Sandalwood Cutters Hut on Karara Station cicra Oct 1983
Back when I lived in Morawa I made numerous trips out past the Sandalwood Cutters Hut on the old Rothsay Road. The very first time I went to the hut as a boy with my father, there were still cutters using the hut and there was a pile of cut sandalwood at the hut.
When I was about 17 and had my own car I made a trip out to the hut. But at that time it was abandoned.
On one of my outings in the Station Country with friends we camped at the hut. That could actually be when these picture were taken. I am not sure.
The hut is on Karara Station.
The following picture was taken facing south.
Even though it is October there are still some wildflowers surviving because behind me is a slow sloping granite wash that brings water down towards the hut and supplies water to this section of ground. There is a small dam to the right in the picture that was dug to catch some of this water.
This next shot was taken from further away from the hut up the granite wash. You can pick out the hut in the middle of the shot.
From my research on the Web I understand that the old Rothsay Road has become heavily overgrown and unnavigable since the new Rothsay road was put through. Looking at Google Earth images dated 2015 I cannot even identify what might have been then old Rothsay Road.
In a way this is a bit sad because this is an interesting place to visit. I guess on the upside it means that it won’t get over-visited with the resulting damage that can often result in.
The following shot is from the same vantage point at the last picture but I taken facing more to the east. You can make out the wee creek (or ‘crick’ as my dad called small creeks) that ran down past the hut.
I know for sure that I have other pictures of Sandalwood cutters Hut somewhere. If I come across them as part of this project to post all my old pictures of my time in and around Morawa then I will certainly post them, and will try to remember to link this post to that post, and vice versa.
>> EDIT 1 << : After doing this post I found the following on the Web doing a search for Sandalwood Cutters Hut. This was the only match found on the Web for that search.
The interesting thing about this article from the Subaru 4WD Club of WA is that they went to the hut sometime around June 2019. This means the track to the hut was navigable by AWD Subaru vehicles in 2019.
Sadly, no pictures.
If you would like to see the whole June 2019 newsletter from the Subaru 4WD Club of WA you can find it here.
>> EDIT 2 << : After hours of viewing Google Earth I have located the Sandalwood Cutters Hut.
It would appear that the track going past the hut at the date of this Google Earth imagery (2015) was in reasonably good condition—as best one can tell from a Google Earth view. This track upgrade may well have been done as part of the creation of the Karara Rangelands.
For anyone wanting more specific location information, the hut is at 29˚17’31”S 116˚42’10”E.