28 June 2013 - Bunbury Glade Caravan Park, Bunbury, Western Australia

The sound of rain was disappointing this morning, and did not look like clearing for some time. We had an errand to do in the city before heading further afield and while the rain did hold off, making our umbrellas and rain coats redundant, it was still a very dismal picture.

We headed off up the highway, turning east onto the Coalfields Highway, an excellent wide road, fairly recently realigned, taking us up into the Darling Scarp which still continues to protect the Swan coastal plains from the extensive inland. Despite the low cloud and busy windscreen wipers, we could see that we were passing through a very picturesque landscape; rolling hills, farmlands and thick jarrah and marri forests.

Eighteen kilometres from the South Western Highway turnoff, we turned south into the Wellington National Park, passing through a further twelve kilometres of dense forest, until we reached the Wellington Dam.

This was completed in 1931, constructed in less than two years, a project providing work for the unemployed during the Depression years. In 1944 the height of the dam wall was raised by a metre, and in 1960, a further 15 metres. The wall is now 366 metres across and 34 metres high. Big gates keep the curious out; we were unable to walk across the wall as I would have liked. The reservoir has a capacity of 186 million kilolitres of water when full, however was far from that today.

The dam provided drinking water for inland towns, with a pipeline built to Narrogin in 1956, and later extended to other towns. Western Australia’s second hydro-electric power station was built on the Collie River about 400 metres downstream from the dam in 1956, and is still in use today, able to produce enough power to supply 1,500 homes.

The total catchment of the Collie River covers about 4000 square kilometres, all eventually flowing into the Leschenault Estuary we visited a few days ago. The river flows have been boosted since 1903 with water pumped from the coalmines near Collie, however lower rainfall since the 1960s has reduced the amount of water flowing into the Wellington Dam. Widespread clearing for farmland in the catchment over the past century has caused salinity levels in the water to rise. In 1976 clearing controls were introduced and in 1979 a re-afforestation program began in an effort to control this common problem. However the salinity levels continued to rise to a point where the dam could no longer be used as a source for drinking water, for which it was originally built.

It is hoped that with continued re-afforestation work, salinity will be reduced to an acceptable level and fresh water will once more be available from the Wellington Dam.

Rain cloud

We jumped the puddles down to the lookout from where we watched the rain mist lifting from the heavily wooded gullies and out over the reservoir with its exposed muddy banks. This seems to be the norm for most reservoirs seen on our travels apart from those in Queensland we visited in early 2011 after the floods. We looked for the brochures detailing the walks on offer in the National Park but were unable to find any.

We back tracked to the Coalfields Highway and pressed on a further eighteen kilometres to Collie, an inland town located 204 metres ASL in the Scarp with 9,000 folk whose economic wealth comes from coal and related industry. That comment tends to make one think of a dark dirty dismal industrial centre, however this is not the impression one gets either entering the town or spending a little time there. I can well imagine this was not always so, because for many years Collie was also a rail centre with twelve lines running through the centre of the town. It still does but the trains are fewer and far cleaner. The streets are wide and clean, and while it would be an exaggeration to suggest it is a “lovely” town, one cannot say anything negative about it. In fact the residential areas we passed through were most attractive, with many lovely modest new houses and according to those advertised in the real estate agent’s windows, all reasonably priced.

Collie also lies on the Bibbulum Track, one of the world’s Great Walks, that which starts at Kalamunda in the Perth Hills and finishes down in Albany, stretching nearly one thousand kilometres. As we left the Information Centre, four young men arrived, all with heavy packs on their backs, all wearing woolly hats, having walked through from Dwellingup, where we were just a few days ago. The Track brings business to the town and to every other place along the route, walkers requiring accommodation, hot showers and decent meals to supplement the plain fare one eats on such a hike.

Back in 1839, the Governor of the Swan River Colony offered a reward for the discovery of a significant coal deposit. Coal was accidentally discovered in Collie by George Marsh in 1883 while shepherding for Arthur Perren who had a pastoral lease on the Collie River. Marsh had gathered some black “stones” from the Collie River bed to place around his campfire to boil his billy, when to his amazement they caught alight. Uncertain of the significance of his find, he reported the matter to Perren who realised it was coal. The source of the discovery remained a secret until an exploration party organised by David Hay found coal in the river in 1890. Meanwhile George Marsh had gone west of the state shepherding, where he died of typhoid in 1892, none the wiser of the significance of his own discovery. The reward for the discovery of coal was claimed by Perren and Hay. I guess the good part of this story, even for the dead Marsh, is that he is remembered for having missed out on the glory, and the reward. But then as they say, you can’t take it with you.

And just in case you have been thinking that Collie is named for its coal or the colliers who worked the mines, it is not. The Collie River was named by Dr Alexander Collie, RN who discovered and named the river in 1829. In summer, in its natural state, the Collie River was a series of pools as so many rivers and creeks in Australia are. Now, with massive human intervention, it can be manipulated to whatever state the bureaucrats decree.

The coal fields were developed in the late 1890s, but then that early mining was rife with cave-ins, fires and other horrors. I suspect if we had bothered to visit the museum I might have learned a whole lot more about these early years, however it was not really until the middle of the last century that there was really significant development.

Collie’s coal mining did not really take its rightful place in Western Australia’s economy until the settlement was connected to the rest of the world. The first rail line was completed in 1898 and CY O’Connor, the Commissioner of Railways, whose name seems to have been popping up all along this coast as I immerse myself in its social history, saw the coal fields as an essential element in the development of Western Australia. He considered that if the agricultural lands of the state were to develop, they would need transport in the form of an efficient rail network and he saw Collie coal as the most logical fuel option.

