Farmers on the Ord at the Kununurra Museum

On Friday June 1st, the Kununurra Historical Society will be hosting the last of three Friday Open Nights with displays at the museum and utlilising new technologies online , to share and show the significance of tropical agriculture on the Ord River.

There are displays at the museum about the Carlton Reach Experimental Farm (1941), the later established joint CSIRO/WA Dept of Agriculture Facility, the Kimberley Research Station (1946) and the Ord River Pilot Farm (1961) which was operational by the end of 1960, three years before the completion of the Ord River Diversion Dam.  The Pilot Farm was started as a means of testing the commercial viability of the Ord River Irrigation Area, and was started by an Act of the WA Parliament called the Northern Developments Act.

Digital slideshows will be running on large screens at the museum or view over 2000 images available online, which have been made accessible to all, in documenting the significance of the National Development Project for tropical agriculture and helping to interpret life in the Kimberley over the last century