Naming

There is no clarity on the naming of Ninety Mile Tank and there may be more validity in the name Kumarl Tank (see below). The tank is about 90 miles from Norseman but whether the name was derived from this cannot be stated with any confidence.

Two Tanks

From the date ‘1940’ etched into the footings of the Ninety Mile Tank it is surmised that it was constructed in that year. Bush historian Alan McCall recorded (2021) that the year ‘1940’ is etched into the footings of the tank, as is the name ‘Kumarl Tank’. Kumarl is on the Coolgardie Esperance Highway in the vicinity of Salmon Gums.

Local information is that Ninety Mile Tank, along with another tank 40 kilometres NW (at -32.52594 120.2942) was built as a water supply for farmers and their stock to escape to the East because of a likely invasion by the Japanese into Western Australia during WWII. Or, depending on who was relating the story, they werre built during WWII to provide water on an alternate route into WA in the event of the main roads being bombed. Note: the only ‘main road’ into Western during WWII was built in 1942. It was known as the East West Road, later to become the Eyre Highway.

Information from local historian, Kevin Penny, is that the roof of the sister tank to the north-west was stolen and placed onto the Five Head Stamp Battery shed at Hatters Hill in the mid-1940s.

Farming Trials

In the late 1920s the nearly three million hectares of virgin land between Hyden and Salmon Gums were considered for settlement under the ‘3500 farms scheme’ because it constituted “practically the only large area of wheat lands in a. suitable climatic zone not then settled in Australia” (Teakle 1939).

At that time the sandy scrubplain soils were more a liability than an asset because methods of profitably farming the light soils had not then been evolved. These useless scrubplains merely increased the distances between patches of’ more fertile soils. The scheme for settlement was based mainly on the potential of the heavy woodland soils with limited use made of the clay based mallee soils on which yields quickly dropped off after a small number of’ cereal crops (which more recent experience suggests was simply due to nitrogen deficiency).

The woodland soils constitute only about 30 per cent of the total area and, of this, one third was considered to be unsuitable for normal cropping due to excess soil salt.

Despite the fact that only about 25 per cent of the total area was considered sound for intensive cereal cropping and an additional 20 per cent for extensive grazing, Teakle concluded that there seemed no reason from the standpoint of soils why settlement should not spread across the area in question should there be an economic urge for increased wheat and wool production after consolidation in settled areas.

Between the end of WWII and the mid-1960s until the introduction of wheat quotas there was a strong demand for all types of virgin agricultural land.

In the late 1950s strains of pasture legumes that could flourish on many of the sandy soils in dry areas were found and sowings increased. The price of fertiliser nitrogen dropped to a level at which its use on light land cereal crops was clearly profitable. These two factors, together with earlier discoveries of the need to apply copper and zinc, and high rates of phosphate fertilizers allowed scrubplain soils to be profitably farmed.

A number of farmers seeking to expand or to find farming land for their sons turned their attention to the vacant land between Hyden and Salmon Gums. The Department of Agriculture with the help of farmers groups from Hyden and Kondinin did many trials with cereals and pasture legumes each year between 1960 and 1967 in a. twenty acre plot of yellow loamy sand 76 kilometres east of Hyden.

The performances of the best varieties of cereals and pastures in these trials were highly satisfactory provided they were sown early with adequate fertiliser. Under these conditions the best wheat varieties averaged 1.1 tonnes/hectare and sufficient growth was made by the pastures in all years to support more than one sheep per hectare. An application of’ molybdenum markedly improved clover growth at this site.

In cooperation with the Meteorological Bureau and the Kondinin Shire rainfall records were obtained at the plots and another four gauges located as far as 160 kilometres east of Hyden. To 1970 the area between Hyden and 88 kilometres to the east received a similar rainfall to Hyden (long term average 466mm) dropping by 11mm over the next 30 km and then a sharper decline of 93mm over the next 40 km to the rather low estimated long term average of 362mm near Mount Roundtop.

The provision of stock water by conventional means in the stretches of scrubplain, which in some places cover patches of several thousand hectares, was considered to present a problem.

To obtain factual information on plant performance in a part of the area most distant from settled districts two new experimental sites were established in 1968 near the Ninety Mile Tank half way between Salmon Gums and Hyden. Rainfall figures collected there since 1963 suggested the long term average may be slighty more than 300mm with a flatter winter peak than Hyden but sharper than Salmon Gums.

Near the Ninety Mile Tank many of the major soils appear identical with those on the Salmon Gums Research Station or the plots east of Hyden. In addition, large areas of two soil types not prominent at these other places are found near the Ninety Mile Tank. These are the sands and gravelly sands which contain less fine material than the loamy sand at the east Hyden plots, and heavy brown soils which appear more similar to the heavy soils of the eastern wheatbelt than those at Salmon Gums. Experimental sites were located on each of these two types of soil. The results obtained in the trials at the Ninety Mile Tank and at Forrestania suggested the areas’ yield potential is similar to Hyden or Salmon Gums.

However, at the time the agricultural marketing situation was unfavourable for further agricultural expansion and the large productive capacity of the region would add to the problems were it developed. The land is undoubtedly valuable. The area is only 145 to 260 kilometres from the port of Esperance.

This text on Farming Trials precised from Gartrell (see Reference below).

 

 

REFERENCES

Gartrell, J W. (1968), Land Resource Evaluation – Ninety Mile Tank Report on Trials Conducted 1968, 1969 and 1970 By Plant Research Division and Wheat and Sheep Division. Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australia, Perth. Report.
https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/rqmsplant/21

PERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Alan McCall 7.10.2024
Kevin Penny 7.10.2024

 

© Kim Epton 2024

1144 words.

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