Top Creek & Macleay River trip

As mentioned in my previous post, we did a day trip yesterday into Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, with our friends Bob & Kerry, and Don, a National Park ranger. Bob is researching for a history of land use in the area since European settlement, so the purpose for the trip was to find the site of old stockyards and a hut, shown on a map from the 1890s. We accessed the area along a NP management track that is closed to unauthorised vehicles (we were authorised, and accompanied by a NP ranger.)

Here’s the satellite image from Google Maps of the area:

View Larger Map

The ridge that starts slightly right of the centre top of the photo is the ridge we drove down, to Top Creek (runs from centre left of the photo roughly through the midle), not far from where it joins the Macleay River. Later in the afternoon, we drove back up Top Creek, to the junction with Rafferty’s Creek – a lovely spot!

I tested out the video function of the new iPod a few times. The following short videos are a little shaky (hand-held iPod!) but might give some sense of the landscape:

A 360 degree view from a spot beside Top Creek – the site of the old stockyards and hut, now long gone:

A 360 degree where Top Creek flows (or doesn’t flow, in drier weather) into the Macleay River:

The junction of Top Creek and Rafferty’s Creek:

For those who aren’t able to view videos, here’s a few photos:

Clearing a fallen tree from the track

Track along the top of the ridge

Probable site of hut on Top Creek

Carrai Plateau across the Macleay River

Macleay River

Junction of Top Creek and Rafferty's Creek

And finally, a photo from the vehicle as we were driving back along the ridge, looking across to other ridges:

Ridges through the trees

It’s wild, isolated country – but very beautiful! And to connect this image-heavy post to writing, this kind of area is likely to be the inspiration for the fictional setting of the series of books I’ll write after the third Dungirri book. Still very much in the embryonic stage yet, but the ideas are developing, and we’ll see how it grows 🙂