I’ve been putting off getting another post up for a while - for two reasons really. Firstly, we've done so much in the past couple of months and been so busy but mostly because Lawn Hill and surrounds is just so beautiful, I’m worried I won’t do it justice.
But like everything in life, once you make a start, it gets easier.
Jacqueline, the owner of Gipsy Plains had said she had a friend who was managing a cattle station up north with her husband, and they could do with a hand. The day we left, we spoke with Irene and agreed to meet up in Mount Isa later in the week to discuss things further. So we waved goodbye to our new friends at Gipsy and hit the road again.
We stocked up in Cloncurry and by mid-afternoon had arrived at Corella Dam. We went in with mixed thoughts - the reviews we’d heard and read were that it was a beautiful place, but it was also a busy one. We drove the few kilometres in and our hearts sank. Yes, it’s beautiful, but jamming yourselves in with the hoards is not our thing unless for a quick overnighter. There must have been 100 vans here and some had obviously been here for months. If you didn’t get a spot beside the water, you were camped in the dust up the spillway.
But we spied a gate off to the left and a track that lead over the hill and Wikicamps showed another campground on the other side. The road was a bit rough with washouts, but we took it slowly and arrived at a little piece of heaven. Down along the banks of the Corella Creek was a small campground, with only room for a few vans and we found a great spot. The birdlife was amazing and we enjoyed a peaceful couple of days chilling after our busy time at Gipsy, while the hoards were enjoying life by the dam.
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| Our camp on Corella Creek |
We moved a whole 17km up the road to our next camp at the old abandoned mining town of Mary Kathleen. This was the site of a uranium mine, which after production ceased in the 80’s, was auctioned off in its entirety. On the Easter weekend 1983, there was a huge auction and everything was sold. Robert, our host at Gipsy, bought one of the office buildings, which is still used on his property. The only things left now are concrete slabs of the old buildings, but armed with a map of how the town was set out, we wandered around and could imagine the place in busier times. There was a swimming pool, tennis courts, bowling club, town square, school and lots more community buildings and streets and streets of “houses”. You can camp anywhere that takes your fancy and a concrete slab of house made a great base for our awning.
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| The floor of the former ANZ bank at Mary Kathleen |
We also took a drive and walk up to the old mine site to see the hole left where they’d dug out the ore. The colour of the water is electric blue and looks so beautiful, but I’m sure would be so toxic. It hadn’t stopped some from swimming though, as we could see footprints up to the water’s edge. They’d be glowing in the dark after that dip.
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| The Mary Kathleen uranium mine |
We arrived in Mount Isa after a few days. We’d not been to this big mining town before and were blown away by the sight of the huge mine dominating the view of the town. It’s a large town which services the mine and the surrounding pastoral properties easily. There’s a fair bit to see and do, and it was the week before the world famous Mount Isa Rodeo, so the town was starting to hum.
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| The huge MIM mine dominates the skyline |
After meeting with Irene and hearing all about Lawn Hill Station, we were looking forward to the time that lay ahead and after a few days exploring “The Isa”, we were on our way north.
It was a big day of driving to reach the station, although it was only about 400km. The first half was bitumen and easy going, but the second half was unsealed, and rough. We came up through Riversleigh, the property which contains a world heritage-listed fossil site and which also forms part of Lawn Hill Station, past the turn off to Boodjamulla National Park and Adels Grove, and kept going another 20km or so and arrived to work at Lawn Hill & Riversleigh Pastoral Holding Company in the late afternoon.
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| Station boundary |
This is where I feel I’m going to struggle, but here goes.
What met us was the most amazing place. We came past the cattle yards and up a steep rise and drove through the homestead complex. As well as the main homestead, which Mike and Irene occupy, there’s a large kitchen building with a communal dining room, where everyone eats their meals (routine - breakfast - 6.30am, smoko - 9.30am, lunch - 12.30pm and dinner - 6.30pm). Surrounding these buildings are staff quarters, guest cabins, offices, machinery sheds , a helipad and a large tropical garden full of cluster figs and frangipanis.
