Farmstay Day 2

Near the campground, at the edge of the salt lake we spent some time each day observing the birds. Some of the ones I saw were endemic to the area, while others occur throughout Australia, and some, like the galahs, can be seen just about anywhere. However these galahs have intense pink feathers, rather than the usual softer pink. The owner says that the oil from one of the trees gives this intensity. The spiky bowerbird that occurs here likes silver rather than blue, and campers often put out silver for it. I didn’t have anything silver, so I didn’t.

After looking at birds, she took me to the other dry lake she has. Wild rice and millet cover the lake area there, and this would have been a larder for the aboriginal community. While we were there we found two patches where the lake hadn’t completely dried out since the last rains. The wet patches were oval, with trees on an island in the middle. A particular plant that was used by the aborigines of the area for yams was in abundance in these two watery areas, although the vegetation dies at this time of year, so they all looked dead. She hadn’t seen these here before, either the plants or the watery areas, because you’d need to be here at exactly the right time, and looking at the whole landscape you could see that it wasn’t exactly flat, so these areas occurred. She was very excited by the discovery. At the nearest edge of the lake, we discovered a number of flake tools, enough for that area to have been an aboriginal campsite.

Later, we visited another aboriginal rock art cave in the escarpment which had an aboriginal well next to it. We then went to a lookout above the escarpment. Even though it’s not that high, you can see the tree covered landscape for many kilometres, and very faintly in the far distance is Carnarvon Gorge and the escarpment making bumps in the horizon.

We had roast beef and sunset from the lookouts. We also did some work with the cattle. And so ended my farmstay. I needed to leave early in the morning. While I was there some cattle appeared that had been missing for a few years, along with a steer that belonged to a neighbour. We had lots of interesting conversations and I thoroughly enjoyed my stay. I had needed to revamp my schedule when I found out about the farmstay, and I’ll have a couple of longer days driving as a result, but I’m really glad I found it. The owner is revegetating and I learnt a lot about that as well.