Thursday, 16th of May 2013
From our camp spot on the Paroo River in Currawinya National Park, we drove back almost to Hungerford before turning west along the Dowling Track. The road was fairly good and we made good progress.
By coincidence, we arrived at the access road to Kilcowera Station at the same time as the owner, Greg, who was showing relief managers around the property as he and Toni were leaving on Saturday for a two week holiday, touring other Outback Beds properties.
They opened all the gates for us as we followed them in at a slower pace, closing the gates as we went along.
At the homestead, Toni came out to greet us and to introduce us to the features of the station. There were various possibilities for us – camping at the shearers’ quarters or at one of a number of sites along the lagoon shore. We opted for the lagoon and she drove down to the Cardenyabba Lagoon in front of us to show us our camp site. The camp site is at the edge of the lagoon. What a lovely spot it is. There is a fire pit as well as fire wood provided. The nearest other camp site is about 50 meters away.
Soon enough I had a fire going, having done a bit of wood chopping with our new axe/wood splitter.
Once the flames died down, Lesley put on a beef roast in the camp oven.
Roast Beef, roasted pumpkin, roasted potatoes and horseradish. Yum.
There are 800 cattle currently on the property – 2000 would be the maximum they could have on the 200,000 acre property. This is not like Europe where lush grass provides much feed to cattle. In drought time here they have to reduce numbers and when they have sold the bullocks and weaners they feed the cattle mulga, a native tree that survives drought and regenerates quickly once the rains come.
Luckily this lot who came to watch us at the camp site did not know what we had for dinner.
Kilcowera still is mainly a cattle station. Opening up their station to travellers some 12 years ago, assists to bridge the lean times of drought. They have a number of websites that you might be interested to check out:
Their main website: http://www.kilcowera.com.au/
Their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Kilcowera.Station
Their blog page: http://kilcowerastation.wordpress.com/
Their entry on the outbackbeds website: http://outbackbeds.com.au/outback-accommodation/kilcowera-station.html
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