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We too were not allowed to visit the
Koonchera Waterhole or Pandiburra bore on a recent trip down the Birdsville
track. There are new managers there and they told us that there was
still extensive wet areas on the property. Whether that was just an
excuse or not I don't know, but we did hear from an independant source that
Clifton Hills has been having a lot of problems caused by tourists, such as
people camping near waterholes and inadvertently stopping stock from getting a
drink, littering, driving up to the homestead and walking straight in to the
house or sheds without permission, getting stuck somewhere whitout having got
permission to be there, and then expecting help from the station people and so
on.
You can understand that they must get
fed up. Clifton Hills happens to be half way along the track and
gets more problems than other stations because that is where people are ready to
break their journey. They did tell us that they can't stop people
from camping near the road and we had a lovely night at Lake Surprise sand
dune.
When we phoned Mt. Lyndhurst to
get permission to camp there, the manager was really pleased. He
said we were welcome to, but commented that we were the only people who had ever
asked him for permission.
So please everyone, if you go out into
these sorts of places, remember that the surrounding country is privately owned
land and do ask permission before going there. City folk wouldn't
like strangers picnicking on their front lawns, and driving onto someone's
property is just the same thing, albeit on a larger scale.
Cheers Annabel
P.S. We got fabulous views of the
chesnut-breasted whiteface at Mt. Lyndhurst and the banded ones north of
Mungerannie. I didn't see one grasswren on the whole trip
though.
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