Dunlop Station to Trilby Station

Saturday

Our next stopover was another station only 40kms down the road. On the way we stopped in at Dunlop Station for the morning tea/tour conducted by the current owner, Kim. Kim and her daughter bought the property 9years ago and are in the very long process of attempting to restore it. It includes the homestead, a store and a shearing shed, as well as many outlying buildings.

The homestead needs a load of work but is a great improvement on what she bought. She hadn’t realised there was a cellar until they removed all the newspapers stacked to the ceiling on one of the Verandas.

Originally  Dunlop Station was a pastoral lease that operated as a sheep station and was once the largest sheep station in the world at over 1million acres. Kim’s property is now about 22000 acres and she only runs 100 sheep. Dunlop is significant as the farm with the first mechanised shearing of sheep in a building Kim is hoping to restore to a usable shearing space without losing the historic equipment still installed.

Apparently the staff numbers at Dunlop in its day were enough to warrant it having its own store, storekeeper and accountant. All goods were brought on paddlesteamers. The store building is beautifully crafted with rocks taken from the property and is now full of old bits and pieces, most of which have been found on the property.

It wasn’t until the day Kim’s family moved in that they realised they had no electricity, water or functional toilet/bathroom. The place has come a long way with lots of hard work but what a daunting task ahead. Not a job for the faint-hearted.

From Dunlop we continued to the neighbouring property, Trilby Station, 10km down the road for an off grid night by the river. Once settled in there was time for an exploratory walk, binoculars in hand, in search of the elusive Burke’s Parrot. Alas it remained elusive! 

We had quite a stretch of the river to ourselves and Michael was able to light his first campfire of this trip.