With slightly overcast and breezy weather accompanying us we stopped briefly in the river town of Echuca to walk through the historic Port of Echuca. The Port of Echuca was home to a large fleet of wood-fired paddle steamers that moved wool, wheat and timber from farms located up and downstream of the port for onward overland transportation to the big city of Melbourne. At its peak, the wharf was about 1km in length to accommodate all of the boats.
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| Paddle Steamers lined up at the Port of Echuca Wharf. At it's peak, the wharf was 1 km long |
We jumped back into the rig and made our way into the nearby (~30km away) Barmah State Forest where we made camp along the southern bank of the Murray River. It was soon apparent that we were right in the middle of a Kookaburra’s home territory as he was ever-present and watching (supervising?) every move we made from vantage points in surrounding trees and even from nearby on the ground as we went about our business!
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| We were closely 'supervised' by this Kookaburra as we set up camp |
Around 5pm, with the shadows getting longer and the light starting to dim, some slight movement in the distance caught Heather’s eye. When she looked closer to see what it was she saw a horse a couple of hundred metres away moving slowly amongst the trees of the forest and it was heading in our general direction As she continued to watch, another horse then another and then two more appeared amongst the trees.
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| Wild Brumbies grazed their way through our camp - a great experience! |
These were wild horses - ‘Brumbies’! In total, this herd of 5, clearly being led by a cautious but at ease stallion, calmly grazed their way towards and then right through our campsite. Despite their size you could not hear them at all - their hooves not even snapping a twig as they passed through our camp. We were able to get reasonably close (5 or 6m) without spooking them and managed to get a few good photos and some video. This was a truly memorable experience!
A link to the video that Heather made of the Brumbies has been provided below.
While exploring in the area we came across some old but large stockyards. The fencing posts and railings, hand-hewn from forest timbers, was still standing strong!
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| Hand-hewn fence posts and railings still standing firm form the Barmah Stockyard |
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| Stock loading ramp at Barmah Stockyards |
Heather managed to do some metal detecting around the location of the old homestead and managed to unearth a couple of pre-decimal coins (a 1950 Threepence, and a 1943 Kangaroo Penny), and a Jew or Jaw Harp - no doubt used to provide entertainment by station/farm hands for their colleagues as they sat around a fire at night.
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| Heather hard at work in search of buried treasures from the past! |
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| 1950 'Wheat-sheaf' Threepence |
Following our magnificent close encounter with some ‘Barmah Brumbies’ it seems quite apropos that the next destination for WTF? - Where are The Farrows?, would be ‘Snowy River Country’, where high country horsemen and their pursuit of wild brumbies were the inspiration for poet Banjo Paterson’s epic ‘The Man From Snowy River’.
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