Home Valley Station (HV8)

13th May 2013

Well after a good night and a hearty station type meal for Mother's Day, we woke this morning got ourselves ready and set off about 7.45am, bound for Home Valley Station. We had to make a brief stop in at the homestead where the girls had a great start to the day, getting to hand feed and cuddle a 45 day old Wallaby "Eagle" that the station owner was hand rearing. They were very excited as you can imagine!

So after that half hour stop off, we finally hit the road about 8.15am, with our first stop planned at Ellenbrae Station some 100kms away. Ellenbrae is well known in the area for the scones they serve, so we thought it would make a welcome stop off and it was great.

The homestead was beautiful, with lots of local artwork on the wall, station memorabilia and Double Barred Finches flying around everywhere, all of this was set in a very peaceful tropical setting. The station manager, Karen was great to have a yarn to telling us a lot about the station and station life. Before we knew it, we had been chatting for about an hour & a half and eaten half a dozen scones between us, so it was time to say our goodbyes and hit the road again.

We still had another 160kms or so to go before getting to Home Valley Station. When we were about 50kms away from Home Valley, we drove over the final ridge before the landscape fell away below us down to the plains surrounding the Pentecost River and the spectacular Cockburn Range towering in the back ground, it is a truly a sight to behold and we all felt very lucky to be sharing it together.

Only a short distance after this, we experienced our first issue of the trip, getting our first flat tyre, which when you consider we had travelled about 4500kms all up is very good and at the end of the day, if your going to break down anywhere why wouldn't you want to do it here.

After a quick changeover, we set off again, reaching Home Valley at around 4.30pm, we checked in, set up camp and settled in for the evening, looking for a well earned rest, after another great day travelling the Gibb!