Stories of the Oldfield River With the advent of fertiliser the value of the Munglinup area for farming was recognised and the area was opened up in the late 1950s. The availability of cheap land was advertised both within Australia and as far away as South Africa. Interested people were required to apply to the Lands Department and, if successful, they were usually allocated the block of their choice.

"When we left Kenya we went down to see Australia House [in Nairobi]. There they had a big brochure on land available under Elders, the Esperance Land Development as they were then. They're Esperance Rural Properties now."
Don MacKenzie

"[We saw the land advertised] in the "Weekly Times", that's a Victorian paper, and it had a little ad in it. But my husband [Bob] had already, before I'd met him, [put in] applications."
Avril Lawrance

"Well during that time I took up a CP block, went through the normal Land Court that was held at the time, and I took that up in... 1959 I was allocated the block I think. It was a Land Court. The blocks were advertised, you applied for the land through the Lands Department. There was a court, an open court where you asked questions if your submission had gone through. So we actually had to sit in court and be sworn in. I thought I had a very weak case actually because I didn't have the finance to do all this, but the fact that I'd been living there I think helped a lot. My boss at the time, John Kelman, put a reference in for me as well and I think that probably helped. He guaranteed me a job during the development phase. Anyway the block was allocated. I don't think I was the worst applicant (laughs), and they were probably looking for anyone really who was prepared to take on the land. I think it was seventy-five cents an acre plus a survey fee and you had twenty years to pay this off. So the actual cost of the land was insignificant."
Peter Standish

"Cheap land, that'd be the basics of it. Virtually gave you the block. From memory it was seventy- five cents an acre to buy it and that was an interest-free loan, interest free for twenty years anyway. If you cleared ten percent of it every year until it was half cleared and boundary fenced you could take freehold. We were told where the boundary fence was and that was generally around about five or ten chains off the river. No, we just left it as it was and I suppose that's why it's in such reasonable condition, because no one was allowed to clear down to the river.

One of the areas I left on the two hundred acre paddock, I left about ten percent in one very sandy corner. When the inspector came down just to make sure you were doing the right thing, because conditional purchase you had to clear, he found that that wasn't cleared and told me to clear it and its blown away in the wind ever since. Now it's growing pine trees."
Richard Field