It wasn’t until we got home last night and published Upper Reaches of the Black River and got some feedback did we realise how close we actually where to the old machinery that we missed and it bugged me for the rest of the night. So today rain hail or shine we had to go and find it so we loaded up the ‘Slug’ (4wheeler) and we where off back out to Wrights rd again. As there had been a bit of rain the night before the creeks in the area where up a little so there were some deepish crossings but we still managed to keep the feet dry. It seemed that we had been riding for a while and still hadn’t found the site so I was thinking that I might have missed a turn so decided to turn around and start heading back in the other direction a bit. Just as I started to lose hope yet again of finding it I stopped to clean my sunnies and low and behold we basically stopped right next to it and I still didn’t even see it until Jacinta yelled in my ear and scared the crap out of me and pointed at it.
I’m not up there with how these plants operated but I’m guessing there was a boiler attached to this for power and there would have been a belt on the flywheel to a smaller wheel that would drive the saw??? (correct me if I’m wrong).
going by the size of it I’m guessing it may have been a reasonably big mill back in the day also.
As always when out in the bush this time of the year the fungus is just everywhere
and seems to come in all different colours, shapes and sizes.
From here to fill in a bit of time we thought we would follow the Newhaven track south and try to get up Mt Dipwood. The track to Mt Dipwood turn off was very overgrown and wet with a few little creek crossings so it was good ride with a couple of little challenges. We found the turn off for the Mt Dipwood Climb but unfortunately the track just disappears after a couple of hundred meters so we turned around and headed back north and found another little track that climbed up the range. It wasn’t anywhere near as high as Dipwood was but it still offered some fantastic views, even of the coast.
Unfortunately this shower had us lined up so we decided to head for the hills and try to stay dry.
Hope you enjoyed
Cheers
Brendan & Jacinta
Full Video here
That machinery looks in amazingly good condition, was there a manufacturers name plate on it?
No i did have a look and try and find it but didn’t see any