Day 21 Friday 7th July

It had rained quite heavily all night and we woke to a fairly wet and soggy area all around our vans. Rick, Kerry, Rob and I had booked in to do a tour of the historical homestead at 9am but this was postponed till 2.30pm after the area had dried out a little. For the people who needed to leave today, one of the caretakers of the bush camp was going to escort them out of the camp on a different track to the one we came in on because the normal road in was too boggy. A sign had been put up back at the main road to say that the road in was closed. We weren’t too unhappy about this as it meant that things would be reasonably quiet here. We had a relaxing morning and the place was starting to dry out. We enjoyed the tour of the Lara Homestead, a magnificent timber building over 100 years old. The owner was a lovely woman and explained how she and her husband had bought the property back in 2010. They ran cattle on it and she decided that the wetlands (an area had been created over 100 years ago from the artesian bore) could be a lovely bush camp. She did all the work setting things up and putting in facilities. On the very day they had their first tourist come into the camp, tragedy struck. She was excitedly waiting to tell her husband that they had their first tourist when she found out that the chopper he was using to muster the cattle, had crashed and he had died. We all thought she was extremely brave to continue on with both the cattle station and the tourist venture but she had wanted to see it through. It has become quite famous for travellers now. She has the property on the market now as she is in her early 50’s and wants to travel. She also told us lots of interesting information about the Great Artesian Basin and how farmers were being encouraged to “cap and tap” their bores, put in new bores and pipes and that they are limited to the amount of water they can take. All huge expenses for the land-owners but one that many are happy to make for the sustainability of the Basin. She then shocked us by saying that the rules are totally different for the mining companies who use huge amounts of water for mining. A new coal mine in this region was guaranteed by the government to have unlimited water for the next 50 years if the company went ahead with the mine!