Extract from ABC News
Donkeys pull a car across the Ord River in the East Kimberley in 1926. (Supplied: Alan Sloan courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
Nuggety little donkeys were essential beasts of burden in Western Australia's north early last century, transporting goods and pulling huge loads across vast, rugged distances.
But within a few decades, thousands of donkeys would be shot and left to rot, or the meat squashed into cans for consumption.
A donkey team outside the Wyndham Hotel, in far north Western Australia, in 1925. (Supplied: Frank Bunney courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
When 83-year-old Fred Russ was a child growing up on the isolated Gibb River Station, 2,000 kilometres north of Perth, he loved giving pet donkey Honey a cuddle and feed of bread he pinched from the kitchen.
"They were wonderful animals; a wonderful work animal, very docile. We used to ride them as kids," he said.
"I can't speak more highly of them."
Donkeys were used for decades at Gibb River, a cattle property without roads or suitable vehicles.
He has vivid memories of a team of seven donkeys pulling a hand-hewn wooden wagon built by his father, Fred Russ Senior.
Fred Russ Senior built a wooden wagon at Mt Elizabeth Station to haul firewood, which was pulled by seven donkeys. (Supplied: William Wright courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
"The wooden wagon my father made had wheels about 2 feet [0.6 metres] wide cut from four big local trees, with a hole in the middle chiselled out," Mr Russ said.
"It didn't run along smoothly, but the donkeys carted wood for the station, two-by-two and one in the shaft."
Mr Russ said horses were at a premium throughout the 1940s and 50s, and sure-footed donkeys laden with freight would go where neither horse nor vehicle would venture.
Donkeys were like semitrailers
Donkeys were used as pack animals for stock camps during the mustering season and ploughed paddocks for peanuts at Karunjie, Mt Elizabeth and Sale River.
Michael Gugeri and Fred Russ say donkeys were hardworking and docile animals. (Supplied: Gabby Gugeri)
"They opened up this country," Michael Gugeri, 87, said.
"Donkeys are only little, so it's just a matter of numbers to pull those loads."
Wool, such as these bales walked into Broome in the 1920s, was an important commodity. (Supplied: State Library of Western Australia)
Teamsters and their donkeys were the original semitrailer trucks in regional WA, hauling food, furniture, farm machinery, building and fencing materials in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The animals even lugged critical scientific gear for Einstein's Theory of Relativity experiment at 80 Mile Beach, south of Broome, in 1922.
It was only a "matter of numbers" for the little donkeys to pull enormous loads. (Supplied: Clement Durham courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
Newspapers reported in September 1916 that the biggest load of wool ever hauled in WA was brought to the Day Dawn Railway Station from Noondie Station, in the Murchison.
The wagon of 61 bales of wool weighed 10.5 tonnes and was pulled by 29 donkeys over 150km.
"In the late 1920s, the Derby-Fitzroy Crossing mailman would switch from a motor vehicle to mules in the wet season," West Australian historian Cathie Clement said.
Donkeys pull a car through the Fitzroy River in 1939. (Supplied: State Library of Western Australia)
Dr Clement said new arrivals stepping ashore in the 1930s and 40s found their trip inland often involved mules, while prospectors rode their donkeys across the Goldfields and Murchison until the 1950s.
Horses weren't used to haul freight because they were at a premium in the Kimberley for work on cattle stations. (Supplied: Lindsay Le Lievre)
Derby resident Lindsay Le Lievre grew up on Leopold Downs in the 1950s and became a stockman in his teens.
"Donkey teams and wagons would get over the King Leopold Ranges," he said.
That rugged set of ranges cut through the West Kimberley, and a rough road through the hills was only finished in 1967.
Donkeys and their handlers were used in areas with difficult terrain, like the sands of the Fitzroy River in 1920. (Supplied: Samuel Rea courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
"They were very good on rocks, sure-footed and wouldn't fall. They could walk very fast," the 78-year-old said.
When the workhorse turned into a pest
By the 1960s, the three Kimberley stockmen were faced with an unenviable task.
"We used to go out on a run to check bores and windmills and see 30 or 40 and we'd shoot them. Everyone did,"Mr Le Lievre said.
The doughty and once-essential animal had become a pest in the thousands after being let loose from stations.
"Donkeys were everywhere, even when we were on Luluigui [Station] back in the late 1940s. Donkeys were a menace then," Mr Gugeri said.
"They were a nuisance on the road, too, because you kept hitting them."
The donkeys were usurped by improvements to roads, including the Gibb River Road being built, and an increase in trucks and four-wheel drives.
Michael Gugeri became a truck driver in the 1960s and says donkeys were a "nuisance on the roads". (Supplied: Michael Gugeri)
"They bred like proverbial flies," Mr Russ said.
Mr Russ said the Agriculture Protection Board culled 5,000 donkeys on Gibb River Station within two years in the 1980s.
Kimberley Rangelands Biosecurity Association (KRBA) data shows more than half a million donkeys have been culled since 1978.
KRBA estimates the region's current population is 5,000, and to completely eradicate them would cost nearly $4 million.
Pastoralists managing feral animals in the West Pilbara shot more than 5,600 donkeys from helicopters between 2017 and 2020.
The Gibb River Road was built in the 1960s for cattle trucks and remained notoriously rough for decades. (ABC Kimberley: Vanessa Mills)
"It's fragile country. We used to shoot as many as we could," Mr Russ said.
Donkeys would "muck up waterholes", "keep cattle away from springs" and eat grass; the same damage cattle and horses caused, only the difference was the value of the animal had plunged.
"I used to hate going to shoot the donkeys because they'd remind you of the ones we used to have," Mr Russ said.
"Just imagine how many carcasses would have rotted away. What a waste of meat."
Donkey in a can
Putting Kimberley donkeys into a can was the idea of Charlie Telford, a concrete worker, who took up the abandoned Mt Hart Station lease as a 63-year-old in 1962.
Mr Russ remembers the rudimentary factory, near the Mt Hart and Gibb River Road junctions, being made from concrete and called Telfoods.
Mr Gugeri last visited the site in 1962 and still recalls the mincers on steel benches, stacks of unused cans on shelves and large wire racks to dry the meat.
"There wouldn't have been refrigeration. It would've attracted a lot of blowflies," he said.
The dried meat was pressed into 4-litre cans, and the lid was soldered on.
Abandoned stock yards at Mt Hart, near the short-lived donkey canning factory on the Gibb River Road. (ABC Kimberley: Vanessa Mills)
Mr Telford apparently took samples to Singapore, although it is unclear if Telfoods was targeting the human or pet food market.
The venture was short-lived.
A state heritage listing for the factory site said the WA Health Department soon closed the plant because it "did not meet international export health requirements".
Charlie Telford sold Mt Hart in 1967, and the Telfoods Donkey Canning factory began to decay.
"A man was stuck there in the wet [season] and had to resort to opening one of these tins up," Mr Gugeri recalled.
"I believe it wasn't very palatable. They soaked it, boiled it, but nothing they did could make it very interesting."
The Gibb River Road was built for cattle trucks to use, but one creek crossing retains a link to donkeys. (ABC Kimberley: Vanessa Mills)
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