2023 Mellenbye Adventure: Day 3—In Search of The Original Barnong Homestead
I had two objective in my plan for the first full day at Mellenbye. The first objective was to travel up the Barnong-Wurarga Road and, based on new information I had, try and locate the original Barnong Homestead (OBH). The second objective, covered in the next post, was to then go out to the Mellenbye Breakaways.
The First Objective for Day 3
Barnong Station is a sheep station lease located to the nor-northwest (NNW) of Mellenbye. Mellenbye and Barnong share boundaries.
The Barnong homestead that most people know is the ‘new’ Barnong homestead. But long before that homestead was built (about five kilometres north east of Gullewa) there existed the original Barnong homestead which was located somewhere about halfway between Wurarga and Gullewa. At least that is what I have worked out as being the likely location.
The only picture I have ever found of the OBH (as my dad always referred to it as) is this one and, due to the nature of the Internet and the Web, I cannot even be sure that this is actually a picture of the OBH. If anyone can confirm this is a picture of the OBH then I would much appreciate it if you posted a comment at the end of this article and let me know.
If this is the OBH then I am somewhat confused by that range of dark hills in the background.
So, about 10:00 in the morning on day 3 my niece and I left Mellenbye and headed up along the Morawa-Yalgoo Road towards Gullewa.
From what my dad used to tell me, Gullewa was a reasonably sized mining town in its day. P. H. Lodge & Sons used to take deliveries of goods up to Gullewa. These days you would be battling to find any sign that there used to be a town there. However the main Gullewa Mine is still obvious on the left-hand side of the road coming up from Morawa.
As my niece and I went through what would have been the Gullewa townsite location we stopped to take a picture of the cemetery there.
Just past Gullewa we left the Morawa-Yalgoo Road and turned left onto the Barnong-Wurarga Road. About three kilometres along this road a large emu darted out of the bush on the right, ran across in front of us over to the left, and disappeared back into the dense bush. I have experienced many such surprises in my time driving around the station country, but it startled Kim. Having an emu zoom across the road in front of you was a first for her. I don’t think she expected emus to be that big. From then on she was on the edge of the seat watching out for emus.
We came up to the location where I had calculated that the old Barnong homestead was likely to be located and, as it happened, there was a navigable track going off to the left—as indicated in the following clip from Google Earth.
We followed the track as far as indicated by the red line. The track heads west and crosses a shallow salt creek then comes out at a corrugated iron shed or shack. We did a couple of loops around this shack. By my assessment it was too modern to have anything to do with the original Barnong homestead.
The track went on to the south west of the shack, but was covered in long lengths of rusted fencing wire. I kept removing the wire from the track and we slowly progressed to about where I have put the red dot. At that stage I gave up and turned around. I could not see that range of black hills—shown in the picture that I have—anywhere ahead of us Hence, I assumed that this track was not leading us towards the OBH.
After this we backtracked to the Barnong-Wurarga Road and headed back to base at Mellenbye.
A quick picture of my niece leaning on my car near the Mellenbye Station Stay sign on the way into the station.
After a champagne or two we would head out to the Mellenbye Breakaways.
If anyone has any information about the location of the OBH then I would be very interested in that. And is the picture I have that purports to be of the OBH really of the OBH?
