After our big day out in Tom Price and drive up, we arrived late around 5pm. This was a good for setting up in the cooler part of the day. We took the first camp spot (with afternoon shade) we found at the Miliyanha Camp Ground.. that turned out to be a good choice, as we had vans coming in as we parked and we would have missed out if we had done the loop.
Millstream was previously a station and added to Chichester to form the current park. The homestead built in 1920 is the information centre and there is a walk with name plates of the various areas of the original homestead grounds. What a great station house, there is a 12 foot verandah all the way around which has then been extended another 12 foot making it 24 feet outdoor under cover. The inside is similar to other station houses of the time with cross ventilation through out. Two rooms either end with a large room right across the middle. Everywhere double doors opening onto the verandah. You can also tune into FM88 for recollections from the last owners who left in 1964.
The water is coming from a aquifer (under ground reserve estimated to hold 1700 million cubic metres of water). We thought it was the trains that we could hear, but a drive along Snappy Gum Drive, put a end to that theory. There is a pumping station transferring the water to supply Karratha, Dampier, Pt Samson & Cossack with water. These towns are also supplied from Harding Dam. They monitor the levels here at the oasis to ensure that the level does not change here due to the amount of water being taken. It would greatly change the life balance here if that happened. When Millstream was a station, they built irrigation channels which are quite narrow and now overgrown. The channels watered the fruit & vegetables and crops that they grew. They even had a bath house above one of the channels. We saw one of these at Cradle Mountain in Tassie.
The water is crystal clear. There is a story board saying that the kids used to swim in this pool and they had a jetty and metal punt to row around in. Their grandmother planted the water lilies which took over their swimming hole and they had to pull them out to clear a swimming space. The water lilies now rule the pond. There are heaps of fish, it’s a beautiful aquarium. I would love to snorkel in there, but you know that’s not allowed of course.
There are three types of palms here – the introduced Date Palms and Cotton Palms and the Millstream Palm, a left over from millions of years ago when it was sub-tropical here.
The Kitchen
The station kitchen, separate from the main house. It would be one big oven in summer though, there was no insulation or enough ventilation to keep it cool. The camp kitchen is in a replica design.
I think that the kitchen design is quite unusual and there is quite a lot of workmanship involved. The curved roof was a bit ambitious for that era. Apparently they thought the guy building it was going too slow, and that ended in a argument and he up and left midway through. Hmmm, curved roof, argument, storming out, that scenario was repeated at the Opera House.
Love the steel gates, put them up once, apparently the white ants are a bit of a problem here.
28th September - Sunday
Drive along Snappy Gum Drive, Palm Pool and Deep Reach Swimming Hole and Cliff Lookout Walk.
Glen having a “refreshing” dip in Deep Reach swimming hole. The fish love the non slip step area into the swimming hole. They provide non slip decking, steps and a handrail to the water edge. The water is deep right up to the edge. There are plenty of shaded BBQ tables and gas BBQ’s to use.
The cliff top viewing area.
The cliff edge is just past the spinifex to the left. View of Hamersley Range behind our car.
Monday 29th September
This morning we did the Warrungunha Trail trail for 5 kilometres. It leads to the Cliff Lookout which we had viewed yesterday, so we only did the base walk and didn’t climb to the top of the cliff for the lookout.
There is a forest of paperbark trees here and they are some of the largest we have ever seen. There were only few this size at Karijini. Below them is a wetland type reed.
We startled a couple of Euro’s on the walk. They have to jump very high through the long grass. I am not sure where they fit in between kangaroo’s and Wallabies.
The Euro is in this photo, you just have to find him.
On the walk, we saw some northern parrots, variegated fairy wrens, and a new one to tick off. Star Finch. I was hoping to see these finches as they are listed on the park’s bird list so we had a good chance of seeing some. They were not difficult to spot with their bright red heads.
A photo of a blue winged kookaburra. Their beak appears much bigger than the laughing kookaburra. This one looks quite young and doesn’t have full colour.
Tuesday 30th September – Warm 37.5c (in the shade) fine sunny – cool breezes
We left early to drive to the Chichester Ranges as we won’t be taking this road to Roebourne tomorrow.
This is a wonderful scenic drive through the range and spinifex plains. It was well worth taking the time to do it.
After we crossed the railway tracks and headed up a rise, this panorama opened out. We beat the train again, I would estimate that it was one kilometre long. We saw the train when we turned onto the road north and the train tracks veered to the east. He has less distance to travel to the crossing than us, as we had to do a curve. When we crossed we could not see the train, but he came along while we were taking photos.
This is Mount Herbert, the walk is 600 metre loop. I had wanted to walk some of the camel trail and decided to do the walk to McKenzie Spring which was 4.5km 2.5 hr return – Class 3. This follows the camel trail that the original cameleers took. McKenzie Spring was where they watered the camels on the trail.
Looking back to Mt Herbert and our car in the car park. We were about half way to McKenzie Spring. Distance markers would be helpful.
Some of the path is in one of the creek beds with small water worn stone.
This lizard came out to say Hi, dashed out and posed, and let me get very close, looking at us all the time. They always amaze me by their lack of fear and curiosity.
Ah, more signs we must be on the right track. Just follow the little camel arrows.
There were several water holes as well as the spring which was overgrown with rushes leaving a small area of shallow water. We surprised Spinifex Pigeons when we arrived and saw Painted Finches also using the water hole. They say that Spinifex Pigeons are never far from water and it’s true. It’s handy to know if you ever got yourself lost because you could easily bypass a water hole, but if you saw them you would know to look.
Spinifex with it’s wheat colour looks great. There are fires currently burning in the park, making it hazy but it is still a outstanding view.
We then drove over to Python Pool. The morning was moving along and it was getting quite hot and a swim would be welcome, but it was not to be. The pool has algae bloom during the dry and we decided not to swim – as advised. There were a lot of small fish in the pool and you could see about three different varieties.
A beautiful deep clear pool, pity about the algae bloom.
We could see the flames from this view point. A plane came over while we were on the McKenzie Spring walk, probably checking out the multiple fire situation. They had a major fire here in September 2012.
This car looks like it’s been here awhile.
