What drove people to walk extreme distances through savage heat, stabbing spinifex, and incessant flies without any promise of wealth or prosperity? The thought there might be a pot of gold waiting for them, like the end of a magic glowing rainbow, just over that hill, through that valley or up that river.
I don’t know that it rains enough to have many rainbows out near Forsayth, but in 1913 it was definitely the end of the rail line. But there is gold here, in fact the whole area from Mount Surprise to Georgetown and out to Forsayth is full of it, people still prospect and find it today.
But it wasn’t gold that led to the development of the rail line, it was in fact Copper. Forsayth is the end of the line and in reality it is a small town with a big history and a wild west frontier attitude. It was the Chilligoe Company that build the line in order to supply copper to its blast furnaces in Chilligoe (But that’s another story).
The history of this town and the people who lived here is on display throughout the town, but it’s like a great big jigsaw.
As you drive around you find more pieces and slowly put the amazing story of this unique area together. One of those puzzle boxes is opposite the pub, where there is an old two room hardwood shed with no windows.
This is the old Forsayth Lockup which served as the police station for close to thirty years. On the walls inside are stories of its history and the daring pursuit of justice for what must have been a frontier town not dissimilar to those of the wild west of North America.
One such story is of a giant Russian miner who had to be subdued by the police after being arrested for “obscenities” and “drunkeness” at the local pub. The story goes that after being arrested he got wild and broke off not one but two sets of hand cuffs. The police sergeant and an aboriginal tracker managed to arrest the giant and get him to the lockup
You would have thought that in order to be kicked out of a pub and arrested in North West Queensland during the 1880’s you would have been a famous bush ranger or at least one of the Kelly Gang.
So WTF, its a pub on a gold field in the middle of nowhere in 1880, its hot and dusty outside and the beer is probably warm, anyway who knew what the big fella was really saying, he was Russian after all. But something tells me there was more to this story, like all the picture boards and news paper clippings that you come across when traveling out west they are sanitised versions of events, and only by travelling extensively can you start to get the real picture.
My family and I were in Forsayth, staying at the Forsayth Tourist Village on our way to Cobbold Gorge. As the Gorge camping ground was full, I elected to stay at Forsayth and travel the 45 kilometres out to the Gorge for the 7.0am tour.
The thought of as staying in Georgetown on the Great Savannah Way was one I didn’t care to contemplate for long as it would have meant a 4.0am start.
Forsayth is 47 kilometres Southwest of Georgetown in the Gulf of Carpentaria and halfway between Georgetown and Cobbold Gorge. It was late September and the temperature under the shade was a mild 35 degrees centigrade.
When we pulled into Forsayth which was not too dissimilar to many small outback towns, what became evident soon after arriving was that it was an important location in the history of this region. But our first task was to set up our camp.
The park management were very friendly and helpful and the amenities are modern and clean. There’s not much to do at the park but the hotel is only two minutes walk up the road (just watch your language). The hotel is owned by the ……family who own and run the Cobbold Gorge and the …….. cattle property on which it sits.
History of Forsayth
Forsayth is one of four towns that make up the southern section of the Chilligoe Rail network founded by the Chilligoe Mining and Rail Company. It is also a gateway to the Cobbold Gorge tourist area and the …… gold fossicking sites of ……. Apparently there is still gold in the hills and valleys and I met a number of gold fossicker who were permanent residents of the tourist park.
Cobbold Gorge
At the time I was unable to book a camp site at the gorge due to the higher than normal demand, if I had stayed there I would have missed out on soo much history (not to mention the Cobbold Gorge camp ground is no where near as shaded as the Forsayth Tourist Village.
The road out to Cobbold Gorge was a wide dusty and corrugated dirt highway with a multitude of jump ups, tight corners and steep causeways and did I mention corrugations, oh yeah lots of them. But as outback tracks go it was pretty good and in many places interspersed with small sections of bitumen.
You could take a normal car out there, but I wouldn’t recommend it, if you did you would need to drive slowly to avoid rocks bouncing up into your engine bay and those same sharp rocks ripping into your tires. If you don’t have much experience driving over corrugations you’re in for a surprise.
I have found over the years that vehicles behave differently when faced with corrugated roads. Most vehicles have a sweat spot around 85 kilometres per hour where the harmonics caused by a combination of weight and its distribution in the car combined with the speed of the car balance out the vibrations caused by the corrugations.
At this point you tend to get a smoother ride, if you slow right down you will vibrate your car to bits, as happened when one of my nudge bar shields which hold the front proximity sensor vibrated apart and broke the mounting bracket.
A word of caution here, at 85 kilometres per hour it is easy to lose control of a vehicle in the soft edges of the road or on the corners where there are usually rocky outcrops.
If the road has a lot of bull dust (which is a fine power of clay) it often hides deep pot holes which can collapse your tires or worse cause anything you are towing to flip. I have found that slowing down and suffering some of the vibrations reduces wear and tear on your vehicle.
Excess speed on uneven roads just to get somewhere for a tour is not worth rolling your car especially in the Australian Outback where help can be a long way away and the heat can kill you.
On particularly narky roads I will slow to around 65 – 70 kilometres per hour and engage four wheel drive, on my ute this tends to balance out the vibration as I have the front pulling if my back wheels start bouncing.
There is no doubt that what the ……. family have created at Cobbold Gorge is no less than an oasis in the outback. If you are going out to the gorge book ahead using their online booking tool. It works really well and ensures you have a trouble free registration once you get to the site.
Once you have gone through the onsite registration process, you are picked up by your Savannah Guide who takes you on a tour of the site in a big four wheel drive, air conditioned bus and then transfers you to a small boat for the guided tour of the gorge.
If you have been lucky enough to have undertaken a tour with a Savannah Guide then you know how professional this organisation is.
A Savannah Guide is part of a professional association that focuses on quality education and professional service. The guides at the Cobbold Gorge are definitely very knowledgeable and professional.
The short bus ride past the Cobbold Camping ground and across the ……river bed. We learn about the first travellers that past this way and some of the encounters with the traditional owners, the ……. people.
