Outback stock route helped forge WA's pastoral empires

At 1500 kilometres, the De Grey-Mullewa Stock Route is also one of the nation's longest.

Even though the route navigated some of the driest and most inhospitable country in the nation, it is believed to have been used by more livestock than all other routes combined in WA.

The De Grey stock route could only be used by the drovers after 55 government wells were dug along its route.

At its peak, the stock route carried more than 130,000 sheep annually.

The more famous Canning Stock Route to the north in the Kimberley is the world's longest at 1850km with about the same number of wells.

The De Grey track takes on what most thought impossible, leading stock from Mullewah - just west of Geraldton on the mid-west coast to just east of the De Grey River, near Port Hedland.

The stock route was pioneered by the hardy explorer E.T. Hooley in 1866 and was formally defined by survey in 1893.

It became part of a WA stock route network founded in 1905 to foster that state's livestock industry.

Much of the track has been lost to the passing of time other than the amazing wells dug by hand which made the route through this arid landscape possible.

A series of 55 wells were sunk by the government under the guidance of Charles Straker about 20km apart - roughly a day's journey for drovers using the route at the time.

Importantly the route linked the vast pastoral properties of the Murchison, Pilbara and the Gascoyne areas to markets in the south-west, notably Perth.

"The stock route played a significant role in opening up and sustaining the development of the northern districts for pastoralism from the late 1860s," the heritage listing reads.

"It demonstrates the great number of stock that were being driven to Mullewa and taken from there either as livestock or meat to the metropolitan region and the eastern Goldfields, and how important this was to the state."

The WA government offered a bounty in 1864 to the first person to drive 100 head of horses or 200 sheep from below the Tropic of Capricorn to the north.

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The reward was free rent on 100,000 acres of pastoral land in that largely unexplored north.

E.T. Hooley took up the challenge and overlanded sheep to his leases on the Fortescue River at the second attempt.

A coastal route was rejected because of the scarcity of water and the presence of poisonous plants.

Hooley's lease later became Minderoo Station in the Pilbara when it was taken up by the Forrest brothers in 1878.

Mining magnate Twiggy Forrest grew up on Minderoo and returned the historic station to family ownership in 2009.

Some of the restored wells form part of Geraldton's tourist drive, which retraces the route from Mullewa to the Greenough River Crossing.

The 102-kilometre drive, named, The Old Stock Route Trail, was developed as part of Australia's Bicentennial celebrations in 1988.