Rockhole (1934-1939)

 

Driven by the vision of an expanded Pallottine presence in the Kimberley, and regardless of the difficulties at Tardun [3], Bishop Raible [1] arranged the purchase of a run-down sheep farm at Rockhole, about 20km west of Halls Creek in September 1934. It belonged to Francis Patrick Castles whom Raible knew from his horseback tours of the vicariate and considered a friend, and Castles was eager to leave.¹ The purchase price of £1,400 was generously donated by the Apostolic Delegate Archbishop Filippo Bernardini.²

 

The Chief Protector of Aborigines was not consulted. The Catholic sources omit to mention that the government station at Moola Bulla had become an institution for ‘half-caste’ children in 1930³ and that Moola Bulla and Rockhole were about equidistant from Halls Creek – neighbours in Kimberley terms, and with a shared boundary. This provocation was a fatal mistake by the Bishop and earned him the unbridled wrath of the Chief Protector.

 

The vision for Rockhole as recollected by Fr. Bleischwitz was to be a new mission centre, a hospital, an old-age home for Aboriginal people, and perhaps a school. Aborigines trained at Beagle Bay could be brought to Rockhole to share their talents and knowledge with the Aboriginal people of the Rockhole region.⁴ To the white settlers of the area it would act as a pastoral centre.

 

Br. Henry Krallmann [4] had inspected the property and thought it had potential, with a stock of sheep and horses. It was named after a rocky hole that always contained water, even during droughts⁵, but to the band of Brothers who first laid eye on it, it must have conjured less pleasant images.⁶ The station ‘house’ consisted of two uninhabitable small mudwall rooms that lacked ventilation, with a crude kitchen added on. Its redeeming feature was a spacious verandah.

 

Fr. Francis Hügel [5] and Brothers Henry Krallmann and Josef Schüngel [6]worked alongside several members of the Cox family from Beagle Bay. Bleischwitz mentions Patrick [Paddy], George Kelly and young Phillip Cox. Bertha Paddy, who came with her children in 1939, remembered that Maggie and Joseph Kelly were there and ‘Fabian and his brother’.

 

They used one room as storeroom and the other as chapel, slept on the verandah and set to work to turn the place into a settlement fit for a hospital and school. Fr. Hügel undertook tours to the surrounding settlers in his buggy. After some months they received reinforcements through the carpenter Br. Joseph Tautz< [7] from Beagle Bay. However Tautz had to leave in early May 1935 after Beagle Bay was completely destroyed by a cyclone. ⁷

 

In December 1935 Bishop Raible arrived back from Europe with a band of professionals. Three theological students, Bruno Kupke, Anthony Omasmeier, and George Vill formed the seed of a Pallottine training college opened at Kew in July 1937. Professor Nekes [8] was to conduct linguistic studies with Fr. Worms [9], and Hans and Ludwina Betz from the missionary medicine training institute in Würzburg were to be the medical team for the Rockhole hospital and leprosy outreach. Raible introduced them to Chief Protector Neville, who questioned them about leprosy and tropical disease and eventually the government declined to recognise their qualifications and they had to leave Australia. Moreover, Neville moved quickly to establish a small hospital at the government reserve Moola Bulla, which by late 1936 was staffed with a nurse. The CPA successfully killed the idea of a hospital at Rockhole.

 

On 10 June 1936 Neville paid a personal visit to the new station, and Fr. Hügel chronicled the event:

 

‘His many and detailed questions seem to prove that he considers our place as an established mission-station, which is, however, not the case. He made an objection to the taking of men from Beagle Bay. More difficulties are to be expected from him.” ⁸

 

Neville asked in particular why George Kelly and his family and Philip Cox had been taken away from Beagle Bay without his prior permission. The missionaries seemed unaware that it required authority from the department for Aboriginal people to move from one mission to another. Fr. Hügel said:

 

‘I simply told Mr. Neville that the reason why I brought them to Rockhole was because I needed them – that’s all. .... Because of his position, he thought he was in complete control of every native in the Kimberley and that nobody could move one step without his permission. He also had the idea that he alone could sanction the transfer of any Aborigine and that nothing could be done without his say-so. Beagle Bay and Rockhole were not Government-run feeding stations, so he was overstepping the mark.’⁹

 

It was now clear that all plans for Rockhole had been shattered, there was to be no hospital, no training centre for Aboriginal people, and Fr. Hügel’s attempts to missionise among the white settlers had also not borne much fruit. He was recalled to Beagle Bay, and his last entry in the Rockhole Chronicle was on 3 October 1936. Fr John Herold [10] took his place from 26 April 1937 to 6 January 1939, and the Chronicle was discontinued. An officer of the Australian Aerial Medical Service noticed that the station made no use of its radio, they ‘have hardly been on the air since they have had the set and I believe they are giving up the mission there and starting a new mission south of Billilulna.’¹⁰ Fr. Herold became embroiled in endless red tape, having to take out permits for the transfer of Paddy Butler, Bertha, Ambrose and Philip from Beagle Bay to Rockhole every six months while the Department pondered ‘the advisability of permitting natives to be transferred to and from a leper area’. ¹¹

 

In early 1939 the Bishop decided to sell Rockhole and make another attempt further south. Br. Stephan Contemprée [11]was called from Tardun to prepare for the removal and sale.¹²

 

Bertha Paddy and her children also joined the clean-up team:

 

In 1934 the Bishop [Raible] sent two Brothers, Br Henry, Br Joseph Schüngel, my husband [Paddy] and Philip [Cox] to the new station called Rockhole, near old Halls Creek. I went as a mission helper to join Paddy. We left Broome 11^th July 1939. We tried to reach Rockhole before Br Henry’s feast day, 14^th July. We did. The Bishop was driver. Fr John Herold was there. Maggie and Joseph Kelly were there. Fabian and his brother went up and Br Stephen [Contemprée]. We had to leave Rockhole and started droving around the Comet windmill on the Billiluna run. ... We shifted from the Comet at Billiluna to Tjalawan.’¹³

 

The Bishop sold the property including some horses but no sheep, to Ernest Bridge in October 1939, in a secret deal for cash on the spot. It was rumoured that he was able to obtain £1,000. Bridge was a drover with a young family and wanted the station as a permanent home and to graze his horses and camels. He remained a friend of the missionaries and often offered them hospitality. Later he acquired the neighbouring Koonje Park station and moved there.¹⁴

 

Rockhole became abode of some Kimberley characters, Tom Cole, first drover on the Canning Stock Route to Wiluna in the late 1920s, drover Arthur Muggleton, Jake Cooper and George Williams, who was the last to die there.¹⁵ After that, Rockhole became a ‘ghost station’ according to Bleischwitz. Bishop Raible summed up the Rockhole experience with the motto ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’. A fresh start was made at Balgo [12]in the Tanami desert region after a three-year ‘Abrahamic’ cattle drove.