Take a trip back in time to Gogo Station in the '60s

Originally established in 1885 and encompassing a vast 1,750,000 acres, Gogo Station – also known as Margaret Downs – is located on Gooniyandi country just south of Fitzroy Crossing.

Referred to as one of the Kimberley’s most productive cattle stations, it was also home to the Gogo “Cave School” – the first ever station school in Western Australia.

We’re taking a look back at what life on Gogo Station would have been like in the 1960s thanks to the very excellent State Library of Western Australia Facebook page – a treasure trove of WA’s most intriguing history!

Cultural sensitivity warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this page contains content that may be culturally sensitive, and may contain images and names of people now deceased.

*Aerial photograph of Gogo Station, ca.1962-1963.*

*Gogo Station’s former homestead turned teacher’s residence, 1962.*

*Gogo Station cattle being mustered on the Fitzroy River, ca.1960s.*

The station was owned by the Emanuel family: alongside the Duracks, Isadore Emanuel was one of the first pastoralists to bring cattle into northern WA – and at the time of Gogo’s establishment, the Emanuels were the largest leaseholders in the region.

From the ’50s, Isadore’s grandson Tim Emanuel (pictured below) was in control of the family’s four stations: Gogo, Christmas Creek, Cherrabun and Meda. (The original station had to be dissolved into three separate properties following the Land Act that limited holdings up to one million acres.)

*Tim Emanuel at the Gogo Station hangar, ca.1962-1963.*

The station’s school was established in 1957, with Education Department District Superintendent Bill Rourke choosing the caves as potential classrooms when the shed he was initially shown was unbearably hot.

Cut into the limestone Parmarrjarti Hills, the caves are former air raid shelters and vehicle storage from World War 2 – four metres wide and in parts barely tall enough for an adult to stand, a concrete floor and an electric light was installed, while a spinifex shelter added more shade at the front of one of the caves.

The first teachers were Cyril Burcham and his wife Gladys, who had graduated from college just three years prior and had been working at the Fitzroy Crossing mission school – while the first students comprised of a cohort of 20 children ranging in age from 6-17 years old.

*The entire school population in front of the caves, April 1962.*

The establishment of the school meant that the children of the Pamarrjarti people who came to live on Gogo Station could attend school on country, rather than at a mission school – although the station school still had a Christian curriculum that was based on English literacy instead of traditional languages or culture. Photos from the ’60s also showed the school still had close ties to missions, with visits from the Ernest Faulkner, Superintendent of the Fitzroy Crossing UAM (United Aborigines Mission), and Lois and Bruce Godwin from Mowanjum Mission.

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*Ernest Faulkner, Superintendent of the Fitzroy Crossing UAM (United Aborigines Mission), his wife Helen, twins Susan and Helen and Percy Beharrel, Gogo Station School, 1962.*

*Lois and Bruce Godwin (with hat) from Mowanjum Mission on a visit to Gogo Station, with pilot Richard Roberton of Aerial Enterprises and Brian Hassell, ca.1962-1963.*

*Gogo Station School children wearing Christmas hats, 1962.*

*Parents inspecting student work on display in the bough shed, ca.1962-1963.*

1962 was a year of change of Gogo Station School, with the appointment of 24 year old teacher Brian Hassell, previously based in Port Hedland, as Headmaster. His wife Noela would join the teaching staff in the following year, when student numbers increased – she was also the photographer of many of these images, taken mostly over their first years at the station.

*Noela Hassell and who is believed to be Sandy Shaw (Gogo Station’s head stockman), outside the teacher’s residence, ca.1962*.

Gogo Station School, Brian Hassell standing in front of the chook pen, 1962. — *Brian Hassell standing in front of the chook pen, 1962.*

1962 was also the year that the school officially moved from the caves into a single classroom 400 metres away – the same site that Bayulu School now sits.

But most importantly, 1962 would be the year that the Commonwealth Electoral Act gave all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to vote – although it wouldn’t be until 1984 that they were given equal standing to other voters and required to enrol and vote in elections.