Jo Darbyshire is working with the community of Lake Grace, her residency forming part of one of Spaced’s current programs, Rural Utopias.

Jo is a fifth generation West Australian, and grew up in Lake Grace, in the West Australian wheatbelt. She currently works as an artist and social history curator in Fremantle, WA.

Here, Jo shares an update from her residency.

Where does Lake Grace get its water?

This two-week period saw me much more enmeshed in the Lake Grace community- but I also travelled further afield to Wave Rock, near Hyden to understand more about how the need to capture freshwater has impacted on the landscape and culture of the area.

This region contains the largest collection of salt lakes in Australia. The ancient water flow started at the mouth of the Swan River (Fremantle, where I currently live) and moved in an arc through the Ballardong/Njaki-Njaki lands to Esperance.

The salt lakes are still full but as the weather changes, they will begin to dry up again, and the wildflowers I saw on my last visit were replaced by different flowering plants. I saw many snakes and lizards as they came out of hibernation. The renewal of the land has had a positive effect on the people of the town and many expressed joy at the beauty of the land and their appreciation for it.

There were few freshwater springs or soaks in the Lake Grace area when European settlers arrived c 1911. Water sources need to be no more than 16 miles apart for horses travelling in the area. Often it was someone’s job to ride each day to bring water back to a farm. Farmers used tanks to store water until the first dams were built in the 1930s.

In the 1950s town dams were built- these are still operating in times of hardship- and are called the ‘turkey nest’ dams. Large ‘roaded catchments’; areas where land was cleared and its coarse gravel- with a clay base, was graded into swales- to direct water to the dam, were made. The most recent roaded catchment area used bitumen to coat the swales- and this has now been discontinued as it was found to be carcinogenic.

The government via Water Corp then organised for Scheme water to be provided to the area and water is now piped to Lake Grace from the Collie Dam. Farmers had to do the physical work of laying pipes from the town if they wanted the scheme water.

I explored some of the roaded catchment areas. One, shown to me by local artist Michele Slarke, is no longer used and after 25 years is regenerating. It is covered in wildflowers and small bushes. Another has catchment swales, which run about half a kilometre, channelling water to a small square dam- created in the 1930s- and now used only to water grass on the town oval.

 Another way Europeans tried to capture water was by building low walls on large granite outcrops to make a catchment dam. Wave Rock or Katter Kich near Hyden, a granite cliff, 15 metres high and 110 metres long, is the most well known of these. A wall and dam were constructed on the rock in 1928 and extended in 1951, by the Public Works Department.

The South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council says that Katter Kich is significant to Noongar/Ballardong people because it is a keniny (dancing) ground, camping place, holds gnamma or water holes and was part of a Noongar trade route. Towards the eastern boundary of the Ballardong region is the Njaki Njaki dialectal group, which includes Lake Grace.

Local tribes believed that Katter Kich was a creation of the Rainbow Serpent, and was created in her wake by dragging her swollen body over the land after she had consumed all of the water in the land.*

I also visited Dingo Rock- a large granite outcrop on a private farm owned by Kerrie and Greg Argent. Long, low, catchment walls were built to channel rain runoff into a large dam st the base of Dingo Rock, by prisoners from Fremantle Gaol in 1952, with the aim of collecting freshwater for the area.

I also had the chance to visit a local farm and learn about modern farming methods with farmer Kim Slarke. These methods involve huge farm machinery worth millions of dollars and lots of chemicals. Farming is now a highly technology based business and many of the smaller farms in the district have been forced to close- bought up by larger farms, now run by only one or two families. Kim’s sons were gearing up to work on the ‘Harvest’, which will occupy farm management, and workers and CBH for the next three months, as they have bumper crops. Harvesters will work 15-hour days, inside air-conditioned cabins on the huge harvesters, with meals delivered to them on site. Huge hay carting trucks are also moving through Lake Grace, some carrying more than 120 large bales.

On the weekend of 9/10 October I ran the second of three painting workshops at the Lake Grace Regional Art Space. Thirteen participants from around the Wheatbelt attended and camped overnight. They had all had a chance to think about the theme- Rural Utopia- and this was reflected in their artwork. They were asked to use gas vapour masks for safety as we explored various techniques to work with oil paint and oil mediums on large-scale canvases. As some of the paintings were completed they were displayed in the main window of the art centre- activating the space and providing a focal point of discussion for townspeople and passing tourists alike.

You can follow me on Instagram: #lakegraceresidency @jodarbs

* "Noongar Native Title Settlement Information" (PDF). Southwest Land and Sea Council. 7 October 2014. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Rock)

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