Greetings fellow Foxies,
There have been changes at Railway Dam that deserve a follow-up to the
January 2014 blog.
These include the information bay, the recently installed memorial to World War 2 immigrants who are now an integral part of Narrogin, and my rediscovery of the abandoned Archibald Park jet boat course.
At great expense to the management I have created two walking trails in the reserve. The Dam Walk (white 650 metres 20 minutes), and the Archibald Park Walk (red 1200 metres 40 minutes).

When the first steam train passed through Narrogin from Beverley to Albany in 1899, it was a hamlet with few people. However within 30 years, Narrogin was a bustling town with the largest train junction outside of Perth. Over a third of Narrogin’s population were directly dependent on railway employment, and many sports had at least one railways team. These days are long gone.
Steam locomotives require large amounts of fresh water Built in 1912, Railway Dam was the third local water source (after the Narrogin Pool, and then a dam, both of which were near the now derelict railway station). This was only for railway use, and the town remained critically short of water until a pipeline from the Wellington dam at Collie was constructed in 1954

As land surrounding the dam was gradually cleared for agriculture, increasing salinity led to the construction of the spaghetti-like system of drains to separate fresh and saline inflows. The drains and weirs originally started up near Graham road. A weir and a separator on the south western edge of the reserve also redirected fresh (blue), or saline (purple) water to either the dam or the disposal drain that bypasses the dam. Where they crossed the saline channel went underneath the fresh channel.

A memorial and associated information commemorates a remarkable time in the 1950’s when European immigrants came from displaced persons camps to Australia. In return for free transport, they were required to spend 2 years working for the government. Conditions in the camps established to the south and west of Railway Dam were hard with no running water or sewerage. My friend John Zabajnik recalled that his family was lucky as they had a sleeper floor in their tent, while most coped with bare ground.
Many of these people obtained their own house, and remained in Narrogin to become leading citizens.

The file below contains a fascinating account of the times and these resilient people.

In 1992 a jet boat course was excavated on the northern side of Railway Dam. Twice a year, water was pumped into the circuit from the dam for a time trial event. Public interest rapidly waned and it was abandoned after a couple of years. Nature is gradually reclaiming the course that hopefully will become an ephemeral wetland.

A rush-covered mildly saline area between Railway Dam and Federal Street is a haven for tent-web and St Andrews Cross spiders (both harmless) that becomes an amazing spider city panorama on dewy mornings.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
                                      Have you ever noticed small concrete and stone squares with remnants of fireplaces, drains etc scattered through the bush around the Williams Road exit from the Marri picnic area? They were probably no more than one room shacks, . It has been suggested that the huts were for post World War 2 eastern European migrants, or water supply construction workers. My WW2 immigrant mate John Z  assures me that they only had tents on bare earth or sleepers until they got a house. (Interestingly this largely accounts for the lack of evidence of these remarkable times apart from residents with names ending with ik ic ich and ych. There is a great story here.
I think that the inhabitants were construction workers for the Bottle Creek dam that was built in 1922. The dam was built after  the burning of the Hordern Hotel and another business caused an demand for a reliable water supply and a fire brigade.
 Before 1954, Narrogin was chronically short of fresh water. The Narrogin Observer regularly reported water restrictions, and I found a great 1945 Daily News headline  ‘More beer in Narrogin than water’.