Well, now that we are established 'Carnarvonites' (for three months at least) it is time to take in what is on offer here. And therein lies a challenge....where to start? Carnarvon, for us, is an enigma, a place of real contrasts, a town which took some 'getting used to', but having done so, we feel quite settled and at home. It is just a case of accepting its limitations and making the effort to discover and appreciate its strengths.
Let me begin by wielding the 'broad descriptive brush'. Carnarvon is oft vaunted as being 'an oasis in the desert', and we have found that a very good description....it's just that the desert seems to crowd in on all sides and interpose itself throughout the entire township as we shall see later.
According to the relevant tourist brochure, Carnarvon is "the only town in Australia where the central desert reaches out to the sea". I cannot comment on the claim to exclusivity in this regard, but as to the desert reaching the sea here....that is indisputable.
In attempting to describe and give a feel for Carnarvon, I have relied more than usually heavily on photos taken from the Internet, which I gratefully acknowledge. Carnarvon, which was first settled in 1876 and took its name from Lord Carnarvon the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies, is located on the mouth of the Gascoyne River on the west coast just over 900 kms north of Perth.
As the aerial shot shows, the main township is draped across the broad estuary delta of the Gascoyne River, a river mouth unlike that of the two other large waterways of this part of the coast, the Irwin (Dongerra) and the Murchison (Kalbarri). The northern and southern arms of the river are separated by large silt deposits which have formed two permanent islands. As we shall see later, whilst the northern arm remains in its 'wild' state, the southern has been dredged and banked to form the CBD waterway known as the 'Fascine'. Let me quote here from the Carnarvon tourist brochure.
"Carnarvon's central waterway, know as the Facsine, was named after an 1800's building technique used to construct the embankment on the south arm of the Gascoyne River. Fascine means 'water held back by a pile of sticks'". In reality the 'sticks' are large iron sheets driven vertically into the river bed, but the end result is the same! We shall explore the Facsine in more detail later.
The Gascoyne River is no slouch. It traverses over 750 kilometres of the WA countryside...there is only one small snag....it actually flows only occasionally after heavy inland rains. For the greater part of the year all that can be seen is a dry, sandy river bed.
Our first glimpse of the mighty Gascoyne left us completely bewildered. How on earth can this seemingly dessicated, shallow, sandy gulch provide the water for the vast market gardens and fruit plantations which thrive on both sides of the river, and for use by the local and visiting population. This was a question which beset us on our arrival.
The answer is simple...the Gascoyne actually 'flows underground'. When the river is in spate, much of the water seeps through the sandy beds to remain contained in large underground aquifers...the perfect storage system, filtered as it makes its way down and protected from evaporation by the sand of the river bed once it is there. It is then a relatively simple matter to extract this wonderful resource through a series of bores and pumps, which is exactly what happens.
And so it is that the town of Carnarvon can lay claim to being 'the food bowl of the west'....seriously. This area along the banks of the Gascoyne supplies 70% of WA's winter vegetable requirements. Over 30,000 tonnes of fruit and veggies are produced annually on Carnarvon's 175 plantations and market gardens.
The range of produce grown here is staggering. In fact it was only as I flew into the town a month ago on my return from Adelaide that I was able to see just how vast and varied the plantings are.
Fruits include bananas (a local speciality...small and very sweet), first planted in Carnarvon in 1928, and one of the area's largest crops,
mangoes
paw paws
table grapes, some of which are protected from both the winds and the rain by vast hessian covers
whilst other vineyards are exposed to the elements.
Other locally grown fruits include avocados citrus, stone fruit, and a variety of melons.
Together with the Carnarvon bananas, tomatoes are a real local speciality. Here the plants are tried to upright stakes in what is a most labour intensive but highly productive growing method.
And, as you can see, the volume of fruit produced on each plant is extraordinary.
