Ruby Plains Station is a

pastoral lease A pastoral lease, sometimes called a pastoral run, is an arrangement used in both Australia and New Zealand where government-owned Crown land is leased out to Pastoral farming, graziers for the purpose of livestock grazing on rangelands. Austral ...

and cattle station located about south of Halls Creek in the

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia Queensland * Kimberley, Queensland, a coastal locality in the Shire of Douglas South Australia * County of Kimberley, a cadastral unit in South Australia Ta ...

region of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. It is situated along the Tanami Track and is used as a stopping place along the

Canning Stock Route The Canning Stock Route is a track that runs from Halls Creek, Western Australia, Halls Creek in the Kimberley (Western Australia), Kimberley region of Western Australia to Wiluna, Western Australia, Wiluna in the Mid West (Western Australia), ...

. Ruby Plains and the Sturt Creek Outstation covers an area of . Sturt Creek alone covers .

History

The station was established some time prior to 1900. In 1900 the property was owned by Messrs Cahill and Button. Button found some small nuggets of gold by accident not far from the homestead while on his way home. The value of his find was about £100. By 1901 the station was carrying about 700 head of cattle. The area has a tropical climate and often receives high rainfall during the monsoon. In March 1904 the station recorded just under of rain in 45 minutes. Two men named Shellie and Hansen struck

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

while drilling for water at Ruby Plains in 1931. Gold was found at a depth of about and the two men lodged a claim shortly after at Halls Creek. An Aboriginal woman named Judy was murdered at Ruby Plains by another Aboriginal woman named Topsy in 1944. In 2008 it was placed on the market and passed in at auction for A$38 million. S. Kidman & Co. were hoping to attract a price of A$44 million.

James Darcy

James "Jimmy" Darcy was a stockman at Ruby Plains who fell from his horse while mustering cattle in 1917. The seriously injured Darcy was transported by buggy for 12 hours to Halls Creek for treatment, despite there being no hospital or doctor in town. The

postmaster A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...

, Mr Tuckett, telegraphed Perth using

Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...

for advice and was told the stockman had a ruptured

bladder The bladder () is a hollow organ in humans and other vertebrates that stores urine from the kidneys. In placental mammals, urine enters the bladder via the ureters and exits via the urethra during urination. In humans, the bladder is a distens ...

and would need to be operated on immediately. With no medical instruments or

anaesthetic An anesthetic (American English) or anaesthetic (British English; see spelling differences) is a drug used to induce anesthesia ⁠— ⁠in other words, to result in a temporary loss of sensation or awareness. They may be divided into t ...

, Tuckett operated while being advised by Dr Holland; the operation took seven hours to complete. The following day complications set in, and it became essential that a doctor come to the town. By this stage Darcy's plight had caught the imagination of the Australian public who were avidly following the story. Holland made his way to

Derby Derby ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area on the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire is named after Derby, which was its original co ...

on a cattle boat and was driven the final to Halls Creek by T-Model Ford and a horse and silky, only to find that Darcy had died the day before he arrived. This event was what inspired John Flynn to establish the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

References

External links

* {{Stations of Sidney Kidman Stations in the Kimberley (Western Australia)

History

James Darcy

See also

References

External links