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Four wheel driving has always been on our to do list. We are talking the more conservative kind of ‘off-road’ driving where you just try to get to your destination without getting bogged or smashing up the car and anyone in it. This time we are getting serious and gunning for the Holland track.
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| The gumtrees at dusk |
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| The meeting place at the Forretania pub??! |
At the entrance of the trail an interpretive sign and a plaque pays homage to the efforts of John Holland, the Krakouer brothers and John Carmody who blazed this trail from Broomhill to Coolgardie in 1893. It was built to facilitate travelling to Kalgoorlie during the gold rush. It took the foursome just over two months to build the track, but in a cruel twist of events, a railway was laid only three years later between Northam and Kalgoorlie which rendered the Holland track almost obsolete.
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| Well over 100 years old |
The first part on the Holland track ventures through low scrub and sandy planes. There is evidence of fires some years ago with black branches pointing to the sky with green undergrowth.
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| Our convoy |
Throughout the track you will discover that the expedition of 1893 did not have the means to remove the big trees. Expect not to go straight, but curl your way through the tree trunks on a narrow trail. Warning!!! If you are precious about collecting some scratches on your car this may not be the place for you.
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| I managed to capture this very shy Malee Fowl |
Suddenly deep tyre ruts will appear when you are rounding any of
the countless corners. Many of these massive potholes were still full of murky
water from the recent rains. You have the choice to be the cool “bogan without a
course” and thrash your way through them risking to get bogged or to partake in
the more civilized alternative with detours around these deep ditches. We attempted
to choose the safe option, but inexplicably found ourselves balancing, tight
rope like, high above these grooves with the knowledge that one false move
would slam us with a bang, axel deep in the muddy depths of a rut. Not for the
faint hearted but one for the white knuckle fun brigade.
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| The mother of all ditches. |
Around the halfway point is what, at first glance, looks like an organised rubbish dump??? At further inspection it appears to be a spontaneously erected memorial with a mixture of what someone may need in the ‘sticks’ or just discarded bits and pieces. What is anyone going to do with a garden gnome out here? Inside a treasure box which is part of this ‘kooky’ display is a sign in book to make sure that you were there. We saw someone discarding their beloved broken camping toilet chair in the hope that it too will find a better use.
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| Trash or treasure? |
The latter part of the track became an interesting mix of flat, low scrubs, rocky outcrops and more and more magnificent Eucalyptus forest.
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| The sign that had seen better days |
Around Centenary Rock a massive fire swept through this area
resulting in the rock and landscape looking an eerie black and brown.
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| Brown and blackened landscape |
There were possible campsites that were marked on the map which we used all along the track, but we pulled over to camp when we saw a spot that took our fancy. Camping doesn’t come much wilder than this. Every night there was complete silence except for the lonely call of an owl and the stars were out without any pollution of electric generated lights from a town or city.
On the last night a captivating thunder and lightning storm finally took away the heat of the day.
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| The sky looked amazing before the storm |
When we arrived in Coolgardie, we visited the graveyard to
pay our respects to John Holland and our unforgettable journey on the Holland
way.
We discovered that, tragically, Agnes Holland, Johns wife,
contracted Typhoid and died in 1894 - a year after the completion of the track.
John Holland never remarried and when John died many years later at the ripe
old age of 80 in 1936, he was laid to rest in the cemetery in Coolgardie and
reunited, after 42 years, with his wife Agnes at long last.
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| Agnes Holland discovered this spring in the middle of nowhere |
A big thanks to Lynette and Stewart for the awesome chats, advise, generosity, friendship and Lynette's delicious cooking.
The Holland track runs
from Hyden to Coolgardie, is 321km long and took us three day to complete.
The first 60km out of Hyden and last 30 odd kms into Coolgardie are either
bitumised or fast dirt roads. That means you are bush-bashing for around 230km.
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| Writing in the logbook |
We traveled with a middle-of-the-range, four wheel drive and a roof top tent and our mates had a ‘you beaut’ landcruiser which came through also unscathed with a camper trailer. In my opinion taking a caravan on this terrain would be foolish but entertaining at the same time.
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| The man with the cruiser |
The Toyota landcruiser club WA are in charge of maintaining the track in conjunction with DPaw. Visit their website on http://tlccwa.org.au/ for further information.
I would recommend you carry recovery gear and a satellite communication device with you on this remote trail.
A shovel can be very handy for obvious reasons.
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| Mmm!!! A broken toilet chair. |
We ended up staying in a free campsite 10km south of Kalgoorlie called Lake Douglas. It is a pretty spot where we were lucky enough to see a spectacular sunset over the lake as fitting end to our adventure.
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| Enjoying lake Douglas at beer o'clock |
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