The Canning Basin of Western Australia

Abstract

With its centre at approximately long. 1240 E., lat. 200 S. (or iooo miles north of Perth, the State capital) there exists in Western Australia a huge, virtually uninhabited region. Its features consist of scattered, table-top hills and almost universal sandhills and, since the initial penetration by Colonel Warburton in 1873, it has received probably less attention than any other portion of inland Australia. Its potential as an oil-bearing area has, however, excited some interest since 1922 when the Locke Oil Syndicate made a cursory examination But it has taken the discovery of flow oil at Rough Range near the North West Cape, during November 1953, to rouse interest in the thorough determination of the geology of this region, whose centre (for practical purposes) has been taken as Joanna Spring. region has recently been renamed The Canning Basin after the late Surveyor-General of Western Australia, A. W. Canning, and the name is particu? larly appropriate for it is already commemorated in the Canning Stock Route, laid down by Canning during 1908-9-10 for more than 700 miles from Wiluna to Halls Creek. object of this venture was to stimulate the movement of cattle from Kimberleys to the nearest railhead at Wiluna, and thence to the metro? politan markets in Perth and on the Goldfields. Every 15 to 20 miles Canning sank wells and equipped them with troughing and windlasses, either by opening up existing wells sunk by aboriginals or by putting down bores. stock route was gazetted as being 5 miles wide. During 1911 drovers began to move cattle down the route from Kimberleys, the first to do so being Thompson and Shoesmith; they, alas, were attacked by blacks and murdered at No. 37 Well, known to the tribesmen as Libral. T. Cole, following a few days behind them, found their bodies, and then went on south. He reached Wiluna six months after starting, with the beasts in excellent condition, and suffered only one or two losses. But since then the equipment of the stock route has fallen into decay, being used hardly at all, and then principally during the recent war when a few drovers moved cattle south as the Japanese were bombing the Kimberley cattle boats en route to Perth. Thus Canning's original intention, to provide an alternative way to move cattle south, instead of by sea, was again proved practical. Today a subsidiary of California-Texas and Australian Motorists Petrol Com? pany, the West Australian Petroleum Co. Ltd. (briefly known as Wapet), holds an oil-prospecting permit (No. 30H) over an area of 151,000 square miles within the Canning Basin, and for a short way beyond the coastline. From Mount Blaze, on the coast, the boundary of this permit runs to its south-east corner at 230 47' S. and i25?23,E.; thence north-east to I9?45'S. and 1280 20'E. (where it turns towards the coast), and ends at 160 7' S. and 1220 47' E. in the Buccaneer Archipelago. huge area of the Canning Basin, about 210,000 square miles, may be described with comparative simplicity, being a region of few mountains and of universal sandhills. Its elevation varies from nil at the Eighty Mile Beach between Broome and Port Hedland, to 1080 feet at the base of the Southesk Tablelands