We spent a night at Fitzroy Crossing before heading to Derby for 2 nights. We stayed in a great park at Fitzroy Crossing, but there really isn’t that much else there! At dinner we happened to run into some people we knew from back home so spent a bit of time with them catching up!
The one thing we did do in Fitzroy Crossing was to take a drive out to The Crossing Inn. This is the oldest hotel in the Kimberley which is still standing on its original site. This hotel was established in 1897. As always, we had to go in and have a beer! Strange little pub and it’s obviously still very popular with the local aboriginals as it was quite busy when we called in.
After our overnight stay we headed to Derby. Just happened to go past this sign and look what we found again!!
Arriving in Derby we went to see the Boab prison tree. This Boab is huge and has a girth of 14.7 meters and is believed to be about 1500 years old. It was originally used as a staging point for prisoners being walked in to Derby. It’s now a registered Aborignal site and has cultural significance to the Aboriginal community.
The picture below is of a cattle trough built in 1917, which is 120 meters long and can handle up to 500 bullocks at any time. This trough also has the claim of being the longest in the Southern Hemisphere.
Frosty’s Pool (below) was built in 1944 as a bathing area for the troops stationed in the area during the Second World War. It was named Frosty’s pool after platoon member, Charles LV Frost.
Surprise, surprise, Shelly wanted to visit the jetty to take more sunset photos …. because we really need more!
The Derby jetty experiences some of the highest tides in the world, with tides in excess of 11 meters. It’s amazing to see how quickly these tides turn around and just how much difference there is between the high and low tides. The current is so strong as well, for water that is so flat you can see it moving so quickly.
On our second day we went to visit the Old Derby Gaol. Some of the stories of how prisoners, and Aboriginies in particular, were treated is astonishing, it’s hard to believe that we could have treated our fellow men this way.
We also went to visit the Derby Pioneer and Aboriginal Cemetery (yes Shelly loves visiting cemeteries!).
Unfortunately this also told of the way Aborigines were treated back in the day, really made you wonder how we could have thought it was ok to treat another human that way.
There were stories of how Aboriginals were never given a coffin to be buried in, only a blanket. How they were never listed on any registers so relatives had, and will never have, any way of finding their loved ones.
The Pioneer cemetery contains graves dating from back to the 1890’s including Constable William Richardson who was killed by the aboriginal outlaw, Jandamarra. The story of Jandamarra is one that we knew a little about, but have since found out a lot more and it’s quite interesting, we might write a seperate blog about that at some point.
Quite a few people mentioned to us that there wasn’t any reason to visit Derby and that we shouldn’t bother. Well we are both glad we did. It’s not a huge town, but we both enjoyed our two days there. Everyone was friendly and we wouldn’t hesitate visiting again if we were in the area.