The Pera Bore Experiments

This is the unique story of two radical experiments on the same piece of ground on the red soil plains 20kms West of Bourke.
 
It’s 1887. Picture a cluster of burly, sunburnt men watching anxiously day after day as the bit of their American oil drill wound deeper and deeper into the red soil at the back of Bourke. Then, hats were thrown high with an exuberant shout as water from 300 metres below gushed fifty meters into the air. The American boring team had struck the Great Artesian Basin – 1.7 million square kms of life-giving liquid lying untapped beneath a fifth of the continent.
 
Ninety years later in 1978, I arrived at Pera Bore with my family – about 70 kms South of Kerribree Station where that dramatic first deep artesian well had gifted entrepreneur William Walter Davis ‘liquid gold’ to prosper his sheep station. Ahead of us lay an experiment that we hoped would prosper Australia. 

As we drove through the gate, a rusting steam engine, some iron fluming and a few date palms were the only vestiges left of the optimistic venture in agriculture begun at Pera Bore in 1895. At that time, overstocking, rabbits and a drought combined to shut down the big pastoral stations in the North West of NSW.
 
The original Pera Bore farm was a brave experiment to see what could be grown on artesian water. Over a period of 15 years, crops sourced from places as distant as Mexico, Canada and Algeria were planted by settlers on twenty acre lots. A community sprang up among the gidgea trees and saltbush, complete with a government homestead, school house and a sports field. They even boasted a cricket team.
 
But saline artesian water turned the red ground to cement and the promising plantings withered away. Agricultural science had no solutions and after a decade or so of determined effort, the Pera Bore experiment finished and the settlers moved away.

In the 1960’s, American farmers Owen Boone and Jack Buster began experimenting with irrigated cotton crops on the river flats of Fort Bourke Station and Darling Farms. In the late seventies, Laurie and Elvira MacIntosh and Robyn and myself discussed with them the idea of trialing a radical program that would help young people deepen and strengthen their Christian faith. Working on their farms would pay for the students' tuition and board.
 
I felt we were kindred spirits with the original Pera Bore pioneers when we started the Cornerstone Community on the same ground. We worked hard, lived in a simple community and drew students from all over the world. As we expected, the Outback provided tough physical, social and spiritual tests for their faith. Dedicated staff joined us to help mentor them and we began to see their lives produce hardy fruit.
 
We found that country towns all across the Eastern States were keen to offer our students an opportunity to help with youth work. So, in groups of five or six they completed a second year of training in 50 or more places, from the remote mining community of Dysart in Western Queensland, to Morwell in Gippsland. Staff from Bourke covered big miles supervising them.
 
The effort extended over nearly three decades, eventually involving several thousand staff and students. The experiment was repeated in Gidgee Lake, Emerald, Dalby, Broken Hill, Canowindra, Dubbo, Swan Hill and Suhum in Ghana.  By helping students drill deep into the great resources stored in biblical documents and the history of Christian enterprise, we saw ‘liquid gold’ surface and bring robust growth in many of their lives.
 
Pera Bore proved a rare adventure – heat, flies, dust, drought, flood, crop failure, abundant harvests, Western sunsets, dancing, singing, and volleyball combined with study, prayer, reflection and the challenges of community living. There’s been nothing quite like it in Australia.
 
Neither the earlier or the later experiment died. The innovative efforts of the original Pera Bore farm morphed into the Trangie Agricultural Station towards Dubbo. Around 2000, an extended drought and restrictions on the Darling River saw Cornerstone decide to shift from Bourke to other locations where it continues.
 
Today, hundreds of men and women will tell you sincerely that Cornerstone’s radical Pera Bore experiment remains a ‘sacred site’ – a significant reference point on their life journey. Although the campus and the buildings are abandoned, they have carried the seeds of that community away and planted them in unlikely locations around the globe.

Watercolour 1980, Rick Bardsley-Smith

Bourke 1979

Dubbo 2023