Off to See the Wizard - Day Trip to Derby

On Wednesday we decided that we would just take a day trip to Derby, as it is only 55kms north of Willare Bridge Roadhouse where we were camped.  People had given us varied opinions of the town, but like always, we wanted to see for ourselves and form our own opinion.

The first thing you come to on your way into town is the Derby Common.  In this area there is an artesian bore, which feeds into a huge cattle trough.  It was built in 1917 and is 120 metres long, with room for 500 bullocks to drink at the same time.  The bore flow has reduced over time, so a windmill was installed.

The most famous thing at Derby is the Prison Tree.  This is a huge hollow boab and was used to hold prisoners on the way to gaol - nearly exclusively aboriginals.

You can see where people have carved their initials etc into the tree over the years and how it has grown around them.

The other item in this area is “Frosty’s Pool” which is the remains of a small swimming pool built in 1944 by soldiers posted in the area during WWII.

We were rather impressed with the town as a whole.  We popped into the visitor’s centre and they couldn’t have been more helpful, telling is what to see and where to go.  The Main Street has a nice green centre island with boabs all the way along.  Apparently, these were transplanted as mature trees.  Notice how they are really dark around the lower trunk and also notice how dark the concrete gutters are.  They are discoloured from the town bore water.

We had been told by several people that we had to visit the Mark Norval Gallery.  

Mark was a teacher in the area and became very interested in the local indigenous rock paintings and encouraging and teaching the aboriginal people art.  This culminated in one of his student’s pieces being featured in the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. There is a really interesting video about him here.

He continues to have his studio open for them to create art. Visitors are invited to come into that space as well as the main art gallery.

Mark’s work has won many prizes in the area.

His latest contribution to the town is a series of sculptures on the marshlands around the edge of town.  The tides here are huge and there are large mud flats that are only covered during the wet season.

The last two are BIG.

The mud flats surrounding the town are huge.  Looking across you are unsure if that is a mirage or water.  It is a mirage.

We went out  and had a look at the town wharf.  One part can be accessed for fishing.  You can still see the tram tracks from when they used to take goods out to be loaded on a small tram.

The other end is used to load mineral sands onto barges, which are taken out to sea to be loaded onto ships at a deep sea mooring.

The old cattle yards used for loading stock onto boats in the past are still standing, although in poor repair.

Of course you have to eat during the day and we enjoyed coffee and cake at a quirky little cafe.  Mick was impressed with his collection of Italian motorcycles.

In a back corner he even has a nice, tidy area where is is working on a Ducati.

We were surprised to find a second hand book store, raising funds for animal welfare.  Two unusual items came away with us - a dot to dot with 3000 dots and a little book which is a copy of Lassiter’s diary, as in a facsimile of his hand writing.  Lassiter found a gold reef, visited it twice and then on a third attempt to get there was lost.  No one has been able to find the location since.

I noticed a sign to “The Old Gaol”.  This was built in 1906 and used until 1975, when a new gaol was built.  

It is just two cages with a corrugated iron back. There is a mesh ceiling under the roof.  This was considered appropriate for the tropical climate.

There are iron rings cast into the floor that the prisoners were chained to in the early days.  In the front corner there is a shower, but that was apparently a much later addition.  There is not toilet, they just used a bucket.  There were no mattresses and often just a single blanket during winter to protect them from the chill of the concrete floor and the wind.  Clothing and blankets were never cleaned.  It was designed to hold up to 30 people, but there were up to 100 people housed here at times.  Some improvements were finally made in the 1950s after a storm blew the roof off.  So many people were detained there over the years, including children of the stolen generation before being taken further south. It is hard to imagine how these conditions could be, particularly up until such recent times.  Very sad.

When we were at the visitor’s centre we were given a notice about there being a RAAF flying display that afternoon over the mud flats on the edge of town as a thank you for hosting the Operation Pitch Black military exercise. Curtin Air Base is about 30kms out of town.  Of course we went to have a look.  One F-35 Lightning put on quite a display and then at the end three of them did a fly over.  (It was pretty hard to get a photo.) We heard some military officers chatting and they were going to be attending the local school the following day to meet the kids and play some sport with them, which is a nice gesture.

I think half the town turned out to watch.  The mid flats were lined with vehicles. On Sunday there will be a community day for the military team to meet the locals and show the equipment they use.

On our way back to the campsite, we noticed the sign for the other end of the Gibb River Road.  I know it is an iconic road to travel, but not something this little black duck wishes to do.

Finally, after a very full day we returned to our campsite.

Our opinion of Derby?  A great little town.  We were impressed with how neat and tidy it was.  We are still happy that we just went for the day, as we saw as much as we wanted.  It definitely is a very interesting place to visit.

The highlight of the day was of course the air display.  How lucky were we to be there for that, having seen the jets in action both in Darwin and Katherine.