Murchison House Station

Kalbarri National Park

Murchison House Station

We have settled for a couple weeks at Murchison House Station  just next to the town of Kalbarri.  It is 350,000 Acres…. It is 3500 sq. kilometres.  It is amazing!!! We have only seen a tiny bit of the station.  The owners, Belinda and Calum have been here for 13 years and Belinda says there are still places that she has not seen.  They are opening the station up to the public for 4-wheel drive tracks, so we have spent a couple days writing up the signs on old windmill (I cannot think of the word but the water pumping windmills).  On Saturday, Calum is going to take us along the coastal track of the station and put the signs up.  We are looking forward to it.  Each day we do different things, we work from 4-7 hours a day and we join Belinda and Calum for supper in the evenings.  There is a French guy, Austrian girl and a German girl also on the farm with us.  There are also campers that come and go that we get to meet and usually have chats with at the bonfire in the evening. A couple we met last night had a massive bus.  They had two young kids and they have been living out of their bus for a few years just travelling around Australia working as they need too.  Cool.

Every morning we are in charge of feeding all the animals.  We have a calf and two goats (who think they are all the same), lots of chickens, ducks and ducklings, two ponies and a pet kangaroo, Skippy.  Skippy is like a child, when we come to feed him in the morning he jumps up on us wanting food.  The station also has about 30 sheep, that we see every once in awhile, a couple hundred brahma cows, and a few thousand goats.  The first couple days at the farm we cleared a bunch of fence lines.  It was very tiring and hot.  It was all uphill but the top of the hill made the work all worth while with all of the beautiful views that we could see.  This area of the farm used to be a coral reef thousands of years ago.

Our second night at the farm they decided to give us a real Aussie experience, kangaroo hunting.  We went up to what felt like Scar’s stomping ground in The Lion King.  Calum’s 6 year old son, Aidan, was with us as well as his ex-butcher friend, Damien.  Aidan was super keen on the whole thing.  The first to run out the the kangaroo and right in there helping his dad.  It was a really fun experience but after awhile I started to feel bad for the poor kangaroos.  I couldn’t kill animals for a living that is for sure.  It was definitely a cool experience though.  We came back to the Homestead and hung up the kangaroo bottom halves to leave over night.  The next arvo we got to have a go on skinning the kangaroos and cutting them up.  The kangaroos we did were for the dogs, probably lucky as we all had our turn on butchering the meat.  The day after we watched the pros show us how it is done. 

 On the weekend we had a day off to go visit the rest of the National Park.  We went to The Loop and Z-Bend, it was beautiful! The Murchison River ran through these beautiful gorges.  There were some scary parts for me in the walk though.  We had to do some rock scrambling up high and go up and down ladders.  It took me awhile to work up the courage to do that.  Me talking about this does not do justice though.


Tuesday Morning we sadly had to say goodbye to Kendra, unfortunately her trip up North with us came up short as she was unable to find transportation from when she needed to leave us so the safest thing was to get the bus from Kalbarri back down to Perth where she will take the train to finish her travels. 

Calum and Belinda have a tour that they do three times a week at the farm that shows people the interesting history of the Station, we have been spending the last couple days driving up to where we were shooting kangaroos (which is about 30 minute return trip) collecting rocks bigger than my head and BIGGER.  After a few trips of hauling the rocks back to the homestead they now have beautiful walkways next to some of the sights on the farm.  I also feel like I am ripped in the arms, back and shoulder muscles. Haha.  Yesterday after we used our big muscles for carrying heavy rocks we decided to take a trip down the river in the kayaks.  It was beautiful and calm.  We didn’t make it to the ocean though, maybe next time.

We would love to stay here longer and help out but unfortunately we must get back on the road and seeing Australia again, so on Tuesday morning we are heading off from the station and heading up to Shark Bay to see what all of that area has to offer. 

Until next time,

Holly and David