Yerranderie Trip
9th - 10th April 2005

12:15 pm and Oberon looms late, guaranteeing my role as scribe for the event. The meeting at the Dam is gracious and cordial in typical LROC style. This is our first club trip in two years since the big one to S.A. Easter ‘03. Time has been kind to us all and the familiar faces are like the last time was only yesterday.

The paperwork says that no one is responsible for any advice given! There is some advice that we climb the hill and check the water level in the dam. Greg advises that the water is dam low.

The trip out to Yerranderie is uneventful save for a stop at a registered sensitive site. We make our own assessments of what it all means and move on.

Yerranderie at last! A quick detour en masse shrouds Martin the Caretaker in dust. Whilst he denies the title and professes to work for a living, he is chuffed to be saluted as the Ranger.

The run to the camping ground leads us via the airstrip and on towards the grassed hillside and its border of trees.
A mob pauses briefly to sample the air. Led by the bigger Eastern Greys, they drink in the familiar taste of the dust; the wonderful cracking sound of the direct injection turbo diesels; the whine of the transfer cases and the rumble of the BFG All Terrains on the stony clay before resuming their grazing. The Cruiser slides past almost unheard and then, as one, they stand to attention again, stirred by the throaty burble of the Rover V8’s.

There is a cacophony of engine signatures as other 4WD groups arrive. Like us they go about the business of setting up for the night. Like us they are confronted by gently sloping ground in every direction. We all are looking forward to the comraderie of the camp fire where yarns larger than life are raised another notch in memory lane.

Smoke! There is talk of time – the timeless and time honoured talk of bedtime for the kids but no one is really serious – least of all the kids. The campfire is an initiation ceremony where children gain tribal insight into the ways of elders. No one is serious. Things aired at the campfire stay at the campfire. Tomorrow is another day in the future unspoilt by summaries of the past.
There is talk of Matt’s loose wheel bearings; of Greg’s loose nuts; of Hunter whatsisname and Rover Cross; of the Land Rover Expo and its potential; of the ominous hissing sound from Sally and Jane’s air con. as the gas became the stuff that got away. Marshmellows are done to a turn. The kids are waving sparklers. Conversation is detailed about our apparent lack of sensitivity to the sensitive site. The kids are sensitive, chorusing about an imagined prehistoric animal whose bones rose from the grass in Matt’s hand.

Robbie stokes the fire. The delicious aromas of food on the grate waft into the air. They complement the ambience of time and place under that great canopy of stars. This is the stuff of Yerranderie.

Sunday morning is unhurried. The sun shafts through the early mist, warming the valley and discovering stuff lost in the starlight.
Martin greets us in the old mining village. We quickly become emersed in the history of the area. Much credit is accorded Val Luehde who at 80 years still flies in to keep a firm and loving hand on the heritage of Yerranderie’s halycon days. The big question is how can anyone fill her shoes. We are indeed fortunate to have visited this place.

Yerranderie is not kind to everyone. We rescue a hitch hiker whose walking party has moved on. Under the outward calm of the request for a lift there is a trace of panic at the possibility of being abandoned here for ever. She is asleep in the back of the 110 as we pass the start of Limeburners Fire Trail. Most of our trip group have taken the challenge of Limeburners to top off the weekend. We notice a trail of belongings leading up the hill to a Disco with its back door open!

A short stop at a forest rest area and our hitchhiker transfers to the relative comfort and lack of dust of Sally and Jane’s 130 for the trip to Lithgow. Greg and Michelle are going home through Mittagong. Sally, Jane and HH and us head off to Lithgow after a great weekend.

Home is downhill from here.

John and Jennie Whittaker