In addition to fruit and tomatoes, Carnarvon growers produce a wide range of vegetables including sweet corn and
capsicum (pictured here with tomatoes on one side, mango trees towering above them and a banana plantation bringing up the rear. This is so typical of Carnarvon plantations),
beans, asparagus, and pumpkins. And, believe me, things grow here at the rate of knots under the almost ceaseless winter sun. Let me share an example. When we first arrived here some six weeks ago, this pumpkin patch, which is quite close to our park on Robinson Road (more of this later), was nothing more than rows of bare plastic mounds. Not a skerrick of green was to be seen, and now look at it....all in six weeks. Talk about Jack and the Beanstalk country!
Local produce is sold at a number of 'plantation shops' such as this on the South River Road.
But our favourite is much closer to the caravan park. Morel's, some 750 metres along Robinson Road,
hosts a small shop behind the rather imposing house in the driveway.
Here the produce on offer is seasonal and fresh each day. Tomatoes, spinach, kale, beans (the best we have ever tasted short of my own home grown), capsicums, melons, oranges, magnificent strawberries
and fresh herbs of all varieties crowd Morel's shop tables. To add to the selection, they also stock a range of frozen goodies which to date have not tempted us, but that may well change. Given the poor quality of the fruit and veg in Woolies in particular, it is wonderful to be able to access all this fresh produce which is very competitively priced.
Mind you, this is not to say that all is well with every grower and that a patch of dirt in Carnarvon is a licence to print money. Many are struggling significantly this season as water restrictions have hampered crop planting and growth. As a South Australian I was more that empathetic with their plight when we heard that their current allocation is down to 80% and falling.
New bores are being developed, but this has created something of a local scrap. On the face of it this would seem to be a great idea....the water is available....why not? The problem lies in the fact that this new extraction is being mooted to provide water for expanded plantings and new orchards. As the current growers argue (rationally, in my view) it it illogical to be developing new gardens when their present water allocation is less than 100% and many of their fields are bare for that reason.
The Gascoyne is not always the benign swathe of dry sand we are seeing at the moment. When heavy rains fall on the catchment, usually as the result of a decaying tropical cyclone or severe low pressure systems sweeping inland from the Indian Ocean, the Gascoyne comes to life.....above ground! And then the gloves are off.
The last major flood occurred here in 2010. It was a doozie! This huge tropical low which hit the coast at Carnarvon in mid December dumped over 320 mm of rain in the catchment in just 4 days. This was the wettest December since 1895. By 17 December, at Fishy Pool, not too far upstream from Carnarvon, the river peaked at 15.5 metres and, as the water swept downstream, the river banks did not stand a chance of containing the spate.
The flood waters spilled out across the country side from Gascoyne Junction some 150 kms from Carnarvon township right through to the coast.
The Big 4 Plantation Park, our current home, seen here as it is today,
went under
as did our immediate neighbour, the Caltex Service Station,
and much of the town.
The normally dry river bed became a raging mass of muddy water
which poured under the North-West highway road bridge just out of town, transforming the scene from this
to this....and it was still rising at this stage!
Entire homes were washed away and over 200 townsfolk were evacuated from Carnarvon.
In the area surrounding Gascoyne Junction, many station workers had to climb to the rooftops of the station buildings from where they were eventually rescued by helicopter.
Fortunately no lives were lost, but the same could not be said for over 2,000 head of cattle which drowned in the flood. The damage bill was estimated at over $100 million.
The response was not immediate, not least because of the impact of the subsequent Queensland floods, but something has now been done to preclude a repetition. In fact, on the week in which we were first here, a government pooh bah arrived in town to formally open the newly completed, and very substantial, levee banks designed to divert flood waters to the east of the town. Here the mound of the bank can be seen rising above the scrub of the floodplain.
And now for a closer look at this massive piece of local infrastructure. It is a little hard to tell from these photos, but this bank is substantial....I estimate that I was standing a good three metres above the flood plain.
And as if to emphasis the enigma which is Carnarvon, just off to the east of the levee banks,
standing tall above the low outback scrub, is an old windmill.
And here we find 'the Barrages', structures designed to inhibit the flow of the river and the scouring of the southern bank here in the estuary. I hope to be featuring this area in future blogs.....as a good fishing spot!
