Such Was Life: Groupies

The Group Settlement Scheme was launched by the Western Australian Government with a fanfare. It was promoted interstate and in Britain with glossy ads promising poor and weary post-war families a chance to start afresh in the south-west of Western Australia. They were promised tools, livestock and economic independence. The plan involved placing the families in groups who would work together to clear the land, build homes, develop dairy farms and establish thriving communities. But, as Ian Osborne in Denmark, Richard Allen in Bridgetown and Stephanie Piper of the Busselton Historical Society explain, the reality the Groupies faced was very, very different.

Promised materials were not supplied, gigantic karri trees were difficult to clear and there was virtually no supporting infrastructure. And in the Denmark area the cause of a mysterious “wasting disease” that killed the livestock was only discovered long after the Scheme had ceased too operate. Within a few years most of the Groupies had walked off their farms. The lives of the Groupies in the Denmark area were captured in a series of remarkable photographs by Bert Saw and preserved in the museum of the Denmark Historical Society.