Day 4 – Carnegie Station

From Wiluna to Carnegie Station is 384km and I had anticipated the road to be rough but acceptable.  It turned out I was pessimistic with the road being in good condition.  There were corrugations however we found driving at 90kmh allowed the 4x4 and trailer to skip over the tops giving a smooth ride.

I used our new 4K Action Camera to take video footage during the trip.  However 4K video is rather large and I’ve therefore reduced the size of the video clips to Standard Definition where they are posted on the blog.  I’ll also list the size of the clip below the video so readers can decided whether they want to use some of their data allowance by streaming it.  The audio should have been removed (I hope).   Obviously I’m a total novice when it comes to recording video.  And the first thing I have noticed is Open Live Writer will not allow me to embed a video into the post.  It has to be done directly into Blogger.

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At Mingol Camp we stopped for 30 minutes to change drivers, rest the engine and have a brief look around.  This is a well known camping location for people travelling the Gunbarrel.  This is also the location of Johnson Waters and I’d read accounts of some people taking a swim.

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Carnegie Station was a further hour east.  This is the last piece of civilization we will see until we reach Warburton on the Great Central Road.

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There are usually only three people living here throughout much of the year.  However they were in the middle of the annual muster when we arrived and numbers had swollen to 20.  Brendan, one of the young friendly Jackaroos offered to fill the 4x4 with diesel.  At $2.50 a litre I thought it might be the most expensive fuel we’d purchase during the trip.  Brendan had the same complexion as Donald Trump, white around the eyes and a deep orange face.  In Brendan’s case it was from wearing goggles to protect his eyes when riding a speeding quad bike whilst mustering the cattle.  His orange was a combination of wind and the earth. 
I asked him how long he’d been on the station? “Two years!”  Before that he’d worked on a couple of stations further north in the Pilbara. I was amused to hear he was originally from Victoria.  Australian cowboys are called Jackaroos and cowgirls are called Jillaroos.

The station covers more than one million acres and carries approximately 3500 head of breeding cattle.  That’s approximately 285 acres per beast.  Mustering has been made slightly easier with the sinking of numerous bores driven by windmills.  Towards the end of winter the cattle tend to congregate near water.  The annual rainfall is usually in early spring.
I was slightly surprised to hear the station owners actually live south of Perth visiting once a month to bring supplies.
With plenty of daylight remaining we decided to press on travelling another 50km east before deciding to camp beside the road.  That evening I decided to make my first attempt a night photography.

Obviously I’m going to need considerably more practice!