In 1950s Australia, anything seemed possible in the outback — provided you could throw enough concrete and steel at it.
A hospital in the desert 2,000 kilometres north of Perth? Let's build one.
A 23,000-hectare rice farm on a flood plain? Of course, we can.
A town where there is nothing? Sure.
With the endless optimism that seemed to come with the 1950s and '60s society, big things were built using plenty of money, government backing, and immigrant or Aboriginal labour.
But many dreams were short-lived and what was abandoned has since slipped back into the Kimberley region's bush.
A grandiose cropping scheme
The flood plains of the Fitzroy River south-east of Derby once hosted sheep on Liveringa Station.
In 1952, the former Western Australian department of agriculture, and private company Northern Developments, embarked on experimental crop trials on land excised from the station.
Dam infrastructure, irrigation channels and pumping stations were built by the former public works department along Uralla Creek, an offshoot of the Fitzroy River.
Rice, sorghum, wheat, oats, linseed, cotton and legumes were planted over the next 30 years.
A bustling township — Camballin — was built to house the farm's workforce with a school, shop, outdoor cinema, mechanics and caravan park.
The crops failed — plagued by birds, insects, weeds, management and money issues.
After successive floods from the Fitzroy River, which could spread 32km wide, a 17-km-long levee was built in 1980.
The levee failed spectacularly in the floods of 1983 and wiped out a $20-million sorghum operation.
The remains of the irrigation scheme litter the bush for hectares along Uralla Creek, including large pumping engines, water tanks, concrete channels, neatly paved embankments and broken levees overgrown with trees.
On the edge of the desert
Talgarno was a military base on the coast south of Broome created in 1958 to monitor experimental British Blue Streak rockets fired from South Australia.
The base, excised out of Anna Plains pastoral station, had all the mod-cons a 1950s society might need for 1,000 soldiers and scientists, including single and married quarters, air conditioning, a cinema, swimming pool and hospital.
A grand opening was held on July 4, 1959, when caviar, wine and what was labelled a "glut of delicacies" were flown in by then federal supply minister Sir Alan Hulme.
But just one year later it was all but defunct, as defence policy changed and British taxpayers baulked at the millions being spent in the Australian desert.
The state heritage-listed ruins mostly include the old hospital and mundane infrastructure still embedded with local sand and shell.
The Commonwealth auctioned off all of Talgarno in 1964, and pastoralists, builders and hoteliers carted away everything from filing cabinets to roofs.
The old military base is now only home to the desert wind and cattle.
