We finally had our women’s week walk, after having to postpone the original due to bad weather.
The day started out as our coldest so far this year, but the sun was shining as we drove out to the start of the track and our spirits lifted further when we found the badly potholed start of the Boboyan Road had been freshly graded.
Seven women plus 2 hangers-on got ourselves organised and set off for Brayshaw’s hut, about 100m from the parking area. This area is former pastoral land and is a mixture of cleared areas and natural bush. Brayshaw’s hut dates from 1903. When we look these huts now, it’s hard to picture them as isolated homes for people who were born, lived and died there.
We left Brayshaw’s and followed a track that led through native woodland, nothing special but really pleasant, with an easy track until we came out to an open area and stopped for a break. It is the site of an old sheepyard, and as we were doing the ‘short loop’ we were due to cut across the paddock to meet the return track on the other side. However, it was a nice day and was good walking, so there was a unanimous decision to carry on and walk to full track.
More woodland walking, and we very soon saw our next destination as the land opened out. This was Waterhole Hut, which was not bult as a home but as a basic shelter for bush workers in 1939. There were 2 other walkers looking at the hut as we arrived, appeared to be young men, but they moved on quite smartly, probably scared off seeing a mob of women approaching them. We checked out the hut and the nearby stockyards, saw our first wildlife as some timid kangaroos took off.
A fire trail passes beside this hut, and the next section of the walk was along this trail. For once it was dry, so no need to make minor detours to try to avoid getting feet wet. We soon reached a point where we could look across to see where we had stopped for morning tea, then continues as the trail wound up and down through bushland until the next hut appeared.
Westerman’s Homestead (a fancy name for a fairly basic hut) was built in 1916, however, settlers had lived in this area since about 1880. We had lunch and explored the area. Up on a hillside is a grave site, originally for an unnamed infant from the early settlers, then in the 1920s for an adult sister of the infant who died of TB. They couldn’t get her to a cemetery because of floods, so put her body in a box made from ceiling boards and buried her beside the infant. The grave is fenced off and a bit overgrown, deserves a bit of weeding and pruning.
After Westerman’s we left the fire trail and followed another woodland track back to the start. All in all we only did about 6km, and we had enough energy left to cross the road to check out the remains of the Tin Dish School, what was the local school, though there’s nothing much there except a plaque and what looks like the remains of a rock chimney.
All in all a pleasant few hours walking through a reminder of pastoral life not much more than a century ago, and feeling thankful to the organisations that preserve this recent history. The walk was a success as a special event to encourage bushwalking, as the party only included 2 members of the club. Perhaps we need more of them.
