fuel the condensers supplying fresh water. However these needs were nothing compared to those of the big company mines. Vast quantities of timber were needed as props to support the ever growing number of underground shafts, to power the steam driven winders that hauled the gold bearing ore to the surface and to feed the sulphide roasters processing the ore.
By 1900 the timber around Kalgoorlie had been cut out. Timber companies moved to hauling huge daily tonnages across a vast network of rail lines.
One of the largest rail systems in the country radiated out from the Golden Mile. At their peak the firewood companies were delivering around 1500 tonnes of timber per day to the mines and towns. It was one of the largest industrial uses of timber for fuel anywhere in the world in the twentieth century.
