2023 Mellenbye Adventure: Day 3—The Mellenbye Breakaways
As noted in the previous post/article, my plans for Day 3 of my Mellenbye Adventure included two objectives. The first was to try and locate the original Barnong homestead. If you read the previous post then you will already know that I/we kind of failed in that objective. My second objective for the day was to go out to the Mellenbye Breakaways.
The Second Objective for Day 3
Shelly at Mellenbye Station Stay has a map showing a number of things of interest that visitors to the station might like to see. One such place of interest is labelled as the Mellenbye Breakaways.
Now, anyone who knows the sheep station country is going to know that there is breakaway country of some sort in almost every direction. You pretty much can’t travel along a station track for too long before you are going to see some breakaway country.
But the particular patch of breakaway country that Shelly has put on her map of interesting country worth seeing is a little bit special. Special enough for her to call it the Mellenbye Breakaways.
The Mellenbye Breakaways are about 15 kilometres south east of the homestead. The road, or track really, is kind of an upgraded station country track. However, I can see that if there was any serious rain then it would become somewhat challenging. But in dry weather it would most likely be navigable in a normal sedan; most likely.
Something that is a bit different with the Mellenbye Breakaways compared to most other breakaway country that you might come across in station country is that you end up on top of these breakaways.
See my little car up there?
Here we are, parked on top of the breakaway shelf having curried eggs sandwiches. Kim has some champagne in her cooler container and I had No Sugar coke and Makers Mark Bourbon in mine.
I like breakaway country. I could probably have spent the better part of a day driving and walking around these breakaways.
These breakaways are ‘different’ in a number of ways compared to most other breakaway country I have come across. Firstly, as I mentioned previously, you end up on top of the main breakaway shelf. Secondly, the ‘floor’ of these breakaways on the east side appears to be a dry salt lake. These breakaways would look even more interesting if the lake was full. But maybe when that happens you can’t get up here.
Thirdly, there is breakaway country in three directions. The picture above shows part of the breakaway country to the west. The picture before that showed it to the east. And the following picture shows it to the north.
There is likely more to see to the south, but I did not walk down to that section.
One more shot of the Mellenbye Breakaways … just because I can.
If I were to get back to Mellenbye one day I will certainly go back to the Mellenbye Breakaways and spend more time there as there are many other breakaways in the same area. Plus, you go past other breakaways on the way to these breakaways.
