My Island Home

It’s funny where life takes you sometimes. Just bear with me, I know this is a fishing mag and It’ll take a bit to tell this yarn but it’s kind of necessary if you want to get an idea of what we are about. It will be more fishing oriented in the future.

When I was growing up, (still am at 40+, years of age) our family lived on a sheep and cattle station in WA’s Pilbara region. Our daily lives at “Yanrey Station” revolved around mustering either sheep or cattle, fixing windmills and fences and generally trying to stop 48 000 sheep from trying to kill themselves. It was no easy fete; they are quite creative when it comes to finding new ways to commit suicide. One of their favourites was to wait till the middle of summer (50*+) when the dams are nearly dry, then wander in and bog them-selves in the middle of the biggest mud hole you’ve ever seen. Getting them out was great fun and gave me a good insight into ‘Mud Crabbing’ except it takes you half the bloody day and you didn’t get a feed of crab at the end of it all. Just a sore back and a buggered pair of boots.

Yanrey had been our family’s home for 4 generations when we decided to pull the pin on it all. A run of real bad luck and hard seasons was the deciding factor. Cyclone Steve in 1996 dropped a heap of rain and put ¾ of our 1000 000 acres under water. The flood wiped out 100’s of km of fences and drowned roughly 15,000 sheep (they never stood a chance with their track record. I’m sure they died happy knowing that it would piss us off).  This was followed up the next summer by cyclone Vance which tracked straight down the guts of Exmouth Gulf, the eye, about 20km to the west of Yanrey homestead and straight over the place which I would call home in the near future (Wilderness Island). Wind gusts in Exmouth were recorded in excess of 280km and apparently the lee side of a cyclone can produce wind speeds up to 15% stronger.

Considering then that we had wind speeds over 300km, there was obviously a bit of structural damage to the buildings, just small stuff, a bit of roof off the homestead, doors off the shed (3m x 6m and about 100kg each) which blew off and took out the overseers cottage which was 50m away, lots of trees down, the entire roof off the 16 stand shearing shed (at least we wouldn’t be doing any bloody sheep work this year), and the shearers quarters. The biggest disappointment though was the fact that the shearers dunny block came out of it unscathed much to mums disgust. I think it was the closest I saw Mum to crying, looking at the dunny block and muttering ‘I’ve always hated that building, and look at it, still there’. The icing on the cake were the 44 windmills destroyed, and we only had 47 to start with. Luckily, we were declared a state of emergency and the state government came to our rescue. We got a brand new water pump to fill all our water tanks. Bless ‘em, don’t know what we would have done without ‘em.

So that was mother nature having her little tantrum and if that weren’t enough to make you want to chuck it in, she followed it all up with 7 years of drought. Not a word of a lie here, we got only 6 inches of rain in 7 years. Dad says it was the driest he’d ever seen it (no shit), Most of the sheep were gone by this stage, either drowned, threw themselves into the dams or got blown away to the next door stations. The poor old cattle didn’t fair too well though and we lost around 2000 head.  Around this time all four of us boys (me and my brothers) had pretty bad accidents. I wont bore you with the details but at one stage there were 3 of us on crutches at the same time so that left Dad to struggle it out largely by himself. I think this was the clincher for him. All the rest he could handle but when your kids start to damage themselves badly, maybe its time for greener pastures.

We all went our separate ways when Yanrey got sold and I ended up not too far away on a place I called ‘Wilderness Island’. Its only 70 odd kilometres from our old homestead so it still felt like home right from the beginning.

Wilderness Island was actually an idea I had when I was lying in a hospital bed, after having been told I may never walk again. I’d always loved the story about Robinson Crusoe when I was a kid and thought it would be a pretty good lifestyle change after all we’d been through. Years of negotiations with government departments finally paid off and I was granted a lease on my very own island. I still have to pinch myself sometimes.

So now what to do? After a couple of years learning how to walk again after my accident, my funds were down to $7000. Just enough for a big pile of lumber, power tools, a carton of baked beans (good thing I liked them, still do) and some shovels. About this time, I banged into my old mate (Harry) who had nothing better to do and decided he would give me a hand. Me, Harry and my 2 cousins, one of whom is a builder, got dropped out at the island and got stuck into it.

The first couple of years were pretty tough going. We lived under a tarpaulin shade on the beach, digging holes by hand and putting the main camp area together by hand. We would fish around the tides and Harry showed me the ropes about fishing. He grew up in Port Headland and absolutely loves fishing. He’s damn good at it too. Me, having grown up on a cattle station didn’t really have much of a clue about it at all. As kids we used to go fishing when ever the river had water in it but as most of you know, that’s not all that often in the Pilbara.

So that was the extent of my experience at ‘fishing’ before Harry decided I needed to flourish in his nourishment. A few people started to hear about Wilderness Island through the grape vine and we would do charters here and there. We did explain that the facilities were very basic back then but it didn’t seem to deter the fanatics. We had a few well-known Australian fishing identities come along on charters and they reckoned it was some of the best fishing in Australia. Peter Morse reckons it’s the ‘best flats for fly fishing in Australia’. Harry had told me in the beginning that he would give me a hand for 2-3 years and teach me the ropes. It was actually closer to 5 years of flourishing in his fertiliser, till Harry decided to give it away.

We’ve had a lot of fun over the years discovering this fishery and building Wilderness Island. The Exmouth Gulf sure is a pretty nice place to live. Our closest neighbours are 24 nautical miles away so its not often we have to share the fishery with anyone. The camp has come a long way in the past 7 years and is now definitely home. It’s beautiful and cool most of the time, great fishing and best of all not a bloody sheep for miles.

Jim Alston
Grew up on station right next to Exmouth Gulf and always dreamed of living the life of Robinson Crusoe. He’s just about achieved his goal by setting up a fishing camp on the edge of the gulf at Wilderness Island.