Macquarie Marshes - Part 4 - Day 1 of Exploring

We had three nights camped at Willie Retreat, so two days to explore the Macquarie Marshes and environs.

Firstly, we drove a little further down the dirt road that Willie Retreat was located on to see the Monkeygar bird watching platform located beside Monkeygar Creek.  

It is quite an impressive structure that has only recently been built, overlooking a large lagoon.

The road continues across to Quambone, but there are a few creek crossing that were too deep for us to traverse.

Back to the tar road, we continued to head north towards Carinda.  

We met a few cattle trucks.  As you can see there isn’t a great deal of room on the tar, so we got well off the road to give them space.

Our first stop was at Burrima Board Walk.  It had quite an impressive entrance.  The deal is, you pay $25 on line per car to enter and when you arrive you enter your allocated pin into the key pad to open the gate and then again when exiting. It was well worth the money.

This is on private property, as is much of the marshes.  A lot is grazed, but this property has had no grazing since 2005, when it was purchased by the Macquarie Marshes Environmental Trust.

There is a large parking area with picnic area and loos. 

From there you enter the board walk, which is well constructed from steel frames with concrete planks that really look like weathered timber.  

The cost of construction would have been immense, hence being happy to pay the entry fee…..I digress.  What do you see?

The boardwalk goes for about 2kms through the wetland.  

It fits around the trees as it goes.

It was so peaceful.  

The photos don’t do it justice.

There were lots of birds.

There weren’t as many wildflowers as I expected.  These are Wavey Marshwart.

And Swamp Buttercup.

We walked among the reeds for a long time.  Reed Warbler birds could be heard singing and occasionally spotted. 

You could get an overview from this elevated platform.

A rustle could be heard a few times and to our surprise it was wild pigs.  We saw a few running through the water.

You could see the damage they cause.

We also saw a few kangaroos splashing through the wetland.

I love how this tree has fallen over, but still has its root system going, as it has sprouted new growth out of the side of the trunk.

The brochure said you could spend about an hour and half.  Initially we thought we wouldn’t take that long, but in the end spent about two hours taking it all in.  A lovely place to visit at this time of year.

From here we were back on the road heading north.  We had to chuckle when you periodically see these signs. As if we hadn’t already been driving on the narrow road for over 100kms already.

Our next port of call was to be Carinda to get some lunch.  

We had to cross the Macquarie River again and were surprised to see that the area around Carinda was a big irrigation cotton farming area.  

Tractors could be seen working in the distance.

The town is tiny and so remote.  The road we came in on was the main one and all the others are dirt and all towns are about at least 100kms away.

As you come into town one of the first things you see is a mural on the side of the amenities in the Recreation Grounds featuring David Bowie.  Why David Bowie?

We planned to have lunch at the Carinda Hotel, as this is a rather famous pub.  

You see, this is the pub that features in the film clip of David Bowie’s song “Let’s Dance”.  Look it up on YouTube.  Apparently, the brief was that he wanted a country pub, situated on a crossroads with all the roads being dirt.  A scout was out looking for somewhere suitable and having no luck.  While sitting in a pub at Coonabarabran he was telling of his woes and a fellow told him that Carinda was where he needed to go, and the rest, as they say, is history.

There are life sized cut outs of David in the pub and you have to get your photo taken with one in front of the wall that features in the film clip.

The rest of the bar has been modernised.  We were served by a friendly German backpacker and ordered our lunch.  

I must say, the meals were excellent.  I had to have a “Bowie Burger” and Mick had a rump steak.  Definitely worth the drive.

They have a David Bowie Festival on the October long weekend, just after we were there.  It was advertised as being the final one this year, but has since been announced that it will return next year.

After lunch we had a little drive around the small town before heading back to our camp.  It really is a tiny place.  

They had a mini tornado go through town last year.  The pub lost its roof, as did several other buildings.  Some are still missing. The general store (not this building) has been permanently closed as a result.

Later, we were asked if we saw the police station and court house.  No, we didn’t.  Apparently, it is rather flash for this tiny, very remote town.  It is said to have been built here instead of Quirindi, by mistake.  As you guess, this is just an urban myth.

After our visit to Carinda, we just retraced our steps to our campsite to have a nice lazy afternoon.

Macquarie Marshes - Part 3 - A Geography Lesson

Before I show our time in the Macquarie Marshes I thought I would share why we wanted to see them so much. 

As I previously said, they are on the Macquarie River, quite near its end. 

The Macquarie River, named after Governor Lachlan Macquarie, starts just on the southern outskirts of Bathurst, where the Fish River and Campbell River meet.  The Aboriginal name for the Macquarie River is Wambuul.

The Fish River (so named by Surveyor John Evans when selecting the route for the first road across the Blue Mountains in 1814 because it had so many fish in it) runs from near Oberon.  Mick goes fishing in the Fish River Dam at Oberon.  The Campbells runs from the other side of Black Springs, also near Oberon.  Ben Chifley Dam, Bathurst’s water supply, is on the Campbells.  Mick grew up in the area near the Campbells’ headwaters, with the river flowing through his uncle’s property.  Fun fact, I caught my first ever fish, a brown trout, on the Campbells at his uncle’s.

