Saturday 11th March

Today we decided to take a look at two other potential campsites in the area, at Fanny Cove and Quagi Beach.    Also in the vicinity is the Moir homestead which is apparently worth a visit.   To get there we have to up on the highway and then east towards Esperance about 20 ks before getting back on the dirt again.

The dirt road to Quagi is maintained by the Shire but we turn off to go to the homestead and Fanny Cove.    This road is not maintained by the Shire but Parks &  Wildlife (Department of) don’t seem to have done much to it either, even so it’s not too much trouble.

In 1870s the Moir homestead and the 25 acres around it were built by two Moir brothers, John and Alex. In 1877 John was killed and his grave site can be seen on the edge of the area near the homestead. Another brother, William, came to help manage the property but two years later Alex moved to Esperance.   Another brother, George came into partnership with William and together they were granted a further pastoral lease of 57,00 acres in 1888. William married and had 8 children ( 7 sons). The property and leases remained in the family until 1949 when it was sold and became known as Young River Station.  When you walk round these places you can’t imagine what it was like for these early settlers, we could have driven into the homestead from Esperance in an hour and a half, a journey that would have taken them 4 or 5 days on horseback, even longer by cart.   The  women gave birth to children without any medical support as the closest available would have been in Esperance! 

The Homestead is managed jointly by DPaW (Parks and Wildlife) and the National Trust and it is easy to walk around the various buildings and wonder what it was like to try to survive here.

        

 

There are several buildings within the homestead bounds, shearing shed, blacksmith’s shop, shepherd’s hut and of course, the homestead itself which is a quite impressive building.    They are all built from local limestone and apart from the shearing shed are still in quite good condition. One of the two wells actually had water in it.

In front of the homestead is an enormous Morton Bay Fig, with an equally impressive root system.   Unfortunately it also houses a feral bees nest which, Roger in particular, stayed clear of.   The homestead had also been taken over by feral bees and at least two of the large fireplaces had a nest in it     So no exploring inside which is a shame as there were at least 7 rooms and the brickwork was really solid. We also saw the huge mulberry tree and some smaller fig trees around the property.

       

After the homestead we carried on down the track to Fanny Cove another beautiful spot, again we could get the BT in there but there were only two out of the four sites big enough to take it.  It would be a pain to drag the van here only to find those sites taken!  (At the top site we watched some bees scooping out holes in the sand rather like the blue banded bees that visit our garden).     We thought we’d take a quick look at Quagi, again a lovely spot which we could get to easily but  although there were about a dozen bays/sites there was the problem of size again, probably worse than Fanny Cove in fact.

Back to camp and a happy hour – more swapping stories.

Sunday 12th March

Went fishing this morning, two big hits right from the start, one taking some of my gear with it.    By the time I had re-rigged, whatever it was has moved on!   Almost certainly a ray.   No more bites for 30 minutes or so and decided that was it.  

Sadly we’re leaving here tomorrow but as always we’ve enjoyed it here and will be back.