A long way for scones! Ellenbrae Station

From Home Valley Station we crossed the Durack River, around 40cms deep and very croc looking, to travel 206km on the Gibb to Ellenbrae Station. The station was about 5km off the main track. We arrived at the homestead to green grass, flowering bougainvillea and sprinklers – gorgeous. After checking in we were allocated to the Ringers campsite (the other one being Jackaroo). We were happy with this as Ringers had the swimming spot. Luckily, we had pulled in around 10am and so had our choice of campsite. Sippy picked a beauty and backed the van in so that we had uninterrupted views of the bushland behind us and 100m from neighbours. This turned out to be a blessing as the camp got very busy as the afternoon progressed, with a few tour groups pulling in quite late. We were also lucky enough to nab the previous night’s campers stack of great quality firewood. Bonus! 5 nice redwood logs that burned forever with a stack of kindling. This enabled us to have a great campfire each night of our stay.

Day two we were up and ready for the famous Ellenbrae scones with jam and cream. We headed down to the homestead by 8:30am, as instructed by the owners, to ensure warm scones for breakfast – they were quite yummy and very filling!

Mid-morning we jumped in the car to drive the 4km 4WD track to Sandy Creek. This lived up to its name – being a very sandy and narrow track, with the last 500m travelled by foot. We were rewarded with a beautiful swim in the open river. Again, we were told it was safe to swim, but we were very croc wary arriving at the billabong . We had the place to ourselves for about 30mins and then were joined by a young couple and their beautiful dog, who happily swam with us. Within another 30mins two others lovely couples joined us - who informed us that they had seen a 2m freshie on the bank just up from us. It didn’t seem to worry them however as they joined us in the water and we spent the afternoon paddling in the shallows and sharing travel stories.

Day three we spent relaxing around the campground, swimming in the waterhole near the campground and chatting with other campers. We cooked a roast lamb with vegetables that evening and were in bed early – nice.