To conclude our Family Camp at Nowanup this year, on Sunday morning several of the families paid a visit to Nightwell, a place of deep significance to local Noongar people.  Aunty Eliza Woods and her daughter Gillian shared their cultural stories of this extraordinary waterhole, while Bruce read the passage below from Ethel Hasell, one of the early settlers in the Jerramungup district.  It was a moving and peaceful way to end a weekend of cultural sharing and community celebration.

In spring 1878 Ethel Clifton married Albert Hassell and set off the same day with her new husband to travel 150 miles through the Chester Pass in the Stirling Ranges to a homestead at Jerramungup.  Along the way they camped at the sacred Noongar waterhole Kep-kai-wymburup (water come, water go), or Nightwell. 

"After leaving the Ranges, we drove all day over sand plains and low hills; the road the whole way was covered with wonderful wild flowers in masses of pink, yellow, white and blue.  The wild bush was flinging out her welcome to me bedecked with her floral wreaths, and rapidly weaving her spells which have never been really broken.

At last we came to our evening camping place:— The Night Well, one of Nature's wonders, alas no more, being destroyed by a party of ignorant surveyors.  Imagine as I saw it that early spring afternoon!  A large jumble of rocks near the bed of a branch of the Salt River coming in from the east; a pool of salt water and below the pool a cleft between two large sloping rocks.  When the river is in flood it flows over these rocks, and for a short time the water in this cleft was brackish, but it was drinkable, and not salt like the water in the river or the pool below.  When the river ceased to flow over the crack the water became quite fresh.  In the winter the water was often right up to the crack, but as soon as the hot weather set in, all the water went away in the day-time and returned again in the night.  When I got there at four o'clock in the afternoon, there was no water, not a gleam could be seen.  My husband said—"Wait till after sunset".  About half an hour after the sun had set, a rim of water appeared at the bottom of the crack like a moonbeam.  We let a billy down and got sufficient for our evening meal.  When it was finished we went again to the crack; the water had now risen so high that we were able to dip a bucket in and get sufficient for the horses.  By 9 o'clock it was up to the top, and I could have put my head down to drink had I so wished; so water was drawn for the morning meal and the horses.  I was so fascinated with this wonder that twice that night I got up and looked at it, but it did not overflow.

We rose at daybreak and about half an hour after sunrise the water had begun to fall, and when I looked at it just before starting it had fallen a foot.  I have visited this wonderful spring many times but it was always the same during the summer—no water in the day and plenty of a night. Unfortunately, some years ago, a party of surveyors were sent by the West Australian Government to survey and map out the country around this wonderful spring of fresh water.  After camping there about three months, and during that time their horses and camp had been supplied from this unfailing spring, orders were given to build a dam or catchment, but instead of doing this, the surveyor in charge decided to blast out the rocks, and in spite of the remonstrances of the settlers and carters who for many years used it, he did so.  The water disappeared, and nothing but dry rocks remained from what was the only recognised permanent fresh water on that road, and one of the most wonderful phenomena in nature."

from 'My Dusky Friends' by Ethel Hassell, written in the early 1900's