Gerry and Jennifer headed to Murchison early to do some pre-tripping. We spent Friday checking out the trip in drizzling rain. The inhabitants of the Murchison Caravan Park were delighted with the rain. Some of the tracks were filled with water and the splashes brought up muddy water onto the car and wind-screen. The rest of the convoy arrived late on Friday and were able to set up.
On Saturday the convoy visited the Murchison cemetery. This was extremely interesting. There are no regular headstones, just massive boulders on which you can attach a plaque. There were quite a few unused boulders. The layout was in a series of circu-lar sections so that you meandered along paths through the bush to each section.
We then headed off to Wooleen Station for a visit. Their café produced some nice coffee and an interest-ing range of cakes. Most of us took a 2½ km walk on a set trail. Pam did get worried about the sign for King Browns. There were the glass versions lying around not the reptilian type. There was an interesting dead car section and trees were labelled.
After Wooleen we headed to Woolgarong Station. This has been destocked and taken over by the government. On the way there we had extremely heavy rain and nearly missed the turnoff track. There was a sign to say that the track is not maintained so some of the drive was quite soft and wet. Trackcare was at the station just finishing off re-roofing the shearers quarters. It took three days to replace beams and re-roof this building. The Metters No. 6 stove had been cleaned and it was pumping out a fair amount of heat from its fire box when we arrived. The “store room” still had its crockery, cutlery and cooking utensils, still intact (extremely dusty!). After a quick lunch and a look around, we headed back to the track.
There were some mini devil’s marbles on this track, then we headed back north, stopping at the Ballinyoo bridge on the way home, admiring the history of both the new and the old bridges.
Some of us investigated a section of the old bridge which is situated just to the north – near a geo-cache, which Gerry found.
After this long day on the road, we sat around the camp-fire with wood pro-vided by Markus. We also played a chocolate game that Anita organ-ised. A lot of laughs and hard work to get one piece of chocolate.
On Sunday, we headed out to Er-rabiddy bluff. On the way we visited the original out-camp and tried to work out the layout of the hut – only a very decrepit chimney remains. The plaque there reminded us of how hard life was when this camp was running.
At the bluff the “mountain goats” in the party took off up the way Markus thought was the medium way. Markus, Paul, Graeme, Pam and Anita made it to the top. Those at the car park could only see tiny dots moving around. They found a different way down. The return trip took 1½ hours. We then drove up the neighbouring hill which had a barbecue at the top, placed there by the local council. From there we could see a long way to the south and watch the bull and cows walking down the road. The barbecue was ingenious, with a basket for the fire that you raised up to the hot plate. All tools were supplied but all the removable parts were chained on.
We continued up the track north towards the Butchers Track. The road was a lot drier than Friday’s pre-trip. The track had a variety of road surfaces and it kept drivers on the alert. We turned west into Butch-ers Track which had some very soft sandy sections and followed that for quite a few kilometres and then turned north to the deserted Muggon Station homestead. The track north had a few slightly tricky sec-tions.
The homestead had been deserted for some time. Two of the rooms had slate floors, the machinery shed had wooden containers for screws etc – all carefully labelled (Imperial measurements). There were solar panels provided by Telstra but the connection box was empty.
The trip back to camp was by the quickest way possible. It was pleasant to sit around the campfire and play with our phones to see if we could get any photos of the aurora, however we were too far north to see it.
Monday saw Markus, Paul, Pam and Graham set off for home at 7.45 am with Gerry, Jennifer, Anita and Anthony leaving about an hour later. We all managed to get home safely that evening.