Three songs about THE CANNING STOCK ROUTE   [Western Australia : Wiluna to Halls Creek ]

This route was pioneered by Surveyor-Explorer, Alfred Canning and his team, between 1906-1910, to enable a droving track for cattle from the Kimberley down to Southern markets, and the dry, dusty desert conditions of which would remove the Cattle Ticks evident on sea-shipped bovines.
Alfred took all the requirements to push this almost 1900km track on the backs of camels and 48 of the final 51 wells were dug and boarded with native Desert Oak timber, at intervals along the way. Many of these esssential water sources have fallen into disrepair, but gradually, some are being restored for modern day travellers.   
The CSR crossed 3 deserts and more than 15 Aboriginal language groups and their important cultural landscape. There were claims that Canning & Co had mistreated the local Aborigines who were forced to assist the construction team, but these were dismissed bcoz “All explorers behave in this manner” ……   
However, the CSR was only used sporadically for its intended purpose (just 35 drives between 1911 - 1959), until the modern penchant for adventuring, from around the mid 60s.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning_Stock_Route

There are plenty of vidclips on YT from over the last 15+ years, of tough Aussie blokes in couples or convoys, pitting themselves and their well-kitted 4WD Rigs, against what is said to be one of the longest, most remote and difficult tracks in the world. And only two small settlements along the way that may – or may not – provide whatever you forgot or ran short of!!

I chose, however, to link to one from 1986 by well-known (well-known to we BabyBoomers!!) outback adventurer, Malcolm Roberts :    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-mXGF-Hcyg
And also one from 2012 (which comes highly recommended by YT Commenters) of Gavin Foreman & Summer Wilms (Foreman & Wilms Adventures) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmTgP7Lchc0
Both clips not only show the tackling of the numerous infamous sand dunes along the way, and using the wells, plus the abandoned vehicle wrecks and pioneer graves, but also fabulous wildlife segments (esp birdlife) and beautiful Aboriginal waterholes at the rock outcrops, and more.   
But if you want another slant, which also has some great photography, esp. of the rugged track, salt lakes, and their experiences (including corrugations damage and welding failures), try Peter & Sven Zalums’ (Griniflix - Adventure8) trip up the CSR in 2017 after a recent cyclone – the first sibling holiday for the Latvian brothers in 70 years and Sven had never before been camping nor 4W driving!!! (and interesting that most of the fellow travellers they met appeared to be European!) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZt8lPXaKik

Or fancy Walking the CSR??!! The online story of Murray Rankin’s 3 attempts in the early 70s to walk the Route, seems to have gone, apart from this : https://westtravelclub.com.au/stories/walking-the-canning-stock-route
However, here is a blog of Terry Bolland’s CSR walk-trek taken from his walk-run-cycle-kayak journey around Australia. : https://terrybolland.wordpress.com/canning-stock-route-walk/      It blew me away bcoz of the frequency of noisy vehicles passing him (so much for enjoying the solitude), but also due to the 750 beer cans he picked up along the track on his journey – and this was back in 1990!!! :(

ENJOY!

R-J



#1   END OF THE CANNING STOCK ROUTE

Peter Muir & David Kirkpatrick (aka Slim Dusty)

The camp gear's in the storeroom, all the packs are in the shed
With the dust of seven summers on their hide
Saddle straps are hard and brittle, stirrup irons are rusty red
For the Canning Stock Route finished when Wally Dowling* died
No more cattle travel southward through the spinifex and sand
All the wells are falling in along the track
Now the Canning’s but a legend, just a lonely desert land
And it's doubtful if the Munjongs* want it back.

Eight hundred miles of sandhills, now and then a sandstone ridge
With a salt lake here and there with samphire flat
An oasis in the desert you can find at Durba Springs
Bubbling, running water, it's a fact
But unless you own a camel, you could never travel there
And a horse would fail now the wells have fallen in
For the sandhills of the Canning reach a hundred feet or more
And it's certain that no car could take you in.

The famous 'Never Never' and the place they call 'Outback'
Two elusive lands that few men ever found
Are located on the Canning, down that lonely desert track
Where to be this very moment would be worth a thousand pound
To be with Wally Dowling, whipping water from the well
While the stockmen hold the mob back from the trough
Stop the thirsty bullocks trampling in their great desire to drink
Just to do one trip would suit me well enough.

But my wish is just a daydream which can never be fulfilled
For when Wally died, the stock route had its day
Now the Billiluna cattle, are travelling down to Broome
In a roaring, diesel roadtrain to the meatworks by the bay
And the tick line stops the others, every station in the north
No one may use the Canning if he would
So they truck their beef to Wyndham and sell for what it's worth
And I doubt they'd use the Canning if they could.

