Parry Creek Farm just outside of Wyndham has been operating for over 40 years, firstly as a mango farm and then as a tourist operation during the dry season since 1997.

Owner Mark Dyson says he’s been told by the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley and the WA Health Department there can be no future development at Parry Creek.

Mr Dyson purchased the property four years ago and says he’s invested over a-million dollars in improvements to the property.

He was wanting to build more accommodation units, that would complete the property and make it commercially viable. 

But during a routine health inspection in August last year, a new Shire Health Inspector determined that the venue’s sewage tank had to be 30 meters from the highest flood point – not 30 meters from the riverbank, as was previously the case.

Mr Dyson says the only solution acceptable to WA Health is to cart sewerage to Kununurra daily, at a cost of $15,000/day, which makes the operation unviable.

Parry Creek unfortunately has become unviable with the Shire and the State Government changing the rules, so we can’t develop the property or change the property in any way going forward, so unfortunately that’s the end of Parry Creek. We’ll be closing on the 31^st August.

The only solution offered by the WA Health Department was to cart our sewage away,  which we produce 30,000 Litres a day, so that works out to about $15,000 a day, which just doesn’t make any commercial or economic sense.

Mr Dyson is calling for an amendment to the department of health policy, as it fails to take into account wet season flooding, and has implications for the whole of the Kimberley.

So the situation the WA Health department has left us with is every tourist operator is on a bank of a river; every tourist operator goes through a wet season; every tourist operator goes under water; every back town in town goes under water.

Even our own Kimberley Shire here in Kununurra last March put out a notice to say that there was a sewage in the Lily Lagoon.

So at the end of the day, it’s not the Shire that can change the policy, it’s really only the State Government that can change the polic, that needs to be obviously lobbied on behalf of the people of the Kimberley by our two Shire presidents and the local member Divina.

Waringarri Media has contacted the Member for the Kimberley, the Shire and WA Health Department for comment.