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OPEN to traffic from 5pm

SUNDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER 2010

Print and Download Announcement

After many years of planning and more than two years of construction, the Lancelin-Cervantes Stage 2 Project Team is proud to announce that the much anticipated Lancelin to Cervantes section of Indian Ocean Drive will be officially opened on Sunday 19th September; and will be open to traffic from 5pm on that day.

With the assistance of favourable winter weather, construction has been able to continue at an accelerated pace and as a result, the road will be completed approximately 9 months ahead of schedule.

The final product is a testament to all who have been involved and there is no doubt that the road will be very much appreciated by local communities and tourists.

It is important to note however, that the road will remain closed to general traffic whilst minor works continue to operate up to the official opening date.

Main Roads WA would like to thank the general public for their support and patience during the road construction and requests your continued co-operation in using current/existing routes until after 5pm Sunday 19th September 2010.

Please note that work on upgrading the old Pinnacles Drive (south of Cervantes) will continue until the end of October 2010.  Motorists in the area should exercise care whilst works are in progress.

Happy travelling!

For more information please contact:
Samantha Gordon
Community Engagement Officer, Lancelin to Cervantes Stage 2 Project
PH:  9655 2049  Mobile:  0409 370 107  Email:  samantha.gordon@mainroads.wa.gov.au

For years, committee members have spent Association funds on professional advice, legal issues, political issues, heritage listings, and on preparation for and meetings with various organisations too numerous to mention. We expect to have considerable expense achieving listing with the State Heritage body in the near future.
In addition, funds are spent on tip maintenance, settlement improvements and rehabilitation.
The office bearers and committee members accept much of the costs in getting to and from these tasks as well as giving their valuable time (which is often considerable) to attend and negotiate on the settlement’s behalf.
There are still members of the Grey community who are not members of the Association. If you have a shack at Grey but have not joined the Association on your shack’s behalf, WHY NOT???  The Association can only speak and act on BEHALF OF MEMBERS!
Please support the community in which you have an interest by paying  the $50.00 per year for your shack’s membership! Membership fees are payable to the Grey Conservation and Community Association and can be sent to the Secretary at the address on this page. Do not forget to include the number of your shack and your name and email address.

RUMOURS

Incorrect rumors continue to circulate.

The facts are:

• This next year will decide if a lease extension is achievable.
• The years to follow will determine the conditions under which any further lease extension would be issued.
• The Minister for the Environment (Ms Donna Faragher) has agreed that the completion of the road will not be a triggering event for our removal.
• The Minister has publicly stated that she wishes to see a “compromise” settlement reached.
• The word “compromise” can mean many things and does not guarantee us continuity beyond the current lease termination date.
• Representatives of Wedge and Grey are meeting with as many politicians as possible, putting our case and stating that we have proposals for each settlement and will negotiate if given the opportunity.
• Any extension of shack leases requires a whole of cabinet agreement.
• Wedge and Grey have agreed to present as one unified front in our meetings with politicians.
• Until we achieve a cabinet approved change of policy we remain subject to eradication in 2011.
• There is still a long, long way to go but at least we have acknowledgment that we have a case !!

RECYCLING

Just a few lines to ask for your support in recycling your steel and aluminum cans.

The association committee has decided, after numerous talks with various politicians and the shire, that further recycling measures should be adopted at Grey.

One of the arguments against us put forward by the pollies, local government and DEC, is rubbish (excuse the pun).

We ask you to help in this regard and separate your cans both tin and aluminum, and place them in the conveniently located bins at the tip.

This will both help alleviate another argument against us staying at Grey and Wedge, and reduce the volume of rubbish in the general tip.

FISH OFFAL

If possible please take offal back out to sea as this will help minimise smell and flies at the tip. Please! “out to sea” means offshore, not just down to the beach!

BUSY BEE

The following email (edited) was received in mid-April by our President Peter Sheppard from Ross Tapper at Grey:

“G’day Pete,
Just letting you know what happened the other day after the Wedge Island Tip fire. ………We had a visit from the Dandaragan Shire’s FESA vehicle. They asked where our tip was and were directed to it. Later, Davo rang them to find out what it was about, and asked for any hints on how to best house keep the tip. The reply was that it was the best tip they have seen, very well maintained and segregated into materials. They even had their Health Inspector on board who gave it approval, so a big clap on the back for Davo should be mentioned in the next newsletter, and a call for volunteers to help in some clean up work out there. ………….Those Fridges and other heavy items are hard to move, but it has to be done to keep the place tidy. Even an emu bob around with some bags to collect the wind scattered rubbish would be a help,
Cheers Rosco

P.S. It’s good to have some good publicity sometimes.”

