Stories of the Oldfield River The Oldfield River first appeared in name in a letter-diary written by William Simon Dempster on 1st June 1866. It was most probably named by Albert Young Hassell in honour of Augustus Frederick Oldfield who collected plants in the southwest of Western Australia. Hassell (1841-1918) came from Jerramungup and crossed the river during an exploration in August-September 1861. Oldfield may have been on the expedition as in her book 'My Dusky Friends', Ethel Hassell noted that Albert Hassell took a white man of about 40 with him (Department of Land Administration records). Before the 1950s the soils in the area were seen as unsuitable for agriculture owing to their nutrient-poor status. A few pastoral leases existed in the area and sheep and cattle were grazed along the coastal strip. The inland areas were not utilised for grazing except at 'Nairnup' on the western banks of the Oldfield River north of the Coastal Highway.

"Originally it was a pastoral lease, 'Nairnup' itself, which went from where the fence used to be right to the coast. There was 250 000 acres in those days, north of the road. It joined the Moir's lease, the Young River lease, so it was just a pastoral lease. Blake and Dunn operated it, they had the lease. They went along with their sheep and their cattle; they had sheep and cattle at the woolshed. There's one woolshed here ['Nairnup'], and one down on the coast, and they used to run most of the sheep on the coast with native shepherds. This was just a home base for the horses and Blake and Dunn lived here. The Dunn boys never ever married, but Bob Blake he married Jane Gibson that's how the early connection originally started. All that was developed here was about 500 acres that they used as their horse paddock and lamb paddocks, and that was completely dingo fenced with six foot fencing, the old fencing is still there, haven't touched any of that. My dad, as they got older, he used to spend more and more time here with them. Blake eventually left, he got out of it, and it was left to Bill Dunn. My dad made sure that he was OK. He used to check on him every fortnight, or something, and when he came to Ravensthorpe he'd always stay with us. Dad eventually took over the lease from Bill Dunn; he originally had the lease to the whole area.

[The bush down on the coast was] completely different to what it is now. It was burnt, continually burnt each year, sections of it. And it was grass, and there were few places that you couldn't drive sheep, or move sheep right through that whole coast. There wasn't any mallee of any consequence, it was just sort of edible shrubs. The sheep did really well though.

It was completely different. There was no thick scrub, there were little patches on the river and in some of the swamps. All the cattle we found, we built temporary yards there, we were driving them from the coast through to here, we had yards there, and we were trucking them out. But you could see the cattle for miles away on the coast, you could find them, and had no trouble with them. They knew where the thick patches of scrub were and once you got too close to them they'd just disappear into them, you couldn't get them out. But it was simple to muster stock, or run stock on the coast. But areas were continually burnt. I remember my Dad, if he was on the coast he wouldn't go anywhere without he would drop matches, wherever he thought to burn. It didn't matter what time of year it was, the fires couldn't go anywhere, it was always burnt next door. That was how they controlled fires, and also how they obtained their feed, the regeneration of the natural scrub. There was no developed pastures or anything it was just natural bush.

We didn't do anything with it. All we had was the lease, and there was still cattle here on the coast just running wild. We didn't do anything with it until about 1956, or somewhere around there. We just had a guy here looking after it, just living in the old house. While having someone here we didn't farm it or run any more stock or anything on it until we came out in '66. Yes it was virgin bush apart from that little section there [inside the dingo fence]. Then what happened was that in the sixties Esperance boomed and the Chase crowd started and they wanted more land. They approached us about taking the lease back off us. At that stage we weren't very concerned, we thought, "Oh well if they want the lease they can have the lease". But for them to take the lease all we said then [was] that we wanted 10 000 acres of it here and they can have the lease. That's exactly what they did, they surveyed out 10 000 acres and took the rest of the lease back, so that was how we acquired it then. Well then that was resurveyed and all the blocks out on the road now they were all part of the lease. You can go right down to the Fuss's, every block south of the road used to be part of the lease. And some north, but they never ever surveyed the complete northern section. They just took out areas around Munglinup and up through there. The rest just became surveyed and was issued as CP [Conditional Purchase] blocks".
Ron Gibson