The Collie rail marshalling yards, in their day, the largest in the state, were an important source of employment for the town and an essential link in the state’s economy for over seventy years. But from 1970 onward there was a steady decline in the size and importance of the Collie rail operation, mainly due the growth of road transport and the use of diesel for locomotives.

In 1950, Wesfarmers Premier Coal commenced business as Western Colliers, producing energy resources for Western Australia’s mining and electricity industries, principally supplying much needed energy to the Kalgoorlie Goldfields. The first coal was produced by open cut mining at Collieburn before the introduction of two underground mining operations in 1952. The second of these mines, Western No 2, would become the State’s largest underground mine, operating for forty two years to produce more than 14 million tonnes of coal. The biggest single mine was the Western No 5 open cut operation, established in 1970, which produced more than 20 million tonnes during an operating life of twenty seven years.

In 1989, Western Collieries was acquired by the diversified agricultural and industrial corporation Wesfarmers, that which owns Coles and Target, introducing the modern era of coal mining at the Company’s Collie operations. Underground mining closed in 1994, and all production was relocated to the efficient open cut operation at the Premier mine site, ten kilometres east of the Collie township.

Today Wesfarmers Premier Coal is the State’s major coal producer, supplying fuel for 45% of electricity generated for the South West Interconnected Grid.

On our map we noticed other industries near the town: the Worsley Alumina Refinery, the Bluewaters and Collie Power Stations and the infamous Muja Power Station.  This last station is currently very much in the news, having undergone repair and upgrade at enormous expense to the tax payer and while partly operation, is unlikely to ever be brought up to its full capacity. Here in Western Australia this is as big news, just as are the revelations of the country’s new Prime Minister as he scarmongers using words like “conflict” in an international context. Still these are early days, and all so interesting.

We walked up and down the main street of the town and patronised several businesses, including the busy bakery for calorie ridden pastries.  We were delighted to learn about the rather strange sculpture of the bookmaker, titled “The Book of Odds” in the main street to celebrate the obscene amount of unchecked betting activity that went on in the middle of the last century. In 1948, a policemen sergeant reported that there was evidence that about fifteen bookmakers were in operation, and that of a population of about 6,000 adults, he estimated that 1,500 or maybe 2,000 bet regularly. It was police practice to turn a blind eye.

Now after midday, we headed twelve kilometres north to the Harris Dam for lunch and a bit of exercise. While the rain had cleared, the picnic facilities up at the Dam were wet, so we ate inside which we seem to do more often than not these days. Then we donned coats and sturdy walking shoes and set off to walk part of the Bibbulum Track, just four kilometres toward Perth, as far as the Harris Dam hut, and what a beautiful walk it was! 

Walking the Bibbulum Track

We climbed above the dam through forest with an under-story of bracken, banksia and palms along with the usual sort of small scrub that seems to survive anywhere. Everywhere there was evidence of past logging, ancient stumps still standing testament to the industry that took place here and sometimes great dead trunks which would have barricaded the track had Park staff not come through and cut corridors through the girth. The fallen trees are left to decompose where they once stood, as they would if humans had never come this way although it seems such a shame that excellent timber goes to waste. Further along the track we were pleased to see the grass trees again. At one point I saw a kangaroo bound away, disturbed by our presence. We spotted a Scarlet Robin, such a beautiful bird and a Superb Wren, but the other fauna we might have seen including the normally elusive Red-eared Firetails, Chuditch and Quenda, were all exactly that; elusive.

I was interested to read on one interpretative panel that there are around one hundred bird, twenty seven mammal, forty reptile and thirteen frog species within the forest, but that “foreign species like foxes, cats and kookaburras” threaten the survival of many of these native creatures. I had never considered kookaburras to be a “foreign” threat to its fellows.

Further research revealed that the Laughing Kookaburra is in fact only native to eastern mainland Australia and has been introduced to New Zealand, Tasmania and Western Australia. Individual birds were released in Perth in 1898 and it is the descendants of these that are considered the enemy of the Department of Environment and Conservation. I was very sorry to learn this; I do so love these wonderful birds.

It took us nearly an hour to walk in because I was constantly distracted by the wonderful fungi along the side of the track as well as some surprisingly lovely flowers, too early for the spring flower season for which this coast is well known. Arriving at the hut, a three walled shelter complete with wide bunk shelves, a water tank, a fireplace and a lonely long drop dunny far away up a track in the bush, we found a sleeping bag that a tramper had dropped as they left or forgotten to pick up after a last minute dash into the bush. We moved it out of the rain but thought it unlikely the owner would return for it. Such is the life of consumables these days; he (or she) will simply buy a new one.

More lovely funghi

Our return took us just over three quarters of an hour and we enjoyed that as much as the walk in. We were so impressed with this short section of the Bibbulum Track, we thought we might look out for more southern sections, and would, in theory, love to do the entire walk. Perhaps we would just walk through forest sections or perhaps just recommend it to those younger and fitter than ourselves.

We drove up to the lookout over the dam and walked across to the other side. The Harris Dam was completed in 1990, and like the dam it replaced, took just two years to construct. It supplies drinking water to approximately 40,000 people in more than thirty towns and small communities on the Great Southern Towns Water Supply Scheme, including Collie, Narrogin and the far away Hyden near the famous Wave Rock which is currently on our “Shall we or shall we not” list.

The dam’s catchment area is 321 square kilometres and it is capable of holding 72 billion litres, making it the second largest dam in the South West Region after Wellington Weir. The dam wall is a 37 metre high earth embankment. We stood at the end of this and looked down upon the wide spillway which looks as if it has been dry for many years.

Our plans for the day had been far more extensive than that so far, however the day was already well done and we decided we did not want to rush through the other attractions on our list. We would leave them for another day, and so we came on home, just in time to miss the rain which had held off for most of the day after all.