It's really had its day now and won't be used again
No more drovers’ horse bells ringin' will be heard
For the cattle-loaded roadtrain, smothered in its diesel fumes
Now struggles up the rise in lower third
When I travel up the Canning, I am sure to be alone
With my camels and some thoughts of yesterday
They will take me slowly northward, 'til at last the trip is done
And find contentment when I've stowed the packs away.

The camp gear's in the storeroom, all the packs are in the shed
With the dust of seven summers on their hide
Saddle straps are hard and brittle, stirrup irons are rusty red
For the Canning Stock Route finished when Wally Dowling died …..

* Munjon : believed to be a Kimberley word for a wild (bush) aborigine ……
* Wally Dowling was possibly the best-known drover along the route; by all accounts a strong man, a hard man, but who died in 1959 from influenza and the droving along with him…..   
Most of the Drovers were Aboriginal, rarely named or recorded and when paid, it was “in kind”. Most were women, and many were used….. https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/19412/Yiwarra-Kuju-droving.pdf
https://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s2018935.htm    So there’s an Aboriginal side to the CSR story too, that has only just begun to be told.



#2   THE CANNING STOCK ROUTE

Bob Emery

From Wiluna to Halls Creek is 900 miles
A wilderness of spinifex and sand
The men who sunk the wells, had their troubles and their trials
They opened up this outback desert land.

In nineteen hundred and six, Alf Canning took his team
At 26, the best man in the land
With a hundred tons of cargo, a camel team as well
For two long years they worked this desert land.

Tommy Windich was a native guide who knew the territory
And Windich Springs, his monument through time
Great pools of flowing water, he found to their delight
Sundowner parrots led him to this prize.

Dust and sand and stoney desert, Canning and his team push on
Bringing up artesian water, from. way. down. below.

52 wells later, Alf Canning he returned,
And said to guv’nor “well, the job is done”
Now to get those cattle moving, they’re waiting in the north
A water track now spans the desert lands.

Hare wallabies jumped in sheer surprise, the mala it was stunned
To see the cattle moving through the scrub
The parrots and the kangaroo rats who had to share the land
With a thousand head of cattle as they passed.

Dust and sand and stoney desert, Canning and his team push on
Bringing up artesian water, from. way. down. below.

Well the roadway to the north and the trucks that shake the night
Do the job those drovers did so well
And the mighty Canning Stock Route is forgotten all too soon
And the men who built and rode it are all gone.

From Wiluna to Halls Creek is 900 miles
A wilderness of spinifex and sand
The men who sunk the wells had their troubles and their trials
They opened up this outback desert land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfqQ-rCE9uk   FIDDLER’S GREEN BUSH BAND



#3      There was a Mudcat thread /mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=109469 from 2008 where the OP wanted a WA song by “The Westerner” about the Canning Stock Route and which he used to have on an old tape.
He gave the chorus as below, BUT, I have not found it online ….

“Coming down the Canning we sing the cattle song
Farewell to Kimberly move the mob along
Its early in the morning we give the whip salute
Coming down the Canning on the old stock route”

HOWEVER! Turns out this is another of the songs by Lloyd G. Montgomery (aka Sandgroper), which came to light amongst a folder of compositions sent in May 1970 to Dale Dengate of the Bush Music Club in Sydney!!
https://blog.bushmusic.org.au/2018/07/moondyne-joe-and-other-sandgroper.html#gsc.tab=0


Here are Lloyd’s lyrics :

CANNING STOCK ROUTE

Lloyd G. Montgomery

We’ll meet the cattle at “The Creek”, the drover said, y’know
Then off to leave the Kimberley, Wiluna-way to go
Like Canning-of-the-Outback, a desert man to be –
We’ll take the Track together, my brumby mate an’ me.

We stumble in the spinifex, ‘til over in the haze
Big Sandy looms across the world, beyond the breakaways –
We ride the Devil’s Switchback, to Waddawalla ‘Hole
Then help to raise the water, with the whipstick pole.

We find the grave at Haunting Well, beside a desert oak
And fight the blacks along the way, to reach Karrara Soak –
From Durba by the Salt Lake, we give the hides a boot
And rush ‘em through the poison, on the old Stock Route.

At Well Eleven, by the Fort, we light the drover’s lamp
To talk of ‘Tracks and Cattle Kings, around the cattle camp
Then onward in the day-dawn, the stoney plain to see –
We ride across the desert, my brumby mate an’ me.

Chorus :
Coming down the Canning, we sing the cattle song
Farewell to Kimberley, boot the beef along
From early in the morning, we make the whip salute
Coming down the Canning, on the old Stock Route.

Lloyd notes on the score that the melody is a variant of a Traditional air (possibly Scottish?)

So, has anyone found a recording of this song??


R-J