This is the view of the river just down from where I grew up.  Yes, we were in the flood zone and our house was flooded not long before I was born.  This was my playground, swimming under the old wooden bridge and playing on the island that used to be in the middle of the river back then.  It was all quite wild and woolly back in the day, before the area was beautified as a bicentennial project in 1988.  There are now lovely park grounds and walkways which have made the area so much nicer.  

From Bathurst, the river flows towards Hill End, with the Turon joining it.  The Turon flows through Sofala and was rich in alluvial gold back in the gold rush days. 

I took this photo recently of the river about 20kms west of Bathurst.

Back in the late 1970s it was proposed to establish an army base in that area.  There was an almighty backlash against the idea and posters were printed showing pictures of the Macquarie River. It was stunning and so very different to Bathurst.  Fortunately, the base did not proceed and the river remained wild.  This is a blogpost I made a few years ago when we had a day out in the area.

Further downstream, near Wellington, the Cudgegong River joins the Macquarie and that is the site of Burrendong Dam, which is the water supply for a huge area for both town supplies as well as irrigation farming.  

As a result, the river is huge at Wellington compared to Bathurst, although still not large compared to coastal rivers. This photo isn’t good, but you get the drift.

The Bell joins the Macquarie at Wellington and the river remains large as it flows through Dubbo.

From Dubbo, it runs near Narromine and Trangie before heading to Warren, where it looks quite different.  

A much smaller, dirtier river, more reminiscent of our western rivers. 

From here it runs north for about 100kms to where it spreads over a wide area to create the Macquarie Marshes. These wetlands can be dry, but can also spread over a vast area in flood times. As the river is regulated by Burrendong Dam, an environmental flow is released in the spring to help with all the migratory birds that arrive for the breeding season. 

This is the river running through the marshes.  Such a small bridge, compared to some of the ones upstream.

We were always of the opinion that the river finished at the marshes, but that is not the case.  

Even when the marshes are mainly dry, the river usually continues to flow further north, travelling through the tiny village of Carinda and then finally joining the Barwon River near Brewarrina. 

This is at Carinda.

The Barwon flows west to join the Darling, which flows south to join the Murray on the Victorian border. The Murray then continues to flow south west to eventually reach the sea in South Australia. 

All this to say that a river that starts just south of here flows nearly all the way to Queensland before flowing all the way to South Australia. 

I hope this wasn’t too boring. Next, I’ll share what we saw at the marshes. It was worth visiting. 

Macquarie Marshes - Part 2 - Warren to Willie Retreat

The following day was also nice weather as we headed to Nevertire, just a short drive from Trangie.  A long train was being filled with wheat from the local silos.

This is just a tiny settlement, but features a painted water tower, which we have seen before.

From there, it is just 19kms to Warren.  You know you are in cotton country when you see a cotton gin with all the bails surrounding it.

Over the road from it there were paddocks ready for sowing the next crop, all nice and level with irrigation channels around the edges.

There was also quite a bit of machinery.

Our first road train for the trip.

Once we arrived in Warren we visited the Visitor Information Centre to grab some brochures.

Then it was time to have a wander up and down the street, followed by morning tea.  The local cafe does very good carrot cake, just saying. As always, I love checking out the old shop facades.

It’s a pity the patchwork shop is no longer trading.

It was fun to see some murals.

A feature this time were signs supporting Dusty.  Dusty is a 12 year old boy from Warren who walked 540kms from Warren to Canberra to raise funds for Little Wings and meet with the Prime Minister.  He actually met with him on the day we were in Warren.  He raised over $500,000 and the Prime Minister pledged to meet his funds raised dollar for dollar.  Little Wings is an organisation that flies isolated sick children and their families to medical appointments.  It is invaluable and their funding was due to run out.  It took a 12 year old boy to get to meet the Prime Minister, when no one else was able to achieve that.  Well done Dusty.

Back on the road, the water tower in Warren also has a mural painted on it.

To continue on our way we travelled north and the road soon changed from nice wide bitumen to a narrow strip.  Fortunately, there was room to get over if you met a vehicle.

Eventually, we came to our turn off.

What surprised us was the communications tower at the intersection.  It meant that we had really good internet connection at the camp site.  Not what we expected at all.

About 1km on the dirt road we came to Willie Retreat.

I love the letterbox featuring a Willie Wagtail.

We had opted for an unpowered site, so we could camp among the trees. It is a rather pretty spot.

We arrived in time for a late lunch and a relaxing afternoon, just sitting around.

There were about half a dozen campers that first night.

What we did notice was the huge number of little bush flies, enough to warrant wearing a fly veil.

The sunset was a nice way to end the day.

We were looking forward to the next couple of days exploring.