Well, hopefully by now you have some feel for the main local industry here in Carnarvon and the natural phenomonen which makes it possible. In future missives I'll be looking at the town itself, the Facsine, the space tracking station, the One Mile Jetty, the fishing boat harbour and sharing some of our life here at the Big 4 Plantation. The MobileMarshies are definitely up and running again!
According to the relevant tourist brochure, Carnarvon is "the only town in Australia where the central desert reaches out to the sea". I cannot comment on the claim to exclusivity in this regard, but as to the desert reaching the sea here....that is indisputable.
In attempting to describe and give a feel for Carnarvon, I have relied more than usually heavily on photos taken from the Internet, which I gratefully acknowledge. Carnarvon, which was first settled in 1876 and took its name from Lord Carnarvon the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies, is located on the mouth of the Gascoyne River on the west coast just over 900 kms north of Perth.
As the aerial shot shows, the main township is draped across the broad estuary delta of the Gascoyne River, a river mouth unlike that of the two other large waterways of this part of the coast, the Irwin (Dongerra) and the Murchison (Kalbarri). The northern and southern arms of the river are separated by large silt deposits which have formed two permanent islands. As we shall see later, whilst the northern arm remains in its 'wild' state, the southern has been dredged and banked to form the CBD waterway known as the 'Fascine'. Let me quote here from the Carnarvon tourist brochure.
"Carnarvon's central waterway, know as the Facsine, was named after an 1800's building technique used to construct the embankment on the south arm of the Gascoyne River. Fascine means 'water held back by a pile of sticks'". In reality the 'sticks' are large iron sheets driven vertically into the river bed, but the end result is the same! We shall explore the Facsine in more detail later.
The Gascoyne River is no slouch. It traverses over 750 kilometres of the WA countryside...there is only one small snag....it actually flows only occasionally after heavy inland rains. For the greater part of the year all that can be seen is a dry, sandy river bed.
Our first glimpse of the mighty Gascoyne left us completely bewildered. How on earth can this seemingly dessicated, shallow, sandy gulch provide the water for the vast market gardens and fruit plantations which thrive on both sides of the river, and for use by the local and visiting population. This was a question which beset us on our arrival.
The answer is simple...the Gascoyne actually 'flows underground'. When the river is in spate, much of the water seeps through the sandy beds to remain contained in large underground aquifers...the perfect storage system, filtered as it makes its way down and protected from evaporation by the sand of the river bed once it is there. It is then a relatively simple matter to extract this wonderful resource through a series of bores and pumps, which is exactly what happens.
And so it is that the town of Carnarvon can lay claim to being 'the food bowl of the west'....seriously. This area along the banks of the Gascoyne supplies 70% of WA's winter vegetable requirements. Over 30,000 tonnes of fruit and veggies are produced annually on Carnarvon's 175 plantations and market gardens.
The range of produce grown here is staggering. In fact it was only as I flew into the town a month ago on my return from Adelaide that I was able to see just how vast and varied the plantings are.
Fruits include bananas (a local speciality...small and very sweet), first planted in Carnarvon in 1928, and one of the area's largest crops,
mangoes
paw paws
table grapes, some of which are protected from both the winds and the rain by vast hessian covers
whilst other vineyards are exposed to the elements.
Other locally grown fruits include avocados citrus, stone fruit, and a variety of melons.
Together with the Carnarvon bananas, tomatoes are a real local speciality. Here the plants are tried to upright stakes in what is a most labour intensive but highly productive growing method.
And, as you can see, the volume of fruit produced on each plant is extraordinary.
In addition to fruit and tomatoes, Carnarvon growers produce a wide range of vegetables including sweet corn and
capsicum (pictured here with tomatoes on one side, mango trees towering above them and a banana plantation bringing up the rear. This is so typical of Carnarvon plantations),
beans, asparagus, and pumpkins. And, believe me, things grow here at the rate of knots under the almost ceaseless winter sun. Let me share an example. When we first arrived here some six weeks ago, this pumpkin patch, which is quite close to our park on Robinson Road (more of this later), was nothing more than rows of bare plastic mounds. Not a skerrick of green was to be seen, and now look at it....all in six weeks. Talk about Jack and the Beanstalk country!