As Ross said the general appearance of the settlement is important. Your committee would like to invite everyone to a Busy Bee at the tip, on Sunday 6th June 2010 at 3.30pm for a general tip and area clean up. Please bring your own gloves, rake, plastic bags and trailer if you have one.

Contact Fred Sharp if you have any inquiries (see contact details on Committee Page).

DUNE RE-VEGETATION

A Dune Re-vegetation field day will be held on Saturday the 22nd of May 2010. Please meet at 8am at the dune. Activities will include planting and fence erection.

Follow us on Face-book and or Twitter, also subscribe to our Press announcements.

Can you help?

We are looking for stories about the Grey community and or photos taken of Grey.

Do you know any history of your shack, the settlement or any other shacks?

We’d love to publish them here on our site.  If you have something for us please email to us via the mail form on the Contact Us Page.

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by Al Jansen
In April my relatively new friends Christine and Darren “turned left”, as they put it, from their home in Perth and kept on going, but not before they’d spent a couple of months living in a “shack” at a community called Grey which is just south of Cervantes (where the famous Pinnacles Dessert is).

I got an invite to go up for a weekend with their good friend Maureen and the four of us chilled out in the rather basic surroundings of a tin-roofed, cobbled-together construction with few of the home comforts we all take for granted.  I never dreamed that I could shower in a few cupfuls of water!  Toilet flushing was with buckets of sea-water, and then only if you really had to, and the kitchen was regularly visited by semi-tame lizards and a carpet python who I think was called George (but thankfully I didn’t actually see him that weekend!).

Happy hour on the veranda over-looking the ocean seemed to go on all evening (well at least until it was time for dinner and Canasta) so I can imagine just how hard Christine and Darren found it to continue with their trip.  Since then they’ve visited some really remote areas that I wasn’t able to get to on my trip, so when they pass through Perth again on their way to Europe in April I’ll be keen to hear all about it.

They’ve done fantastic updates over the months but even in two pages worth it’s difficult to do anything more than whet the reader’s appetite, as I well remember.

Nyoongars collective name for a number of tribal groups.  Nambung area was the Whadjug and Yued tribes.  1658 first known European recording of the Nambung are when North & South Hummocks appeared on Dutch maps. The Frederick Smith river named by Grey was later renamed the Nambung River by surveyor J S Brooking in 1874-75.  Nambung is an aboriginal work meaning crooked or winding.

From 1889 the Old North Road Stock Route ran between Dongara and Perth passing through part of what is now the park. In the early 1900s phosphate was discovered in the caves of the Nambung River valley and it was mined by local farmers intermittently from 1906. A temporary reserve was placed over Nambung River valley to protect the caves in 1927. The first mention of the Pinnacles is in 1934 when they were first mentioned in a Geological Survey report.

During World War II the stock route was used by the army and after the war by beekeepers, hunters. Fishermen and holiday makers. In the late 1960s the Pinnacles Desert was added to the already existing national park which had been established in 1956.

The Pinnacles Desert in Nambung National Park, Western Australia is very impressive as is all the scenery in Western Australia.  The Pinnacles area is something one might imagine Mars could be like.

Chapter 7 gives much information about Explorer George Grey

Grey was a dashing young Englishman a lieutenant in Her Majesty’s 83rd Regiment of foot. Born in 1813 he was only 24 years in 1837 when he led an expeditions to the Kimberley area. He had unintentionally offended Goverrnor James Stirling using Cape Town not Fremantle for his first sortie to the Kimberley. In addition his skill and knowledge of harsh, unforgiving WA conditions did not yet match his boundless enthusiasm for exploration and adventure. He had come close to being killed on his first Kimberley expedition and had lost most of his dogs, ponies, sheep and gear and was himself speared by natives before being rescued by HMS Beagle.

In 1839 Grey, being an incurable optimist, decided to mount another expedition to Shark Bay – another recipe for disaster. The basic problems were always water & feed for the animals and the fickle nature of the weather and seasonal conditions. Mariners had drawn charts of the WA coast since 1616 when Dirk Hartog had mounted his plate at Cape Inscription but very little was known of the interior north east of about York. The arid region of 200 miles of sand plain north of Yanchep and aggressive Aborigines reputed to be ‘cannibals” had discouraged travellers in that direction. Grey purchased some whale-boats and jired a Yankee whaler to drop him with his people, boats and stores at Shark Bay. He planned to arrive in February a month when ‘southerlies’ are still howling and roughing up the sea. Whaleboats were built of very light timber with a fine bow entry, double-ended stern and narrow beam. Normally it was used for a quick chase of a whale and carrying only oarsmen and the harpooner, not the loads Grey had in mind in very short seas. Grey proposed to sail (or row) along the coast go ashore at night to camp and explore. This meant running through surf in heavily-loaded whale-boats.

