(wiliamherron)

Tommy Corrigan and I passed through the Wanarra boundary, and started our decent down the path the flash flood had taken thirteen years before. We could see where it swept down the now dry watercourse to the flat below: spreading from some eighty metres to finish in a crescent shape a few hundred metres wide. There was still a long string of debris that the flood had carried before it, like a bulldozer.
Scrub, about one and half metres high, regrowing in the flood path, contrasted with the height of the old surrounding bush. We could see clearly the path where the flash flood had been its most destructive.
Not yet twelve, I listened to every word Tommy said, as the ponies plodded on down the dry watercourse-

Around mid March 1927, the out-camp man on Wanarra was having a mug of tea and a smoke before turning in for the night. Torrential rain drummed on the corrugated iron hut for most of the day. Massive thunderheads had built up just before sunset, and a thunderous cloudbank moved across the gold mine and town of Rothesay three miles or so away, as night closed in. He stood in the darkness and watched an awesome sight, the wildest electrical storm he had ever seen.
Slowly it worked east of him unloading huge amounts of water on the already water logged bushland. When the rain started again at the out-camp, he went inside and fell asleep, an hour later with the storm still raging.
To the east of the camp, flashes of lightning showed rough stony hills. The whole area awash with sheets of running water. Each little gully and water course building on the next, until it grew, taking before it dry logs and sticks.
The freak conditions released a cloud burst: in fifteen minutes the whole area was funnelled into the main watercourse.

It rose by the second, six, eight feet in places. Roaring down the gully carrying logs and sticks ahead onto the flats. In the black of night it swept on through the out-camp.
Warriedar had 138.4 mm on the 23.3.1927 and Warridah had 136.7mm on the 21.3.1927 so there could have been other large falls as well that were not recorded.

Breezes stir the bowgada scrub
York gums nod and sway
Sheep may graze across the mound
That is a stockman's grave.
No cross, no name at the head of the mound
Only little white stones surround
The fading scars on the bushland tell
How this stockman drowned
Bush bird makes her warning call
Mallee Hen scampers away
Horseman looks down with curious stare
At the stockman's grave
I passed the grave when just a boy
With imagination wild I saw
Nature's savage wrath in fire and storm
Claim a good man's life, what for?
Her cruelest trick was played
On one so brave and strong
In an avalanche of sound one night
A heartbeat, his life was gone
In nature's ageless plan of time
Nature took what nature gave
Upon this mound no tears fall
It's just a stockman's grave
Four wheel drive grinds throught the scrub
Stops near the mound
Prospector thoughtfully rubs his chin
'Yes', there's little white stones surround
Irishman's grave was hard to find
Who cared or of any mind
Very few, perhaps two or three
With curious interest in history
Young man kneels with hat in hand
If only a chance had been given
To know the sleeper beneath the mound
To meet Grandfather, whilst still living
Old wooden cross no name, if there ever was
Same little white stones surround
The scars are gone, no longer tell
How this stockman drowned.

.ЕЕЕЕЕЕ..By Trevor Tilka.

On the 30-3-1927 buried, assumed cause of death was by drowning.
Three witnesses of the burial.
An impression of the tragic event by Trevor Tilka.

William Heron born 1862, died 1927.

Acknowledgement to the Perenjori Tourist and Museum Committee, 6620, WA

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