Greetings fellow Foxies,

By chance I was shown an old image titled “Booran Pool” that features three boys with one astride a sheep or dog, on a pool/crossing that resembles Rocky Crossing/Kunderning Pool.
A bit of research led to a small reserve containing a granite shelf across the creek – the Booran Pool crossing. It is another link in the chain of pools that were essential stops on the earliest trail from Perth/Williams that connected settlements at Narrakine Gully and Wolwolling Pool. They were also vital for Noongars, shepherds and sandalwood transporters. A few homesteaders had quite large grazing leases in the district, and employed shepherds to tend flocks of sheep that grazed in natural grassland. Shepherds   (Noongars, free settlers, and ticket of leave convicts) lived a hard and lonely life in the bush, returning to the homesteads only at shearing. Before shearing, sheep had to be washed (apparently a terrible job) in pools of water.

​There was even a Booran Pool cricket team!
The pool is on the edge of the Dumberning estate grazing lease, which was progressively converted to freehold farms. Here is a 1910 image of a picnic group at the pool.

I was lucky enough to visit nearby ruins on private land. Two houses once stood here. The more recent is now two fine chimneys and a water tank. Nearby is an almost melted mud batt cottage and the skeleton of a wooden barn that would have had a bush thatch roof. The jewels at this site are two Sunshine harvesters adjoining a massive fig tree. It was pretty hot when I visited, but so cool under the fig. Early farms were almost self-sufficient. Besides sheep farming, farmers sold pigs, fruit, dairy products, hay and grain, and often collected sandalwood and brown mallet bark in hard times.

Edith Darby who lived here wrote "My father Kenneth Darby purchased this property consisting of 429 acres in April  1946 and farmed it until December 1959.  It was purchased from Jack (John?) Stevens.  From O. Pustkuchen's records it seems his father, also John, had property  further north (up on the rise). 
We lived in the mud batt house until the timber framed/asbestos house was completed in about July 1954.  There was a well very close to the rear of the batt house on which Dad erected a windmill and overhead tank.  Unfortunately after a number of years the water became too salty for the poultry and garden. 
When we moved to the new house Dad had a dam just north of this house enlarged.  Dad removed the well windmill and re-erected it on this dam for the house garden.  He erected an overhead tank close to this house.  I don't know who built the batt house. It had no ceilings in the 5 rooms.
There were a couple of bough sheds/stables/chaff room then Dad erected an iron shed for machinery and shearing.   He put in the sheep dip by the yards. I seem to remember another "dip"  in the creek immediately due west of these sheds where there was bit of  a stone "causeway"/crossing and a rather deep pool." ( Booran Pool?).
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Below is a link to a folder of images of the ruins in Google Photos.
Click on the first image after opening the link  https://photos.app.goo.gl/QMBfrVQgf0ilHpB32

Greetings fellow Foxies,
Last August I was lucky enough to visit this remarkable place between Narrogin and Williams after heavy rain. This was a vital all-weather crossing over the Williams River on private land that provided access from the Williams area settlement.
Picture the district in the early 19th century when the major settlements were at Albany and Perth with the latter struggling to survive. The discovery of good grazing land in the Avon Valley led to a profitable wool industry, but native pastures were soon grazed out. Shepherds with small mobs of sheep, sandalwood cutters, and kangaroo shooters ventured into the bush, often ahead of the explorers. This was tough country with a variable climate and travellers moved along valleys in search of reliable water and good grazing country (York gum/Jam loams), and avoiding poison pea plants that would kill livestock. Settlers could apply for a 60 acre freehold block (usually near water) and a 500 acre grazing lease.
Their progress was greatly increased by Noongars who led them to the best water, sandalwood and grazing areas (perhaps they thought that Europeans were spirits of their departed ancestors). A sad legacy of this generosity was a progressive loss of their water supplies and grazing land, and mass deaths from exotic diseases.
By 1855 Williams was a settlement on the convict-built Perth/Albany road with another townsite a few kilometres to the east called Crossman that had soldiers’ barracks and an Anglican church.
A few miles upstream, Rocky Crossing provided all weather access north- east to Moorumbine, and to the east via Gnarogin pool. (Narrogin and Cuballing towns were yet to be surveyed).
The map in Google photos of land holdings in 1894 shows how early travellers moved and settled along river valleys from one water source (blue square) to another. The blue dotted line is my guestimate of the 1855 tracks from Rocky Crossing.

The crossing itself is a geological oddity consisting of a granite outcrop in the river that has split horizontally below the surface to form an underground cavern through which river water passes leaving intact granite above as a crossing for people, animals and horse drawn vehicles.
The cavern becomes smaller at the outlet, causing columns of pressurised water to well up in the (Kunderning) pool.
I revisited the site recently and even climbed in the tunnel to check its size, hoping that a snake wouldn’t grab me in my effort to report to my readers. I survived.

The original shack of the first owner Jack Dyson is long gone, but the remains of a very sturdy replacement (early 1900s?) stand proud. Houses really were well built in those days, with pressed tin ceilings local rock walls and lovely American redwood doors and surrounds. Great pity that it is slowly deteriorating. At some time the house was used as a grain storage shed and a tally of barley bags sown for transport is in a doorway.
This is a link to a Relevant Google Photos album https://photos.app.goo.gl/VeFq2HW5uxQ39eqb2