Dadanawa Ranch

The Dadanawa Ranch, also known as Melville's Ranch, is located on the Rupununi River in the Rupununi savannah in the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo Region of Guyana. It is the largest and most isolated cattle ranch in Guyana. The ranch covers an area of approximately 2,000 square miles (5,000 km²).

Location

The preferred means of travel in the Dadanawa area is by jeep. It takes about 3.5 hours to drive from Lethem to Dadanawa in the dry season, and as much as 3 days in the wet season.

Ranch workers or vaqueros, are local, sometimes barefoot cowboys, who skillfully herd cattle or even working to keep them safe from the jaguars.

Nature-loving tourists often use Dadanawa as a base for journeys into the nearby Kanuku Mountains, or looking at Amerindian paintings and petroglyphs near the Rupununi River, or observing the Harpy Eagle in the rainforest.

The Dadanawa Ranch is one of the most remote ranches in the world, covering in excess of 2,000 square miles (5,000 km²) of tropical savannah containing about 28,000 head of cattle. It is located on the Rupununi River in the South Rupununi Savannahs, in the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo Region of Guyana at 2°50′N 59°31′W. It is one of the largest and most isolated cattle ranches in the world.

History

The name "Dadanawa" is a distortion of the local Wapishanan Amerindian name of a near mountain, Dadinauwau, or "macaw spirit creek hill".

Dadanawa started out as a trading post by a man of the name DeRooie about 1865 and was sold with 300 head of cattle in the late 1880s to H.P.C. Melville, an adventurous gold prospector from Barbados who found himself lost and near-dead of malaria in the area several years before. The ranch was sold to investors and established as the Rupununi Development Company in 1919.

Workers

Though most people of the ranch area get around by foot, bicycle, bullock cart and saddle, the preferred means of travel in the Dadanawa area is by 4x4 vehicle. It takes about 3.5 hours to drive from Lethem, the border town with Brasil, to Dadanawa in the dry season, fording one river. It will take as much as 3 days in the rainy season, that lasts from Easter weekend to the end of September.

Ranch cowboys are called "Vacqueros", a mostly local and almost always a barefoot mix of local Amerindians, who skillfully handle the cattle. Most of these cattle are nearly wild animals, who rarely encounter people in the remote and distant spaces they roam. Cowboy boots are rare and most saddles are hand made. All lassos are plaited by hand from locally tanned hides in the cool hours of the mornings. The ranch supports over 120 people in the main compound including the direct and greater extended families of the manager and staff, some of which extend for 4 generations. The ranch area also includes villages of local indigenous peoples that when finished their employment with the Rupununi Development Company, started their own family legacies within a day's return journey of the main Dadanawa compound and store.

Harry E Turner

Harry E Turner was an English ex-cavalry officer who said that he had ridden in the last British army cavalry charge, in the middle East, during the First World War. He was the manager of Dadanawa in 1965 as he had been for many years before, a magnificent^{[citation needed]}, white haired man who still rode cow ponies and who retired to England that year.

Coordinates: 2°50′N 59°31′W / 2.833°N 59.517°W / 2.833; -59.517

References

The Rupununi Development Company Limited -The Early History, 1972, *Turner, Harry E.