We had another idyllic day today and made pretty good use of it, taking our expected 4WD track drive.
The Captain Fawcett track commemorates one of the early pioneers of the district, Captain Theo Fawcett. He held large amounts of land at Pinjarra but realised that he would need heavier land as well. He also took up land near Marradong (on the other side of the Darling Range), and then displayed remarkable bush skills by making his journey directly home through the bush, blazing his way as he went to show the way for his workers. His blazed track is now the present road between Marradong and Dwellingup that we drove on today.
The commemorative trail starts quite some distance South East of Dwellingup and runs through an area of the Lane Poole Conservation Reserve. Much of it runs along old rail embankments where the trains once hauled timber, but as we found today, the old trestle rail bridges which we were looking forward to seeing no longer exist. No doubt the last bushfire destroyed them.
As we entered the forest track at the start of the trail the signs of bushfire were very evident. New growth of palms and xanthorrea was very green among the dark burned wood. Small bright tufts of bright red and lime green shoots were shining translucent in the sunlight as we navigated the excellent route directions on our brochure and the large mud holes along the way.
The Murray River ran alongside us for the first 15-20 km of the track, before we turned up into drier country.
Somewhere in there Trev checked the tyres while I took photos of the impressive grass trees, and found the front left down quite a bit. So we took a brief break and used the compressor to pump it up again. It went fine after that, so we are not sure about the cause.
Approximately 40km (and 2 hours) later we turned out of the native bush onto a dirt road which soon became a bitumen road, and decided not to bother with the rest of the route, which appeared to follow the black top for the majority of the way. The track is published as 115km long, but it seems that only this 40km or so stretch (and possibly a little at the end) is actually 4WD. After 1 hr, and only 20km we had been wondering how on earth the track was going to take us about 3 to 4 hours! The bitumen bit explained that.
We crossed over the rather interesting conveyor belt carrying produce between the large Huntley Bauxite Mine to the Pinjarra refinery and then crossed back under it a few more km along the road after we had headed back towards home. It is pretty noisy.
On the way towards home we pulled in on a lovely old bush track to have our lunch and then took a short look at the tourist railway station (and sculpture) at Dwellingup.
The late afternoon and evening were passed very happily up in Perth catching up with cousin Tim, cousin John and his good wife Lou, and Aunty Joc, who fussed over us and fed us too much good food. We never have long enough with these rellies, so it was a pity to say goodnight and head back towards Mandurah.
We forgot to get a photo of the relatives, sorry.
The Captain Fawcett track commemorates one of the early pioneers of the district, Captain Theo Fawcett. He held large amounts of land at Pinjarra but realised that he would need heavier land as well. He also took up land near Marradong (on the other side of the Darling Range), and then displayed remarkable bush skills by making his journey directly home through the bush, blazing his way as he went to show the way for his workers. His blazed track is now the present road between Marradong and Dwellingup that we drove on today.
The commemorative trail starts quite some distance South East of Dwellingup and runs through an area of the Lane Poole Conservation Reserve. Much of it runs along old rail embankments where the trains once hauled timber, but as we found today, the old trestle rail bridges which we were looking forward to seeing no longer exist. No doubt the last bushfire destroyed them.
As we entered the forest track at the start of the trail the signs of bushfire were very evident. New growth of palms and xanthorrea was very green among the dark burned wood. Small bright tufts of bright red and lime green shoots were shining translucent in the sunlight as we navigated the excellent route directions on our brochure and the large mud holes along the way.
The Murray River ran alongside us for the first 15-20 km of the track, before we turned up into drier country.
Somewhere in there Trev checked the tyres while I took photos of the impressive grass trees, and found the front left down quite a bit. So we took a brief break and used the compressor to pump it up again. It went fine after that, so we are not sure about the cause.
Approximately 40km (and 2 hours) later we turned out of the native bush onto a dirt road which soon became a bitumen road, and decided not to bother with the rest of the route, which appeared to follow the black top for the majority of the way. The track is published as 115km long, but it seems that only this 40km or so stretch (and possibly a little at the end) is actually 4WD. After 1 hr, and only 20km we had been wondering how on earth the track was going to take us about 3 to 4 hours! The bitumen bit explained that.
We crossed over the rather interesting conveyor belt carrying produce between the large Huntley Bauxite Mine to the Pinjarra refinery and then crossed back under it a few more km along the road after we had headed back towards home. It is pretty noisy.
On the way towards home we pulled in on a lovely old bush track to have our lunch and then took a short look at the tourist railway station (and sculpture) at Dwellingup.
The late afternoon and evening were passed very happily up in Perth catching up with cousin Tim, cousin John and his good wife Lou, and Aunty Joc, who fussed over us and fed us too much good food. We never have long enough with these rellies, so it was a pity to say goodnight and head back towards Mandurah.
We forgot to get a photo of the relatives, sorry.
No comments:
Post a Comment