Wetherby Station Weekend

Continuing our quest for bush adventures, we drove 90 minutes up onto the Tablelands near Mount Molloy where we spent a sunny weekend at Wetherby Station, lazing beside the waters of Rifle Creek.

Access to the splendid station, a traditional Queenslander home with huge verandahs, is via a dirt road. 

John and Kathleen, the owners, are a mine of information about the history and the connection with the gold digging pioneers trundling wheelbarrows in the late 1800s outside the house along the Bump Track that ran from Port Douglas to the Palmer goldfields. John actually published a book about the history of the property.

John is an enthusiast, quick to spin up a yarn about local writers escaping the Murdoch mayhem, the latest advances in cattle breeding; or how he had Jennifer Gates, Bill Gates' daughter, staying incognito with a university group and her musclebound minders lurking 'discreetly' in a large Merc.

He took us to our campsite at the edge of pastures and a wooded creek; and stopped off to show us his 'girls and boys': pedigree Brangus cattle - beautiful sleek, black animals, cows and bulls with
wet noses and in various stages of pregnancy and insemination.

At the campsite we explored the creek with its resident kingfishers and robins. 

Then we started the campfire and got down to making damper out of flour, buttermilk, spring onions,baking powder, and diced bacon. Mixing, kneading and packing in baking paper went well, but we are still in need of practise keeping the campoven not too hot because we burned the base of the loaf.

We dropped by the station house for another chat with John who showed us a lovely bowerbird bower. Apparently the bird had moved the bower 20 metres and was now coming into the house to nick fountain pens - anything blue or white.

For the return, we stopped at Abattoir Swamp, a popular birding spot where we found a pair of brown honeyeaters feeding youngsters in a finely woven nest gyrating in the wind.

==========================================================

Wetherby Station, FNQ,