Hi all,
Just got back from a long weekender visiting the area east of
Lake Cowan.
I left from Widgiemooltha and visited
Yardina Rock,
Sinclair Soak,
Moochabinna Rock and
Walogerina Rock before coming out on the Eyre Highway.
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After letting the Station owner know our (myself and nephew) intentions, we rounded the top of the
lake and swung down to
Yardina Rock. This was found to be a rather flat, and seemingly boring
rock.
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Peter Kitchin and Ian Elliot found a soak at
Yardina Rock in 1991. I had a look for it at the co-ordinates and eighty metres away found a small soakage, which seemed to be enhanced by a man-made series of two dams. Amazing!!
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This could be the soak that they found as I could find no soaks nearby, though there was a few small minor pools with some water.
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I had plotted my route on the areas not covered by maps, using Google Earth and imprting the waypoint into the GPS. there are a number of tracks in the area, some better than others.
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Now we headed towards
Sinclair Soak, the tracks not too bad, though I wouldn't take a caravan. I tried to get as close as I could on tracks to the soak but decided to leave the ute a couple of hundred metres from the soak as it wouldn't be worth the damage to the ute.
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There was a small low rocky outcrop so we headed towards it. I marked the way back with my boots, drawing lines in the sand, just in case the batteries of the GPS went flat, and the noise of the diesel in the distance went quiet. We found this rockpool (above) and once again it seemed to have a bit of manual intervention aimed at increasing its capture rate.
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After a bit of a look around we found what we think was the soak, pictured above and below. There was no visible water but the frogs were makng a noise.
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Now we headed to
Moochabinna Rock, and we saw the remains of some of the Woodlines, with only the rotting sleepers marking the way of the old line.
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Explorer S.G. Hubbe, on his Stock Route Expedition in 1896 described it thus: "Here three small excavations were found in the alluvium on north side of the
granite outcrop. Two of these contain a small quantity of good soakage water, and if sunk deeper a fair supply would probably be obtained, which would, if not too heavily stocked, last for some months after rain. But this water cannot by any means be regarded as permanent, the supply in the alluvium consisting solely of surface waters collected and deposited by the sloping rocks forming the outcrop; there is also a small
rockhole, 5ft. X 3ft. X 2ft., which contained a few inches of stagnant water.
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This
rock, like the last one, was not outstanding in its beauty or size. We camped here.
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This small
rockhole / soak at the base of
the rock may have been the
rockhole that was mentioned.
cont.