Stories of the Oldfield River Farmers who were developing the land employed people who later bought farms themselves. Their first impressions of the Munglinup area and the Oldfield and Munglinup Rivers were recorded.

"My first impressions... Well we always wanted to come here. I had the lease of it years before, and I used to come out on weekends and go fishing. Then before we moved out I spent twelve months travelling back and forth to Ravensthorpe and camping out here. Oh it was just one of those things, I always wanted to go there."
Ron Gibson

"There were tracks through there and I'd driven through there because I'd been working for a couple of years in the area. So I knew it and I knew the rivers and river holes because we'd gone fishing there, it was beautiful country. In my own mind I'd selected the bit of land I wanted. I went down to the surveyor's camp and chatted to the blokes and had a look at their rough plans that they were working to and made a decision to apply for this particular block. I was lucky enough to get the one that I wanted which was the land really between the two rivers, between the Munglinup and the Oldfield River just above the area where they joined."
Peter Standish

"Well, there were other people here before me in other parts of the district and I had their example to follow. It wasn't as though I came to something no one else had done. Those other people were closer to Esperance, they had settled a few years earlier. They showed every sign of being successful. We had the challenge of having to go without an income for a few years. I managed to augment that a little bit with outside work. Harvesting clover seed was done pretty early in the piece. Then of course livestock followed, so it wasn't such a terrible ordeal. [I decided on this area] because of the availability of land. There's not much land available if you have limited resources; it's pretty hard to get a start. You could get a start here with fairly limited resources and then you were very quickly in a position where you could borrow money to continue on. inI was very impressed [with the Oldfield River]. I didn't realise that there were such large bodies of water. I knew it was there but I hadn't seen it. I was quite impressed by the amount of water that was there."
Ralph Silburn

"I could have turned around and nearly gone home (laughs). Which a lot of people did. I think we're the only ones here out of this allocation. There are others with different allocations but mainly they're gone now anyway."
Avril Lawrance

"Ooh. It was an adventure. A complete adventure because I was still living the first two years off and on up in Kulin because we still had the house up there and the furniture and stuff and babies and kids and things. Yes, all the dreams that they were talking about, what was going to be and how wonderful it was and a fortune was going to be made etcetera.

Well the country had been burnt, that's why Charlie went in straight away with it. He just drove in the general direction where the farm was going to be, found the pegs. The country had been burnt and thank goodness for that because when we walked around some of the swamps and things we found millions of rabbit holes that had been wiped out with the fire. Looked like it hadn't been burnt for years [the fire] was so intense. Without that I think we really wouldn't have had much farming with the rabbits."
Elvie Scadding

"Oh (laughs) I wondered what the heck I'd struck. Well having come from Tasmania and England it was very barren and it was always very flat, appeared very flat."
Richard Field

"It didn't worry us because where we lived in Kenya it was much the same. We lived right out in the bush. In Kenya we were thirty miles from the nearest shop and all the roads were gravel. So it just didn't worry us at all coming on gravel roads, we were quite well attuned to it. We liked it because it was good open country and there was plenty of room. We were quite happy really. The lack of people or amenities never bothered us at all. [The Munglinup River], a pity it's salt (laughs). Otherwise very beautiful country really, it was quite lovely really. The property where we used to live, [there was] only just kangaroos, there was not very much game. Probably poor, very poor country, not very productive, that's what it looked to us. The country was so poor that it only grew a very unproductive form of plant didn't it really? None of the bushes had fruit or anything like that. Whereas in Kenya wherever you went there was wild fruits of all sorts and wild tubers, an amazing amount of food."
Don MacKenzie

"Bluuurk (laughter). No, it was good, it was fairly isolated. Having lived in Perth I felt very- I don't know what the word for it would be... flabbergasted with the lack of things to do and places to go and all the rest of it. But eventually you found all those places. I found it very hard I think, probably for the first few years and then after that found it was great and I wouldn't go and live anywhere else now. [My] first impressions of the river were fantastic we used to spend lots of time wandering down, particularly down the back of 'Kybie' (Location  735) and also another pool on Coxall Road. So I've always loved that, we've spent lots of times at the Oldfield Pool near the Oldfield Bridge there. Now our bit of Billy Creek at the back here on the Oldfield is a fantastic pool."
Sue Marshall

"Well I was horrified. We rocked up about the beginning of November [1979] and my husband had been telling me how wonderful the clover is and how it was up to the door of car. When I got here on the 1st of November the clover had all died and dropped, the paddocks were flat. We had 8000 sheep and didn't know how we were ever going to feed them. So that was my first impression (laughter). Our first trip to the beach was just before Christmas of 1979. That was actually my first view of the estuary, I hadn't seen the river as such. It was a very hot day; it looked absolutely beautiful there, that was from the road."
Ruth Kirchner

"When we first came from Germany it was all very, very different and we had to learn about agriculture in Australia. Which we didn't know a lot about, we didn't know anything about sheep. We only knew cattle. Well we learned by doing and making our mistakes but having lots of good neighbours and advice here, so that helped us along. [We were attracted here because] it was close to the coast and the farming land was relatively cheap and it had a beautiful river pool at the back. Which is something that when you come from Germany, or from Europe, you just don't have any more, or if you do it's not as easily accessible. It was great, it was something that attracted me personally to this [farm] was that it was close to the coast and having something like the river at the back. Well the [Oldfield] river is unusual such that it's not like a river like where we came from. But nevertheless it's different and it's great in winter time when it flows through and the pools are connected and it's just wonderful having that piece of river and bush at the back of your farm with birds and animals around there. I can't find a word for it (laughs)."
Brigitte Wallefeld