Borroloola - Past and Present
Prehistory
Borroloola
and surrounds have been home to the Yanyuwa,
Garrwa, Gudanji and Mara people for countless millennia. Approaching
from the east (Burketown) you will travel through Garrwa country,
from the west (Heartbreak) Gudanji country and from the north (Roper)
Mara country. As you follow the rivers to the coast and islands
you are moving across the homelands and dreaming tracks of the Yanyuwa
peoples.
Asian Explorers: By Sea
There is little doubt that Chinese explorers during the Ming dynasties
ventured south in the 15th century, to be replaced by
Muslim traders from Persia as China contacted inwards following
revolutions at home; if you'd like to read a thought provoking article,
click here.
The first clear evidence of new arrivals from overseas is of Macassan
fishermen by the early 1600's. They came in large numbers, with
reports of up to 2000 in their colorful prahus, on the monsoonal
winds of our wet season, returning home on the south easterlies
of our dry season. Laying the grounds for Australia's first export
industry, they gathered trepang, pearl shell and sandalwood, working
alongside the local people and even intermarrying. Mostly they got
on well together and the Macassan influence is still evident in
the people, artwork and language of the present day, not to mention
the many ancient tamarind trees throughout the region. Sadly and
embarrassingly, the violence associated with Australia's colonization
only came later.
European Explorers: By Sea
Early records of Europeans venturing near this area reveal that
the Portuguese sailor Manuel Godinho de Eredia can probably lay claim
to being the first to sight Australia in 1601, while searching for new
routes for the spice trade. The quirks of history, however, commemorate
the Spaniard Luis de Torres, who in 1606 led a Spanish/Portuguese
expedition through the strait between Australia and New Guinea that
still bears his name, without even realizing that to the south lay
another continent! Theirs was basically the age old crusade to colonize
the area and drive out one religion, Islam, and replace it with
another, Christianity; the recent trouble in East Timor is a legacy
of those times. In this same year the Dutchman William Jansz aboard
the Duyfken (Little Dove) sailed into what we now know is a gulf
and started charting its eastern shores. However he too missed his
chance to leave his name on the map and the gulf did not become
the Gulf of Carpentaria for another 17 years. In 1623 Captain Jan
Carstensz aboard the Pera named it after Pieter de Carpentier, Governor-General
of Batavia. His sister ship on this voyage was the Arnhem, hence
Arnhem Land! Yet another Dutchman, Abel Tasman, charted and named
most of the features along the Territory coastline on his second
voyage to the area in 1644. His charts remained in use until Matthew
Flinders was ordered by the British Admiralty in 1801 to make a
thorough survey of the Australian coastline which he completed in
1803; his charts remain in use to this very day!! It was Flinders
insistence on titling his map "Terra Australis or Australia"
as opposed to the more common (at the time) "New Holland"
that gave our country its name. Further detail and maps of Tasman's
voyages can be found here,
while Flinders journals can be found here
(select from index) and his charts here
.
European Explorers: By Land
The first foot slogger was our old mate Ludwig (Leichardt) in 1845;
but even he caught the boat back to Sydney after finally arriving
in Darwin, weary, but unfortunately for his travelling companions
on his next expedition in 1848, not much wiser. For a short version
of Leichardt's expeditions, click here;
to read a transcript of his journals for his first expedition, click
here.
Early Settlement
Several explorers followed in Leichardt's footsteps, among them
Gregory in 1856, and then Favenc in the years following the construction
of the Overland Telegraph Line. (Curiously, in 1858 Gregory again
followed in Leichardt's footsteps when he led an unsuccessful expedition
sent to search for Leichardt who had disappeared without trace in
1848.) These later explorers were mainly in search of new pastoral
land but they wouldn't find it here; it lay further south in the
vast Mitchell grass plains of what we now call the Barkly Tablelands.
The McArthur River provided the only ready access into the area
for many years and the river side shanty town soon acquired a reputation
for lawlessness and wild behavior. Needless to say it was a magnet
for sly grog merchants and gamblers, who in turn attracted a motley
assortment of unsavory vagabonds and petty/not so petty criminals
from far and wide!
The activity surrounding the construction
of the Overland Telegraph Line, completed in 1872, laid the foundations
for much of the Territory's early development and Borroloola certainly
grew in leaps and bounds during these heady days; whether it progressed
in still a subject of debate. A township was laid out by surveyor
Hingston in 1885 and by the end of the year the rapidly expanding
port had been duly gazetted and proclaimed as Borroloola.
During the boom times of the Telegraph
Line construction, the isolated outpost had become more permanent
with all the trapping of a small country town. Chinese market gardeners
provided a constant supply of fresh veggies for drovers headed for
the Kimberly and miners headed for the Territory's goldfields. The
mango trees they brought with them and the well that watered everything
are still here. With this air of respectability came government
customs officials, to ensure duty was collected on the steady flow
of alcohol, a mail service so they didn't feel too abandoned, and
of course some police officers with the unenviable task of establishing
law and order!!
One of the first blocks in the newly
proclaimed town was set aside for a police station, and by 1887, for the
princely sum of five thousand pounds ($10,000), it was home to one of
the Northern Territory of South Australia's five new outback police
stations. Needless to say it was an instant success and provided board and
lodging for many of Borroloola's finest for years to come; more on them
later. It was used in its present form until 1948, then as a medical
centre in the 1970's; Borroloola didn't get a new police station
until 1980! The last surviving government issue outback police station
is now a very attractive museum. It contains lots of memorabilia
of Borroloola's past, and never ceases to surprise visitors; it's
not a stuffy school lecture, just a fascinating glimpse into the
towns colourful past; click here
for a quick peek.
Recent Times
From Leichardt's time to the present, the area has been the
focus of a never ending succession of schemes by governments and
investors of all persuasions to "realize the potential of the
Gulf Region". For generations, the common thread of these reports
has been the comment that the greatest resource, and export, to
be found here is hope!
After the construction
of the Overland Telegraph Line, the main impetus in opening
up this area since the droving days was the completion, in 1969,
of the Tablelands and Carpentaria Highways as part of the Commonwealth
Government's "Beef Roads Program". The ever-expanding
exports of live cattle through the Darwin's new East Arm Port facilities
relies heavily on these modern bitumen equivalents of the old time
stock routes. Unfortunately for a lot of people who live in this
area, the cattle industry of the 21'st century provides little in
the way of employment opportunities.
The construction during the 1990's
of Mt Isa Mining's McArthur River Mine and it's commissioning in
1995, have heralded the next wave of development in the area. Unfortunately,
a modern day mining operation has little requirement for unskilled
labour, however the current proposal to open cut the ore body and
smelt the concentrate on site may well bring increased employment
opportunities. Some things never change and, as always, this proposal
is dependent on the vagaries of events occurring far away; a reliable
and long term supply of natural gas.
Borroloola
and surrounds have always been a favoured destination for fishing
fanatics and the recent closure of the McArthur River to commercial
fishing can only serve to guarantee stocks of that king of sport fish;
the Barramundi! The shallow estuaries and pristine Gulf waters have long
been a reliable source for the delicious mud crabs and prawns so eagerly
sought after both domestically and internationally. A Chinese banquet
table is the next thing many of these muddies see after they crawl
from the mangroves of Manankurra!
The development of the Savannah
Way as an outback adventure destination in its own right,
stretching across the vastness of northern Australia from Cairns
to Broome, promises to be the regions next step along its slow,
tantalizing, elusive, but never dull, journey towards finally "realizing
its potential".
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