Wide main street of Carnarvon

Carnarvon (including Bernier Is., Quobba and Cape Cuvier)
Major township on the Gascoyne coast
Located 904 km north of Perth on the North West Coastal Highway, Carnarvon is a large and thriving town surrounded by banana plantations and set close to some of Western Australia's most beautiful and unusual coastline. It lies 3.3 m above sea level and experiences an annual average rainfall of only 229 mm. The Carnarvon Shire extends from Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay to Exmouth Station in the Pilbara.

Like so much of the Western Australian coastline the area around Carnarvon was known to Dutch sailors in the early seventeenth century. It was the Dutch sailor Henderik Brouwer who, in 1610, discovered that the best route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia was via the Roaring Forties. The idea was head east for a few thousand kilometres then turn left. Brouwer achieved the crossing of the Indian Ocean and turned left before reaching Western Australia. Six years later Dirk Hartog sailed too far and arrived at Cape Inscription on 26 October 1616. It was here that he placed his famous pewter plate.

After 1616 the area of the coast which includes modern day Carnarvon became known as Eendrachsland after Hartog's boat Eendracht.

The usual litany of explorers and adventurers passed through the area - Tasman, de Vlamingh, Dampier, Pelsaert, Phillip Parker King, and the Frenchmen Freycinet, Hamelin and Baudin.

No one showed any huge interest in the Eendrachsland because of the unreliability of the rainfall, the apparent non-existence of permanent water supplies, and the harsh desert vegetation which characterised the area.

The first serious exploration of the area was that undertaken by Lieutenant George Grey in 1839. By any conventional measure the journey was a disaster. In February 1839 Grey and ten men were landed on Bernier Island with three whale boats. The plan was to explore the coast north of Bernier Island. They quickly established that there was no water on the island and decided to head for the mainland. During the crossing one boat was smashed on rocks and most of the provisions for the expedition were destroyed. The trip to North West Cape was abandoned and the party attempted to return to Perth. At Gantheaume Bay the other boats were wrecked and the men (one of whom died) were forced to walk the 500 km back to Perth. Perhaps the only contribution Grey made to the area was when he named the Gascoyne River after a naval friend, Captain Gascoyne.

The area was regarded as so inhospitable that although F. T. Gregory explored it in 1858 (an epic journey which covered 2000 miles in 107 days) it wasn't until the late 1870s that settlers began to arrive. In 1876 the region's founding fathers, Aubrey Brown, John Monger and C.S. Brockman, overlanded 4000 sheep from York and established themselves in the district. Brown settled on Boolathana station and Brockman established Brickhouse station.

By 1934 (the peak period) the Gascoyne was supporting 1.4 million head of sheep. Numbers have reduced since then as an awareness of the fragile ecology of the area has forced pastoralists to appreciate the risks of overgrazing. The Western Australian Department of Agriculture describes the area as 'mulga scrubland' and that does not suggest endless paddocks of rich pasture.

The town of Carnarvon, named after Lord Carnarvon, the British Secretary of State (1866-74), was gazetted in 1883 and for most of its early life it served as a port and supply depot for the surrounding pastoral industry.

Carnarvon became the centre of an efficient wool producing area. Life on the stations was hard and brutal and the treatment of the local Aborigines was appalling. Those Aborigines who were not massacred were forced into virtual slavery by the local property owners. Camel teams, driven by Afghan camel drivers, brought the wool from the stations to the port.

The camel teams account for the extraordinary width of Robinson Street which may well (with the possible exception of the main street in Coolgardie which was formed for the same reason) be the widest street in Australia. You almost need a taxi to get from one side to the other.

The novelist Nene Gare explained the origins of the street in her novel Green Gold when she wrote: 'The wide main streets were made to take a double team of camels pulling twelve-foot-high drays shod with big iron wheels. There had to be room for the Afghan drivers to take a round turn, with the result that modern traffic finds itself with parking space in the middle of the road as well as at both sides.'

It was a man named Jack Buzolic who changed the economic nature of the town. In 1928 he wrote of the town: 'At present Carnarvon is a small place with four hotels, six stores (four held by white people and two by Chinamen), three drapery shops and one boarding house, and consists of about six hundred people...Now the whole of Carnarvon and surrounds make their living by the sheep stations in the district...My opinion is that, of the tropical fruits bananas would grow to perfection if cultivated properly.' He acted upon his opinion, planted banana suckers in 1928 and by 1930 had picked his first saleable crop. Although there had been interest in tropical agriculture since 1922 no one had really bothered until Buzolic decided to develop bananas thus broadening the economic base of the town.