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| The homestead on the bluff |
But the real show-stopper is the view. The homestead is built on the edge of a bluff and you find yourself looking out over the Lawn Hill Creek, stretching away from you, and the valley that falls between you and the Constance Range in the background. The Constance Range forms the western boundary of this 1.7 million acre property and has wonderful rocky escarpments of rich limestone and sandstone which glow in different colours depending on the time of day. The valley is savannah grassland, but the creek is lined with wonderful eucalypts and cabbage palms and the birdlife is prolific. Several times a day I would find myself drawn to the bluff just to look. And the view stretches away into the distance, north to the gulf and west to the Barkly Tablelands.
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| The Constance Range at sunrise |
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| Constance from the air |
Lawn Hill Station has had an interesting past. It was once owned by Frank Hann, the famous pastoralist, and formed part of the droving route from the west. While exploring part of the property we found the grave of a policeman, Alfred Wavell who was killed by the bushranger Joe Flick during this time. You can read the account here - The Lawn Hill Tragedy Not far from his grave is the graves of two aboriginals who fell during those events showed the colourful history the property had.
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| Policemans grave |
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| "A good gin was Jenny" |
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| "A faithful boy was Nym" |
More recent history shows the property owned by Sebastiao Maia, a Brazilian cattle king, who built the current homestead and lived, by all accounts, an excessive lifestyle, with visiting celebrities and lots of beautiful women. He took over the lease of Lawn Hill in 1976 and the property grew to become one of the largest cattle stations in Queensland. In 1984 Maia surrendered12,200 square kilometres of Lawn Hill Station for a national park, which included the famous Lawn Hill Gorge and which is now called Boodjamulla.
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| The huge Century mine on Lawn Hill |
Zinc, lead and copper were discovered on the property and it was bought by a mining company, and while the mine still operates in a corner of the property, a landmark decision saw 49% ownership of it handed back to the Waanyi people. The Waanyi are the running water people of the area, now mostly found around Doomadgee, Mount Isa and Camooweal. There is a board of governors made up of representatives of the Waanyi and the mine, and the long term goal is eventually for the Waanyi to have 100% ownership. They now have a controlling 51%.
All the workers on the station, except for the managers and ourselves and one of the cooks, are from the Waanyi people and its mission is to provide employment, training and advancement for them. This doesn’t come without it’s challenges, but there’s currently a team of ringers (stockmen), bore men, grader drivers, cooks and a fencing team all living and working at Lawn Hill and Riversleigh, working the 40,000 head of cattle.
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| Andrew, our head stockman |
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| Mustering through the creek |
We were employed with a very loose brief - really just to help out with anything that needed doing, so the variety of our work over the six weeks we were there was huge. I was cleaning, gardening, helping out in the kitchen, delivering and collecting the mail from the weekly mail plane, helping in the office and cleaning windows. Doug’s work included tree work, gardening, feeding stock, tractor driving, lots of irrigation work and maintenance and getting Bella camp ready for occupation.
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| The end of a long day at Bella |
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| The donkey for the hot water at Bella |
Because the property is so huge, the men were travelling big distances each day, trucking their horses, to muster cattle in the northern country of Lawn Hill, and coming home again each night. An old camp in the north, in Bella paddock, was being restored to be usable again. It needed a fair bit of structural work…….and a lot of cleaning, but after a few weeks, we had it ready for them moving in. The men were so excited to be going out to Bella; they loved being in the bush - cooking on the fire and sleeping on stretchers and swags under the stars, but it meant the homestead was quieter after they’d left with only the grader driver, fencers and bore men left. They came to visit us a couple of times a week - well…..they came more to visit the station store to get their soft drink and baccy really!!
