So I was sitting there in my car looking at the back end of the truck that we were supposed to be driving in a few hours ago as the rain started to get heavier and heavier. We were off to another great harvest trip!
It was time for a quick weekend jaunt out to the Goldfields to chop some trees and go for a bit of a burl hunt. Me and my usual chainsaw buddy Abe were set to disappear on a Friday arvo ready for a few campfire yarns and plenty of kms. The car was packed ready to go and then a message came through from Abe “I’m still at the office can we push it an hour” an hour later “still here, Ill message when I’m leaving home.” By the time I got to the truck it was nearly 3 hours later than what we both expected to be on the road. These things happen and we were only driving that night so it was just one of those things. The real problem was that the rain had set in. We were trying to pack the truck, load things on the back and get on the road in torrential rain. I had a message from my wife in the morning saying we had 30ml of rain over night so it doesn’t surprise me that the both of us looked like drowned cats as we finally set off on our weekends trip.
Our trip east was wet, I was worried that the rest of our trip was going to be washed out and miserable. We did nearly 400kms that night and all of that had the wipers on, it wasn’t looking good. Stopping just this side of Southern Cross for the night Abe stretched out in the back seat of the truck and I rolled my swag out under it to keep out of the rain as much as possible. Unfortunately, my swag zip was broken and I eventually woke up to wet feet as my mattress was poking out and dipped in a puddle. Things didn’t get much better when I was woken up just after 4am by a rooster crowing. Just my luck that we stopped at the only place in the vast landscape of the wheatbelt/Goldfields that had a resident rooster!
Thankfully that was the last negative thing for the trip. We shot off and got to Southern Cross for fuel, breakfast and a coffee before continuing east. It was about 930am when we finally slowed down, turned left and hit the dirt. We were off to Wallaroo Rock! It wasn’t long before we threw on the breaks and jumped out to scour the landscape for things to cut. Abes sharp eye got the first burl of the day off a Salmon Gum which was an absolute belter of a specimen which we loaded up and continued on. We made our way into a grove of Yorrel trees and there was one that just sang to me. An old bent bastard that was mostly hollow but had a branch off to the side that was just FULL of tight curl, perfect for knife handles and hopefully a couple of really nice vases. That ended up in the truck as well as a couple of smaller burls.
The track continued on winding through the eucalypt groves every now and then stopping to go for a poke around or a quick run through the scrub to see what was what. It wasn’t long before the landscape started to move from eucalypt into more of the sand plain country and we saw grevillea and acacia poking through, this turned into a very nice sight for me. A really tight little group of some rather large and fairly healthy-looking Sandalwood trees. Rough and scraggly as most are in the area but all tall and full of leaves. It’s great to see some older growth trees in an area that was just about ripped dry by the Sandalwood pullers back in the day for the fragrance industry. Its fantastic wood to work and smells delightful doing so. But its not worth the $200k fine being caught poaching a tree. After a 10 minute fan girl session over some old trees the drive continued on through the sandplains. A smaller dead fall Rottnest Island Pine joined the gang in the back of the truck which was supposed to end up as firewood at the end of the day but some how managed to find its way back to my workshop… Not sure how that happened.
The next interesting sight that brought in a new species was a fantastic flat granite site. Surrounded but Rock Sheoaks and a scattering of these fantastic little plants called upside down plants (leaves up the top and flowers on the ground underneath) I strolled around drilling holes in each one of the Rock Sheoaks hoping at least one of them was solid enough for me to take. They have excellent grain and a great density to them. Was lucky enough to snag an old fire burnt one that was still solid in the middle with a fairly straight crack down the length that I would be cutting out anyway. That was almost the best part until I found the burl!!! I know of people who have been looking for timber for the last 30 odd years and have yet to find one, rarer than hens teeth and It was a big bastard. Didn’t take long for that one to end up off the tree wrapped in my grubby hands on its way to the truck!
The sun had reached its peak and we were slowly getting closer and closer to the end point of the day. A lot of the later part of the day consisted more of sight seeing and shit talking with a few little trips out to see what we could see. Jumping over the train line was the last major point before we hit camp and was where we got 2 big wins. As Abe and I did a bit of a firewood scout before hitting camp I found an rather large deadfall Quandong tree and Abe found a Salmon Gum burl that was screaming to come home with us. It was the sketchiest cut I think I have seen for a while. Abe on a ladder doing his best to cut through a burl wider than the bar on my saw and the icing on the cake was the fact that the tree was bending in the wind and we could see a crack growing and moving with the tree. Thankfully we got the burl and Abe out of the way before anything major happened, and frankly the tree will probably still be standing once I’m dead. Tough ol thing!!
Now the trip so far had been mostly ups, well all ups. I’m an eternal optimist and being out on the weekend cutting trees in the bush couldn’t be a bad thing ever. But things just got so much better. Wallaroo rock camp site was quiet and empty, well protected and for the most part looked well looked after. We got our campsite right next to the base of the rock and got the fire going before walking up the rock and seeing the sights. There are 3 dams on the rock that used to service the old steam trains that ran the wood lines back in the day, and from more information I have gathered probably also serviced the old bloke who used to live out there growing veggies. Too cold for a swim but its on my list for another trip to dip the toes. Up we walked to get a staggering view of the area from atop the rock, clouds whizzing by giving off a very moody feeling. All in all, 10 out of 10 camp site and will be back even without the chainsaw in hand! How good is it to find new and exciting camp sites.
With cold wind on our back and a hot fire from the front we cooked up steak sandos and told lies while drinking beers. Thankfully the rain had finished up and a relatively clear night looking at the stars was had before crawling into the now dry swag and getting some sleep. Our final day started with bacon and eggs cooked on the fire, a fairly average coffee that has its own origin story that’s longer than it should be and a track out that was too over grown for the truck. A little bit of tactical reversing and a plan b got us driving on some not so public roads onto ex Jaurdi station where we zig zagged and bounced our way back to the road for our trip back to the big smoke.
I always feel like these trips are too fast and could spend days out there searching for the right trees or the right road to drive. But frankly I am lucky to be going out at all. 2 young kids at home and a extremely loving (patient) wife who lets me go play in the dirt means that any time is the best time – I just wish these locations were a little closer some times and then I don’t. Being so far away makes it special because you make the time to go the distance.
It was a productive burl trip with a few extras tacked on top, it was a great camping trip with a great mate, it was a great adventure to learn more about this amazing state I live in and to experience nature. I’ve now got to find the time to process all the material into slabs or blocks and make sure none goes to waste, but currently the majority of it is sitting under a tarp out of the sun waiting for me to get to it! Soon! I promise soon I will turn you into something beautiful!