People who drive over the Gascoyne River in the dry season when it is nothing more than a dry river bed will be surprised to know that it is central to the irrigation of the whole region. It does, on average, flow for 120 days each year. For the rest of the time the river literally flows upside down. Carnarvon is located at the only point on the Australian coastline where the desert reaches out into the sea. This means that the mouth of the Gascoyne River is a 300 km tongue of sand which acts as a huge water storage system. The water table (known more accurately as the river's 'aquifers') lies below the sands and the local banana plantation owners tap into it and pump the water to the surface. Currently 80 per cent of the bananas from Carnarvon are consumed in Western Australia. Crops are usually good although the area has experienced 14 cyclones, 6 floods and 7 droughts in the last 50 years.

Tours of Munro's Banana Plantation take place twice daily and bookings can be made by contacting 08 99 41 8104.

The town also is the centre of an area which grows avocados, coconuts, dates, jojoba, macadamia nuts, mangoes, pawpaws, pecans, tomatoes, pineapples, melons and various varieties of beans.

The Carnarvon Space Receiver Station

It is widely recognised that the biggest event in recent Carnarvon history was the establishment of the NASA tracking station in 1964. Its importance was based on the fact that it was the base which gave the command for the Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI) which actually sent the Apollo missions in to land on the moon.

Perhaps its greatest moment came on 20 July 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped out of Apollo 11. His famous words 'One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind' were relayed to the world via the tracking station at Carnarvon. It was finally closed down in 1974 because it became outmoded.

Things to see:  

Carnarvon Space Tracking Station
The Carnarvon Space Tracking Station has a museum in the pedestal of the big dish (contact the Tourist Bureau to have it opened) with an interesting collection of bits and pieces from the moon landing period including the hand prints of the astronauts who visited Carnarvon. The museum is worth visiting for anyone interested in Australia's connections with the US space program or for people who want to be amazed at the speed at which modern technology has progressed. How can things which were considered the height of modern technology in 1969 look so old and antiquated only a couple of decades later?

One Mile Jetty and Lighthouse Cottage Museum
There are a number of interesting places in Carnarvon. Of the most interesting is 'One Mile Jetty', originally constructed in 1904. The jetty stretches 1493 metres into the bay on the western side of Babbage Island. For those lazy people a jetty train operates every day in the tourist season and is a convenient way of not walking the mile to the end of the jetty. At the landward end of the jetty is the excellent and interesting Lighthouse Cottage Museum which is open from 2.00 pm - 4.00 pm daily.

Maps of Carnarvon and a useful booklet Visitor's Guide to Carnarvon are available from the Tourist Bureau.

Monkey Mia
Monkey Mia (see Shark Bay for more details). Carnarvon is often seen as the major town for visits to Monkey Mia and certainly a number of one day and two day trips leave from the town. Contact the Tourist Bureau in Robinson Street - (08) 9941 1146 - for details. A hovercraft makes the journey from Carnarvon to Monkey Mia four times weekly.

The wreck of the Korean Star, near Carnarvon

Blowholes, Quobba, Lake Macleod and the Korean Star
The Blowholes, Quobba, Lake Macleod and the Wreck of the Korean Star. North of Carnarvon are some of the most interesting sights on the whole of the Western Australian coast. 24 km north of the town is a turnoff to 'The Blowholes'. This trip across near-desert landscape for 49 km offers superb views of the coast as well as the blowholes, a look at an unusual salt loading facility and the wreck of the Korean Star. The coastline is characterised by spectacularly beautiful craggy cliffs, beautiful white sandy beaches and a dramatic variety of seascapes. The road passes near to the famous Lake Macleod, a huge 225 000 hectare coastal salt lake which is 110 km long and 40 km wide. The lake is mined by Dampier Salt Pty Ltd who ship the salt out of the area from the jetty at Cape Cuvier.

The Blowholes (the plural is relevant - there must be 20 or 30 of them) are just south of the point where the road reaches the coast. The road crosses some huge sand dunes which have been whipped up by the westerlies before dropping to the coast.

KING WAVES KILL - reminder to the foolhardy on the coast north of Carnarvon

The traveller is greeted with a huge sign declaring: 'KING WAVES KILL'. It is not something to be treated with disdain. It is a sober reminder to the careless and foolhardy that over 30 people have died as a result of freak waves on the coast.

The Blowholes were first discovered by Europeans as recently as 1911 and since then they have become an increasingly popular tourist attraction.

Further north is Quobba Station standing alone and isolated between the sand dunes and the coast and 30 km north of the Blowholes is Cape Cuvier where the salt from the Dampier Salt works is loaded onto ships bound for Japan. The Carnarvon Tourist Bureau arranges tours of the Salt works every Thursday. The novel loading method involves simply bulldozing salt onto a conveyor belt which carries it to the bulk carriers which moor at the end of the jetty.

On 21 May 1988 Cyclone Herbie hit the area and the Korean Star which was waiting to be loaded was blown onto the rocks where it subsequently broke into two. The wreck lies at the bottom of the 60 metre cliffs at Cape Cuvier and can be reached by 4WD down a road which cuts between the cliffs.

