(header photographs by Harry Waite 1912-2011)

The Myth of the Sacred Brumby

 

 

r

Contents

Contacts


Our Sandy Macdonald

By Dorothy Lawry (Sydney Bush Walkers & H.H. Club)

From The Bushwalker 1937

In 1934 Win. Lewis and I were booked for yet another trip to the Upper Kowmung, but only for the second week of our Looking for somewhere new to walk during the first week, the South Eastern Tourist Map. Most of it was latticed red lines that denoted good roads, good land, settlement. At first glance, there was just one interesting patch for a bush walker-where the Blue Mountains were a mass of black hachuring; but I was looking for new country!

Then my eyes focussed on a large white patch in the north. It was almost entirely blank, so I knew it was rough country, unsurveyed, unsettled, and only about sixty miles from Sydney in a direct line! I looked no further.

In the eastern section of this white patch was shown the Macdonald River, flowing S.S.E. to join the Hawkesbury at Wiseman’s Ferry. There was one town on the river, St. Albans, which was on the old northern highway some ten miles beyond Wiseman’s Ferry, and about 25 miles from the nearest railway station, Windsor. Two miles beyond St. Albans the road swung away from the river, which was only crossed by one other road, some thirty miles away in an airline. This was the road from Singleton, through Howes Valley, to Putty. It is forty miles from the railway at Singleton to the Macdonald River. Win. and I collected two other girls, made up a food-list, and, on the 13th May, 1934, Piled into "Christine" and drove to St. Albans, intending to garage the car there while we explored westwards into the hills for three or four days. The afternoon was hot; St. Albans slept in a sabbath calm. I drove on along a country road that took us up river between dairy farms for another twelve miles, then we parked "Christine" at the Post Office, a lonely farm.

Swinging up our rucksacks, we set off without a care in the world—except to get back to that car in four days’ time. We had no map, but were prepared to make one as we went—and we went on up-river, for we had already seen enough to know that the surrounding country was an absolute maze.

There is at least one other Macdonald River in New South Wales,.up in New England, and I know nothing about it. But our "Sandy" Macdonald is a most interesting place, where the history of the Hawkesbury Sandstone area can be read very easily. The sandstone, of course, was laid down under water; then came a long, slow lifting of the whole region, and the rains of those days formed the Macdonald River and meandered to the Hawkesbury, and to the sea. As the hills rose, the river kept on deepening its gorge, until there came a time when the country sank instead of rising. Then all the grains of sand and earth, that continued to be washed from the hillsides by the hundreds of little creeks, accumulated in the bed of the river until it was choked with sand, and here, as at various places

Again the land rose.(or started to rise?)and here as at various places round Sydney, we can see that in recent geological time there has been this rise of nine or ten feet. Along the Macdonald it has lifted the sand above water-level, and, down around St. Albans, a new bed has been cut between rich river flats that are backed by steep, barren, sandstone or ironstone ridges. As we proceeded upstream, we watched the hats narrowing until only narrow. massy banks separated the water from the hills that  rose almost sheer for two or three hundred feet at the lowest parts, and nearly a thousand feet at the highest.

Every time we crossed the river we had to paddle because there were no stones, only the sand, but as we went on the water got shallower until, at the junction of Yengo Creek with the river, there was only about three inches of surface water in the Macdonald, and none in the creek. This was about five miles beyond the last house.

Although the valley had been settled for very many years, we four women were the first walkers who had been seen in the district! The local people told us, if we had the time, we could easily go right through to the Putty Road, about 35 river miles, but we could neither find, nor hear of, anyone who had been right through. We did not have time to go beyond Yengo Creek, but returned to the car.

In 1935 I planned to follow the Macdonald down from the Putty Road to St. Albans, but abandoned the trip because, a week before we intended starting out, we were advised that water could only be got by digging.

1936 was also a very dry year, and my holidays were postponed until October, but, having collected three men as fellow explorers, we set out from Wollombi on the 17th October intending to cross the ranges, follow down Yengo Creek, and walk up the Macdonald River to the Putty Road. There was a heat-wave in full blast, and our way led along a hot, dusty road for eight miles, or so, up Yango Creek. Yes, we told the local dairy-farmers what we thought of the local names when they told us we were on Little Yango Creek; that we could not do our proposed trip in a week, or in a month of Sundays, because Yango Creek and the Macdonald were so rough; and that, instead, we had better take to the ranges, and follow the old Sulky track to Big Yango homestead (now disused) on one of the heads of Pig Yango Creek. One of our advisers had been born on his father’s farm on Little Yango Creek 65 years before; we were the first walkers any of the people there had seen.

Our plans allowed slightly less than a week, so we decided to take the advice offered by all our new acquaintances, and go through to Howes Valley, and the Macdonald River at the Putty Road, by the shorter route over the ranges.

In spite of the intense heat; the lack of water, and the bush-fires with which the whole country was studded, we got through, but it was no pleasure trip. However, we learned quite a lot about the district, including the fact that all the creeks and rivers seem to be choked with sand, and that digging in the sand is the usual way of getting water from the Macdonald. Sometimes it floods, but usually there is no surface water.

On this trip I first saw the two basalt mountains that were to prove such good friends in the 1937 trip—Big Mt. Yango, which is surmounted by Yengo Trig. (2164 ft.), and Mt. Wareng, also topped by a Trig. (1934 ft.). The sandstone ridges of the area are mostly about a thousand feet above sea-level, so the two mountains are good landmarks.

No one we met in the Howes Valley-Putty Road section of the country had ever seen any walkers before, except the mail contractor who drove us into Singleton, and he had done some walking himself. However, Mr. Harry Jackson, who has a property beside the Macdonald, was very friendly, and showed Alf. and Norrie a short-cut which enabled them to climb Mt. Wareng and get back to camp before dark. He told us that the sand only choked the Macdonald for five miles downstream, and then the river became rocky and rough. He had been no further.

In the autumn of 1937 we had some rain, and when Win. and Harold Chardon and I reached the Macdonald River from Singleton on May 14th there was a little surface water to be seen from the road. It did not go very far before losing itself in the sand. However, every few miles it came to the surface for 9 short breather, and, thanks to the recent rains, the surface was comparatively hard.

We soon found that Mr. Jackson had been misled by a rocky outcrop, and that the sand was continuous to Yengo Creek. It did not take us long to discover also that we were mistaken when we thought the river had been surveyed. Below Yengo Creek, yes. Above Yengo Creek, no, although the Macdonald forms the boundary between the Counties of Northumberland and Hunter, and was so clearly marked on those maps that we Were tricked into relying on them instead of preparing to map it for ourselves. I think the surveyors stood on top of Big Mt. Yango and drew in the river. They certainly missed so many bends that most of the time we were just wildly guessing where we were. The day we went up Big Mt. Yango and back to camp was quite a relief; we knew where we were all day.

When we turned up Yengo Creek we found it had missed the recent rain; the sand was very soft, and the going very heavy and slow. This was our fourth day of sand slogging, and when, about mid afternoon, we came to a rough, rocky stretch, we cheered. Rockhopping was a glorious change. So were the ranges next day, and the sight of Wareng and Big Mt. Yango, with whose help we reached a track that led us over to a good camp-site on Little Yango Creek, where the water was actually running, and gurgling! And so to Wollombi.

The "Sandy" Macdonald proved a "oncer", but I am glad I went, though it was not the pleasure trip a stroll down the Cox would have been. I learned a lot from these "explorations", and one thing in particular that can only be learned from dry trips such as these. I now truly appreciate water—the smell of it, the sound of it, the sight of it; the feel of it, and the taste of it!