Grey and 11 companions, stores and 3 whale-boats were offloaded on Bernier Island on February 25th 1839.

In the course of the trip he named Gascoyne River (at Carnarvon), sailed and rowed in 56 hours the 120 miles from Steep Point to Gantheaume Bay where the boats were wrecked trying to land in heavy surf at end of March. Now they commenced a nightmare trek on foot back to the Swan River which Grey with Kaiber his faithful aboriginal member of the expedition, reached 3 weeks later, starving, thirsty, exhausted and emaciated. After he was (with difficulty) recognised, rescue parties went north and found the other members of the group some as much as 150 kilometres behind and close to death. One, Frederick Smith, was found dead and buried north of Moore River. Throughout the trek Grey kept a detailed daily journal naming the Gascoyne, Murchison, Hutt, Bowes, Buller, Chapman, Greenough, Irwin, Arrowsmith, and Smith Rivers. The Frederick Smith river was later renamed the Nambung River by surveyor J S Brooking in 1874-75. Grey wrote detailed accounts of his adventures which were well received in England. At 28 years of age in 1840 he was appointed Governor of South Australia, was knighted in 1850 and became Governor of South Africa and twice a Governor of New Zealand.

For many years/centuries the coast of Western Australia (Nieuw Holland) was an unwanted dangerous lee shore to be shunned by sailing ships. However in the 17th Century a growing trade between Europe and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) forced ships to travel up this dangerous and unexplored coastline.

Developments in 2nd half 16th Century in navigation & mapping. 1541 Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator produced a globe showing the parallels of latitude and the meridians of longitude, and compass roses. In 1569 Mercator’s world map was published making allowance for the convergence of the meridians towards the poles while showing parallels and meridians in proper proportion on a flat surface.

The sailing ship Gilt Dragon was wrecked off the WA coast in April 1656 on her voyage from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Batavia (now Jakarta) in Indonesia. She carried 118 people – two months later a boat with 7 men arrived in Batavia and said that 68 survivors were onshore in the Southland.

The Gilt Dragon wrecksite lies off the coast south of Lancelin between what are now Ledge Point and Seabird.

Ships were sent as soon as possible to try to rescue the survivors but the ships arrived in the bad weather of winter months and suffered all sorts of problems including losing a party of sailors sent ashore.

Another ship the Waeckende Boey (translated Watching Buoy or Watchman’s Buoy) skippered by Samuel Volkersen with a crew of 40 was sent from Batavia on 1st January 1658 nearly two years after the shipwreck to search for survivors of the Gilt Dragon. The Emeloordt skippered by Aucke Pieters Jonck with a crew of 25 accompanied the Waeckende Boey.

The Waeckende Boey was a small fluyt a freightcarrying vessel designed by shipbuilders in Hoorn around 1594. It was designed as long & narrow with an extreme incline from the waterline to give it a narrow deck thus reducing the taxes levied on it in the Baltic where deck measurements were the critical measure. As well as the salt trade in the Baltic the design was useful in the East India trade about to develop. The Waeckende Boey was 30 metres long 6.6 metres wide and 3.3 metres depth in the hold. The Emeloordt was a galliot a fishing vessel design used for whaling and as a merchantman. The Emeloordt was probably around 22 metres long and of beam 5 metres with a cargo capacity of about 60 tonnes. Each carried 6 months provisions for the voyage.

The captain of the Waeckende Boey seems to have been a difficult personality.

Abraham Leeman van Santwits was the first officer and navigator of Waeckend Boey and he and 13 sailors were marooned on an island off the coast while trying to find survivors of the Gilt Dragon. They ate seabirds and seals to survive and dug a small well from which surprisingly they obtained reasonably fresh water to drink. This island is believed to be the Green Islets.