Bernier and Dorre Islands
Off the coast from Carnarvon (and certainly not part of the regular tourist schedule for the region) are the fascinating Bernier and Dorre Islands. They are now both uninhabited apart from the very rare banded-hare wallaby, Lesueur's rat kangaroo, little barred-bandicoot and Shark Bay mouse all of which are extinct or nearly extinct on the mainland. The islands are really nothing more than narrow strips of coastal limestone surrounded by cliffs which rise, at their highest point, to about 45 metres.

Both Bernier and Dorre Island would be unimportant if they hadn't played a sad role in the decimation of the Aborigines of the Gascoyne and Pilbara. Some time before 1910 the islands became used as a 'hospital' for mainland Aborigines who had contracted venereal disease. The 'patients' were shipped across to the islands to isolate them and, in turn, they were separated so the men were located on Bernier Island and the women on Dorre. In her famous book The Passing of the Aborigines, Daisy Bates recalls: 'Dorre and Bernier Islands: there is not, in all my sad sojourn among the last sad people of the primitive Australian race, a memory one half so tragic or so harrowing, or a name that conjures up such a deplorable picture of misery and horror unalleviated, as these two grim and barren islands of the West Australian coast that for a period, mercifully brief, were the tombs of the living dead. When I landed on Bernier Island in November 1910 there were only fifteen men left alive, but I counted thirty eight graves. There were seventy-seven women on Dorre Island, many of them bed-ridden. I dared not count the graves there.

Reading about Carnarvon
Anyone needing more information on the town should read Merrill Findlay's outstanding book Carnarvon: Reflections of a Country Town. Findlay was Artist-in-Residence in Carnarvon in 1983 and, as a professional photojournalist, she captured the spirit of the town in a way that few local histories do. Her book is sold at the Carnarvon Tourist Bureau in Robinson Street - (08) 9941 1146

	Tourist Information
	Carnarvon Tourist Bureau Carnarvon Civic Centre 6 Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1146 Facsimile: (08) 9941 1149
	Motels
	Fascine Motel/Hotel 1002 David Brand Dve Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 2411 Facsimile: (08) 9941 2491 Rating: ***
	Gateway Motel Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1532 Rating: ***
	Hospitality Inn West St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1600 Facsimile: (08) 9941 2405 Rating: ***
	Hotels
	Carnarvon Hotel/Motel Olivia Tce Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1181 Rating: *
	Gascoyne Hotel Olivia St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1412
	Port Hotel Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1704 Rating: *
	Resorts
	Carnarvon Beach Holiday Resort Pelican Point Rd Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 2226 Rating: **
	Bed & Breakfast/Guesthouses
	Manberry Station Stays Guesthouse 124km north of Carnarvon Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9942 5926 Facsimile: (08) 9942 5926
	The Outcamp Bed & Breakfast 16 Olivia Tce Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 2421 Facsimile: (08) 9941 3116 Rating: ***
	Yalardy Station Guesthouse 94km east of New West Coastal Hwy Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9942 5904 Facsimile: (08) 9942 5904
	Apartments
	Carnarvon Close Holiday Apartments 96 Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1317 Rating: ***
	Cottages & Cabins
	Wintersun Caravan Park Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 8150 Facsimile: (08) 9941 8150 Email: wintersuncpk@wn.com.au Rating: ****
	Caravan Parks
	Coral Coast Tourist Park 108 Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1438 Facsimile: (08) 9941 1448 Rating: ***
	Carnarvon Caravan Park Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 8101 Rating: ***
	Marloo Caravan Park Wise St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1439 Rating: ***
	Norwesta Caravan Park 12 Angelo St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1277 Rating: ***
	Plantation Caravan Park Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 8100 Rating: ***
	Startrek Caravan Park North West Coastal Hwy Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 8153 Rating: ***
	Wintersun Caravan Park Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 8150 Facsimile: (08) 9941 8150 Email: wintersuncpk@wn.com.au Rating: ****
	Backpackers
	Backpackers Paradise Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 2966
	Camping & Other
	Boologooro Station North West Coastal Hwy Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9942 5907
	Quobba Station 80 km north of Carnarvon Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 2036
	Restaurants
	Carnarvon Hotel Restaurant Olivia Tce Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1181
	Dragon Pearl Chinese Restaurant 17 Francis St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: Ph (08) 9941 1941
	Fascine Lodge Motel Restaurant 1002 David Brand Dve Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 2411
	Gascoyne Hotel Restaurant Foss St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1412
	Gateway Motel Restaurant Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1532
	Gypsy's Restaurant 26 Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1445
	Hospitality Inn Restaurant West St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1600
	Northern Heritage Dining 44 Olivia Tce Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 4226
	Port Hotel Restaurant Robinson St Carnarvon WA 6701 Telephone: (08) 9941 1704