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| Cool, green Lawn Hill Creek |
We worked Monday to Friday each week which left us the weekends to explore Lawn Hill and surrounds. We were fortunate that, as employees, we could travel anywhere on the property we chose and found some beautiful out-of-the-way places; creek crossings with sandy picnic spots under huge paperbark trees, groves of palms and beautiful mountain ranges. We just took off and followed the GPS to find new and interesting and above all, beautiful places. The Constance Range , Edith Range and the Caroline Range run through Lawn Hill and each showed us breathtaking scenery in their own different ways.
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| Sunset drinks in the afternoon looking out over the ranges |
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| The view from Riversleigh hill |
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| Maia's tribute to his parents |
We drove tracks which were mostly across lightly wooded savannah grasslands, and of course we crossed plenty of small dry watercourses. Heading across one ‘plain’ we were amazed to see a huge white cross erected on top of quite a high hill. This cross, we learnt later, was erected by Sebastio Maia as a tribute to his parents.
Being so close to Adels Grove and Boodjamulla National Park, we also spent time there at weekends. The gorge is just spectacular and we were able to revisit places we’d been four years ago. And Adels was a little bit of civilisation in the wilderness, which we loved. We’d stop by for coffees or lunches out & the occasional take away night. Lawn Hill Creek flows through Adels too, so the swimming there was fantastic. The men at our station said they don’t swim in the creek on the property - for a reason. Along the creek on the station there’s a waterhole they call Crocodile, and I’m tipping they don’t call it that for nothing. We did find some shallow creek crossings that looked perfect for a dip in the shallows though.
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| The gorgeous Lawn Hill Gorge |
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| Crocodile waterhole - no swimming in here!!! |
We took off for a weekend to visit Burketown right up on the edge of the gulf and spent a fabulous couple of days being shown around by several of the Gangalidda people who run Yagurli Tours. We went out on the Albert River to see the sunset and later drifted back up the river spotting salt water crocs as we went and the next day spent five hours being shown around their “home”, learning about how they lived then and how they live now. It’s not too much different. Lunch was served under the paperbarks at a river crossing - with billy tea and scones, cream and conker berries - and a croc tied to an esky (he would be dinner later!!!) We weren't lucky enough to see the Morning Glory, but Burketown is a town where, after native titles were handed back, indigenous ownership is working.
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| The huge saltpans above Burketown |
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| A guest for lunch - well someone's dinner actually |
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| Sunset on the Albert River |
Our time at Lawn Hill spanned the end of the dry season and in the last few weeks the weather started to change. The days were hot - not the lovely 30 degree days we experienced early in our stay - savage days in the high thirties with humidity starting to build. The savannah was drying out and the feed for the cattle was diminishing. Spot fires started on several parts of the property and hot northerly winds helped spread them out to cover vast areas. The graders were now grading fire breaks instead of tracks and the choppers were doing aerial surveillance while men on the ground were back-burning. Some days the smoke was thick right through the valley and down into Lawn Hill Gorge and you could see the horizon glow red at night.
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| A smokey view of Lawn Hill Creek |
Sometimes I miss our old camper trailer, but not now. Not when I can turn on the air conditioner and leave it running all night if I want to. Darth, as we affectionately call him saved our sanity and allowed us to sleep at night. The tourists who travelled to Adels, the Gorge and the Gregory River were thinning too; too hot now - better head back down south.
But the difference up here is that they know the rains will come. It’s not drought-ravaged country like other parts of the country. It’s hot and it’s dry - but come December, the rains will come and the rivers and creeks will rise and the land will turn green again.
All too soon our six weeks were up. Although we would have loved to have stayed longer, as they wanted us to, we had to move on as we had other commitments ahead. But plans have been made for next year and we may be back. We count ourselves as very lucky to have experienced the life of a station and the people who work there - it’s something a tourist wouldn’t encounter and we wouldn’t have missed for the world.
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| Some of the team-Andrew, Brett and Irene |
I could wax on about how wonderful the gulf savannah is, and in particular Lawn Hill Station; and I could post hundreds of photos which wouldn’t do justice to the vastness and the colours. But I won’t. I’ll just simply say that if you ever have the chance to travel up in this remote part of north-west Queensland, do it. Just do it.
