Obituaries Australia

Robert Bell Blay, n.d.

from Pastoral Review and Graziers' Record, 16 December 1955

On 2nd November 1955 Mr. Robert Morrow Bell Blay passed away at his home, Ellendale, in West Kimberley, Western Australia, at the age of 84.

He went to Western Australia from Victoria in 1900, and, accompanied by his wife, set out for the far north-west. For the first two years he worked on Argyle Station, the property of the late M. P. Durack, where he gained valuable experience before obtaining a property of his own. In 1903 he took up about 80,000 acres some 65 miles from Fitzroy Crossing and 110 miles from Derby, and named the property Ellendale in honour of his wife. For 20 years their home was of two rooms, built with walls and roof of native grass. Only once during that period did Mr. Blay and his wife make a trip south to Perth and, in fact, they visited that city three times only in 50 years, the last time in May 1950. However, Ellendale rewarded the enterprise of its founder, for today it is a successful sheep station with a plentiful supply of bore water for the stock and sufficient for domestic produce to be grown in abundance.

All those who knew him will regret the passing of Mr. Bell Blay—a pioneer pastoralist who loved the Kimberleys, in which he spent so much of his long life.