28th March 1658 6th day since the boat had been sent ashore with 14 crew before a storm and the ship had sailed away. They sighted a sail, lit a fire and thought they were saved but next morning the ship had gone. Leeman urged his men to make repairs to the boat including a make shift sail of seal skins. On 8th April 1658 they began their voyage home to Batavia. About 11th April they were off the northern tip of Dirk Hartog Island having covered some 30 mile but the Java coast lay another 1000 miles or more north and Batavia at least 1500 sea miles away. The story is one of extreme thirst and deprivation weakness and death. On 19th April one man died – the same day that the Waeckende Boey and the Emeloordt anchored safely at Batavia 22 days after the Waeckende Boey had sailed away from the men who had lit their signal fires on Green Islets. On 28th April they made landfall in Java on a hostile coast. 7 crew deserted here after a good drink of fresh water leaving Leeman with 3 men. The boat was wrecked and and they had to walk around the coast. However with fresh water and food a plenty they gathered strength as they went for about 5 weeks. Then conditions became more difficult and food scarce. Around end of June they were assisted by some Javanese natives and then held hostage for a time before the VOC (Dutch East India Co) negotiated their release and return to Batavia on 23rd September almost 6 months after being left by their captain.

Impact on the Future of Wedge & Grey

Your vote next Saturday could influence our future at Wedge and Grey. Potentially, there are 10,000 votes associated with Wedge and 3,500 with Grey. Read the information below, inform your network of family and friends who have an interest in Wedge/Grey and cast your votes accordingly.

Political Commitment Sought

WIPA and GCCA jointly sought the following commitment from the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party for the next term of government.

“The (ALP/LibP) is committed to continuing the role of the Wedge & Grey Task Force created to ‘… examine policies, legislation and associated resolution practices regarding shack communities in other states and jurisdictions, in order to determine the best way forward…’ in implementing management plans for the two reserves.

Further, the purpose of the Wedge & Grey Task Force is to investigate and make recommendations on how the shack communities could be integrated into such plans for the provision of upgraded recreation and tourist facilities, prior to any future EOI process being implemented.”
Responses

- The Liberal Party fully endorsed the above commitment via email on Friday 29th August 08.

- The Australian Labor Party committed via email on Wednesday 3rd September 08 to extend its 2005 promise and will continue the Task Force regarding the shack communities and the future of Wedge and Grey. They have not included the second paragraph (above).

History of Previous Political Commitments

2001 Election
- The WA Liberal government, through Cheryl Edwardes, declined to commit to a transition lease after the 30th June 2001 expiry, pending the outcome of CALM’s EOI process for development at Wedge & Grey
- The Australian Labor Party committed to extending leases pending completion of the Lancelin – Cervantes Road or commencement of development on site
- The ALP won the election and leases were extended till 30th June 2011
2005 Election
- The ALP committed to creating a Task Force involving Ministers for Environment, Planning & Infrastructure, Heritage and Tourism to examine what happened in other states before any future EOI was commenced
- The ALP won the election but the Task Force only met 28th July 2008 and no outcomes produced. Was due to meet again mid-late September 08

Exercise your vote wisely – Wedge and Grey depend on you

Has begun and with it an increase in activity at Grey. This newsletter contains excellent and timely information concerning fire and bush safety. Plus a report on the fabulous work that Peter Sheppard has planned, sourced and executed on rehabilitating the southern dune. If you can access the web, check out the progress made on the Southern Dune page and more detailed safety information on our web site: www.grey.asn.au The committee of Grey would like to extend seasons greetings and wish all a prosperous new year in 2008. Happy shacking.

21 Year Lease? Do not be fooled!

A very persistent rumor has been circulating that we are to be given a 21 year lease. The rumor reached the point of belief that a proposal is sitting on Mr Myercourts desk. We regret having to tell you that THIS IS NOT TRUE. The man himself when questioned by one of our committee stated that:  “he has NOT told people we are getting a 21 year lease but that we are pushing for a 21 year lease based on the leases granted in Tasmania”. He claims “people hear what they want to hear and that it is just wishful thinking at this stage but we and Wedge Island have proven we can be quite persuasive in the past and it is expected we will be lobbying strongly in 2010 to get extensions to the existing
lease which expires in 2011”.

However, you can rest assured that DEC will fight to the bitter end to ensure that we are eradicated and without political command to allow us to stay, we will be demolished. Your committee remains dedicated to ensuring the settlements continued existence and will pursue every avenue open to us. The current aim of your committee is not as Mr Myer court states. We are still looking at a number of proposals and a 21 year lease is amongst them. Politicians hold the key to our survival. It is they (Everyone Henderson in particular ) who created the six year plan so many years ago.
It is they who have amended it to create our current lease arrangements. Throughout the whole negations DEC has steadfastly resisted any proposal for any extension of our stay. There is no indication that they will not continue to do so.