Local produce is sold at a number of 'plantation shops' such as this on the South River Road.
But our favourite is much closer to the caravan park. Morel's, some 750 metres along Robinson Road,
hosts a small shop behind the rather imposing house in the driveway.
Here the produce on offer is seasonal and fresh each day. Tomatoes, spinach, kale, beans (the best we have ever tasted short of my own home grown), capsicums, melons, oranges, magnificent strawberries
and fresh herbs of all varieties crowd Morel's shop tables. To add to the selection, they also stock a range of frozen goodies which to date have not tempted us, but that may well change. Given the poor quality of the fruit and veg in Woolies in particular, it is wonderful to be able to access all this fresh produce which is very competitively priced.
Mind you, this is not to say that all is well with every grower and that a patch of dirt in Carnarvon is a licence to print money. Many are struggling significantly this season as water restrictions have hampered crop planting and growth. As a South Australian I was more that empathetic with their plight when we heard that their current allocation is down to 80% and falling.
New bores are being developed, but this has created something of a local scrap. On the face of it this would seem to be a great idea....the water is available....why not? The problem lies in the fact that this new extraction is being mooted to provide water for expanded plantings and new orchards. As the current growers argue (rationally, in my view) it it illogical to be developing new gardens when their present water allocation is less than 100% and many of their fields are bare for that reason.
The Gascoyne is not always the benign swathe of dry sand we are seeing at the moment. When heavy rains fall on the catchment, usually as the result of a decaying tropical cyclone or severe low pressure systems sweeping inland from the Indian Ocean, the Gascoyne comes to life.....above ground! And then the gloves are off.
The last major flood occurred here in 2010. It was a doozie! This huge tropical low which hit the coast at Carnarvon in mid December dumped over 320 mm of rain in the catchment in just 4 days. This was the wettest December since 1895. By 17 December, at Fishy Pool, not too far upstream from Carnarvon, the river peaked at 15.5 metres and, as the water swept downstream, the river banks did not stand a chance of containing the spate.
The flood waters spilled out across the country side from Gascoyne Junction some 150 kms from Carnarvon township right through to the coast.
The Big 4 Plantation Park, our current home, seen here as it is today,
went under
as did our immediate neighbour, the Caltex Service Station,
and much of the town.
The normally dry river bed became a raging mass of muddy water
which poured under the North-West highway road bridge just out of town, transforming the scene from this
to this....and it was still rising at this stage!
Entire homes were washed away and over 200 townsfolk were evacuated from Carnarvon.
In the area surrounding Gascoyne Junction, many station workers had to climb to the rooftops of the station buildings from where they were eventually rescued by helicopter.
Fortunately no lives were lost, but the same could not be said for over 2,000 head of cattle which drowned in the flood. The damage bill was estimated at over $100 million.
The response was not immediate, not least because of the impact of the subsequent Queensland floods, but something has now been done to preclude a repetition. In fact, on the week in which we were first here, a government pooh bah arrived in town to formally open the newly completed, and very substantial, levee banks designed to divert flood waters to the east of the town. Here the mound of the bank can be seen rising above the scrub of the floodplain.And now for a closer look at this massive piece of local infrastructure. It is a little hard to tell from these photos, but this bank is substantial....I estimate that I was standing a good three metres above the flood plain.
And as if to emphasis the enigma which is Carnarvon, just off to the east of the levee banks,
standing tall above the low outback scrub, is an old windmill.
Although there is no fresh water flowing down the Gascoyne at the moment, the estuary remains under a tidal influence. For a kilometre or so inland from the remarkably small mouth of the north arm, seawater provides a great habitat for fish and other marine life.
Well, hopefully by now you have some feel for the main local industry here in Carnarvon and the natural phenomonen which makes it possible. In future missives I'll be looking at the town itself, the Facsine, the space tracking station, the One Mile Jetty, the fishing boat harbour and sharing some of our life here at the Big 4 Plantation. The MobileMarshies are definitely up and running again!
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