Prison Boab Tree (Hillgrove Lockup)

Someone once carved the words "Hillgrove Lockup" into this boab, clearly enough to read in a photograph taken around 1917 to 1925. Later visitors carved their own names over the top, and the lettering is now nearly gone, erased by the very habit that put it there. The story behind the words is that this hollow tree served as a lockup. Oral tradition says Aboriginal people used it first, then the early pastoralists, then the mounted police escorting prisoners between Derby and Wyndham. The historian Chris Dawson doubts the prison part, for a plain reason: written reports of it only begin in the 1910s. The carving is real and old. What it claims is less certain. The tree itself is not in doubt. The National Register of Big Trees lists it at 11.62 metres round and 14 metres tall, and a 1938 newspaper put it at nearly 40 feet in circumference at the hollow base, about 12 metres, so it has kept roughly the same waistline for most of a century. The shire's heritage inventory records it in good condition, with a top branch broken by lightning and damage from engraved names. Nobody has published a reliable age. If you know of one, tell us. It is not the better-known prison boab at Derby. This one stands beside King River Road south of Wyndham, a camping spot with water, reachable only by 4WD. Go in the dry season and check the road first.