Roebuck Plains Station is a pastoral lease that is located close to the township of Broome in the Kimberley region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. It is one of the closest pastoral leases to Broome. Roebuck Plains is also the name of a roadhouse on the

Great Northern Highway Great Northern Highway is an Australian highway that links Western Australia's capital city Perth with its northernmost port, Wyndham. With a length of almost , it is the longest highway in Australia, with the majority included as part of the ...

, just east of Broome. The ''Plains'' in the name is associated with wetlands situated adjacent to

Roebuck Bay Roebuck Bay is a bay on the coast of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Its entrance is bounded in the north by the town of Broome, and in the south by Bush Point and Sandy Point. It is named after , the ship captained by Willia ...

Description

The station is located approximately east of Broome on a rich marine

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

. It occupies an area of and is able to support around 20,000 head of cattle. The property is a mixture of floodplains and sandy pindan country.

History

The

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have right ...

of the area are the

Yawuru The Yawuru, also spelt Jawuru, are an Indigenous Australian people of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Language A Japanese linguist, Hosokawa Kōmei (細川弘明), compiled the first basic dictionary of the Yawuru language in 1988, a ...

peoples. The property was acquired and developed by the

pearler Pearl hunting, also known as pearling, is the activity of recovering pearls from wild molluscs, usually oysters or mussels, in the sea or freshwater. Pearl hunting was prevalent in the Persian Gulf region and Japan for thousands of years. On the ...

s, Streeter and Company, to supply meat to Broome. A slaughterhouse was also established on the outskirts of town to process the cattle and sheep that were being raised on the property. The

homestead Homestead may refer to: *Homestead (buildings), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses * Homestead (unit), a unit of measurement equal to 160 acres *Homestead principle, a legal concept t ...

burnt down in 1949; the fire started from a defective kerosene refrigerator. In 1953 the station was acquired by the Harris family. It was stocked with 10,000 head of cattle at the time. The Indigenous Land Corporation acquired Roebuck Plains Station in 1999, and in 2006 the Federal Court determined the station was the exclusive possession of the Yawuru under

native title Aboriginal title is a common law doctrine that the land rights of indigenous peoples to customary tenure persist after the assumption of sovereignty under settler colonialism. The requirements of proof for the recognition of aboriginal title, ...

. In 2014 the ILC handed the lease over to the Nyamba Buru Yawuru Corporation.

Pat Dodson Patrick Lionel Djargun Dodson (born 29 January 1948) is an Australian politician representing Western Australia in the Australian Senate. He is a Yawuru elder from Broome, Western Australia. He has been chairman of the Council for Aboriginal ...

, the chairman of the company, accepted the lease but handed management of the station back to the ILC. The property and the adjacent commercial cattle yards are worth around 15 million. The plains are also subject to analysis of indigenous perceptions of the landscape. In 2018, the property was flooded when it received of rain through the

wet season The wet season (sometimes called the Rainy season) is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. It is the time of year where the majority of a country's or region's annual precipitation occurs. Generally, the sea ...

, with half of it falling in one week in January. The 6,000 head of cattle had to be moved off the floodplains to higher ground. The cyclone that brought the rain also caused extensive damage to the property, with trees blown over, buildings damaged and fences washed away.

Notes

{{Stations of the Kimberley Western Australia Broome, Western Australia Pastoral leases in Western Australia

Description

History

See also

Notes