The stink of old dung and smoke still lingers, and the ghosts are quick to let us know they are here tin cups and horses’ bridles clink and jostle, moonshine slops in a barking laugh, an animal snorts in the dark. A broad-hipped fireplace holds a memory of raging heat, a lagerphone slouched against it happily worn. The floor, compacted dirt and beer-bottle tops, is hard and cold but flattened for a swag. Inside, the tin is singed, mottled with use, a cow cocky’s musings cast in leaded scrawl. One side of the hut is for animals, a tin umbrella on poles to shelter their ears, The other is a raw-hewn structure that is stained with stories and thick with ghosts. It is a lonely reprieve, but its functionality – built by men on horseback, carrying tin, carving stone and timber from the landscape – would have softened tired eyes and sore bodies. Drovers would graze their mobs here before the final run to the coastal markets. It is as if time forgot.įrom beyond Kindarun Mountain, Wollemi and into Wiradjuri Country in the interior, this was a staging post on the stock route east. When the hordes who’ve escaped the confinement of the truck quieten, it is still, listless engines tick as they cool, a whip bird calls out caution. Each generation protects it, too, their stories secrets shared with only a few, or at least never pinpointed on a map.Īnd while the Sheepskin Hut is marked as a campground on the National Parks website, littered in 4WD conversations and the pinnacle of trailbikers’ torrid retellings, it is a lonely place rarely visited, a step beyond hillbilly haunts that spew woodsmoke and juice from the still.
Theirs are lives lived in the very heart of this place, from grandfathers who built slab huts by hand to fathers who cut in the tracks with dozers and heavy plant equipment, through a landscape wild and untamed, ceding just metres a day. Pierce’s Putty Valley Tours come replete with stories, too. A landmark visible from every direction, Yengo is our guide as we venture further in, its stories cloaking us. When he sprung skyward, Baiame flattened the top of the mountain. With a plateau’d top, the ancestral story of Mount Yengo depicts Baiame, a creational figure, jumping back up to the spirit world after he created the mountains, lakes, rivers and caves in the area. It is to the clans of this area as Uluru is to Central Desert communities, a sacred space that thrums with a pulse as old and deep as time itself. The peak of a dormant volcano, traditionally used for learning and ceremony for tens of thousands of years, Mount Yengo is rich with cultural significance. impervious to anything but a proud primordial form. This is Darkinjung Country in the shadow of Mount Yengo, where the dreaming speaks of silver-lipped gums, dappled light falling on gullies of unexpected flowers, and soaring grass trees. Never ones to break the rules, we too decided on a picnic in a park, albeit a national park, at a table scored by eons of time and beer-bottle tops, far from civilisation and with not a soul in sight.ĭeep in the Wollemi, beyond the fringes of remote, along washed-out fire tracks and dirt-choked run-offs, this is 4WD country, the smell of diesel and hot brakes a sticky perfume that garlands the blue haunches of Mount Yengo and Pon Pon as the the convoy jolts deeper into the interior.Ĭaptive of Pierce’s Putty Valley Tours – track-felled trees our speciality! – all we know is we’re heading west, along spine-like tracks said to follow songlines.
Picnic hopping is now a thing, along with exquisitely delineated schedules that incorporate five, six, seven events adjacent in the park, and an overindulgence in cheese. And while there is a palpable sense of relief at this easing of restriction, there is a Pythonesque element to this decree.
Parks throughout the Greater Sydney Basin are brimming with socially distanced crowds, interspersed with authority figures to verify vaccination certificates. This is in addition to the one hour allowed for exercise. Households with all adults vaccinated will be able to gather outdoors for recreation (including picnics) within the existing rules (for one hour only, outside curfew hours and within 5km of home). According to the NSW Government, on secondment from governing and moonlighting as health professionals, September 2021 is picnic time:
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