Ord River Catchment Regeneration Reserve Cairn - WA

The cairn commemorates some 80 staff of the Department of Agriculture WA (now DAFWA) who, between 1960 and 1998, worked on the Ord River Catchment Regeneration Project. The cone shaped cairn was built out of local limestone flagstones. Construction of the cairn was approved and partly funded by DAFWA and the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

It is located on the Duncan Road near where the five houses and workshops of the project’s headquarters stood from 1962 until being completely demolished in 1998.

The project, the largest in Australia’s rangelands, aimed to revegetate bare, severely degraded and eroded parts of the Ord River catchment in order to minimise siltation of Lake Argyle, which provides water to the Kununurra irrigation area. Decades of excessive uncontrolled grazing by cattle between the late 1880s and 1950s were responsible for the degradation.

The project area, which is now called the Ord River Regeneration Reserve, is managed by the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

It initially covered about 10 000 square kilmetres of the total area of the catchment of Lake Argyle of 46 000 square kilometres. It extended about 215 kilometres from north to south and included parts of Mistake Creek Station in the north, all of Ord River and Turner stations and parts of Flora Valley and other stations in the south.