Hell's Gate - We will finally update you all!

On Saturday 21st May we moved onto to Hell’s Gate, travelling through more river crossings and past Doomadgee, which is an aboriginal settlement. We only planned to stay probably one night at Hell’s Gate which is just a Roadhouse on a massive property. But when we sat down that night and had a chat with the owners (Bill and Lee, who are in their late 60’s) we found out that they were expecting a Car Rally to arrive and stay the night on the Tuesday and that they had to feed the 264 people dinner and breakfast, as well as refuel the 105 the vehicles. We could see that was going to be a mammoth task for them so we offered to stay for a few days to help them out. They jumped at our offer. So we all worked flat out for a few days, cleaning the few hotel rooms, tidying up the camp ground, setting up all the tables and chairs and cutting up, preparing and then cooking all the food, and of course looking after all the visitors and then cleaning up afterwards. We had fun doing it all, met a lot of great people from both the rally and other travellers stopping in at the Roadhouse. There were actually a number of cars on the rally which had people from Orange and other central west towns. Aidan and Cody also made $100 pocket money by offering to wash all the car rally windscreens the next morning for a $1 donation!

After the rally left, Aidan and Cody greeted the mail plane as it landed on the Hell’s Gate airstrip and checked out inside the cockpit before it took off again. While staying at Hell’s Gate we learnt from Bill and Lee about how people live on these remote homesteads. They get mail once a week via plane, the nearest doctor is the Flying Doctor which takes 2 hrs to get here. Otherwise to go and see a Doctor or Dentist you have a 12 hour drive to Mt Isa. Food comes from Mt Isa, you order via fax to a supermarket in Mt Isa and it arrives via truck once a fortnight. The roads get flooded every year during they wet season leaving them cut off for around 3 months. They have to generate their own electricity, using solar panels to charge up a whole lot of batteries and then they run a generator for a few hours at night to keep the charge in the batteries after the sun goes down. But they are constantly juggling which hot water systems and fridge/ freezers are on etc to ensure they are not draining too much power out of the batteries so that their power will last all day.

The size of the Hell’s Gate property is 150,000 square hectares - the size of one just one of their holding paddocks is over 1000 acres which is the size of most properties around the Canowindra area. We heard all about the history of the area both before Lee and Bill bought the place and since they have owned it. We learnt the interesting story about how Hell’s Gate got its name. Bill drove us around part of the property, taking us down the homestead which is 27kms from the roadhouse, saw aboriginal paintings and grinding stones, learnt stories (both good and bad) about some the local nomads and aboriginals, visited waterholes, caught yabbies and went pig hunting.

We stayed a week at Hell’s Gate and had a great time!