The Settlers Track

Around the turn of the nineteenth century and near what is now the very southern border of the Australian Capital Territory was once a very thriving rural community, first settled in the 1830s. It included several leases with homesteads, a school and even a racetrack for Sunday picnic races.

So, on a very wintery Spring day in 2020, three of us travelled seventy kilometres south of Canberra through the fire ravaged landscapes of Namadgi National Park to Brayshaw’s Homestead carpark and the start of the Settlers Track.

After the charred wasteland we had travelled through, it was a wonderful surprise to discover the southern section of the park was unscathed and had been reopened. Unfortunately, everything west of the Boboyan Road and north of the upper Naas Valley is still closed because of the damage the catastrophic fires had inflicted the previous summer.

We picked up a very informative pamphlet at the gate and proceeded across the paddock to the homestead. Brayshaws was built in 1903 by two brothers, Edward and David Brayshaw, and became David’s home for the next twenty-eight years. Unfortunately, David was killed when he fell from his horse on 31st August 1931. After David’s death, his nephew, Ted and his bride, Roma, purchased the building and their son, Tom, was born there in 1933. 

Pictured Top: Westermans homestead (red building). How many kangaroos can you see in the photo?

From Westermans, we followed the Grassy Creek Fire Trail four kilometres north-west to Waterhole Hut, which is one of eight stockmen’s huts in Namadgi National Park.

It was built in 1939 by Tom Oldfield and was never intended for permanent occupation, so is extremely basic, with rudimentary features such as nails on the walls to hang things on and a dirt floor.

The hut is surrounded by a ring of raised earth which was created to help save the hut from the fires early in the year but was thankfully never needed.

About 200 metres from the hut are the remains of a set of yards built using the slip rail method. This is done by putting a series of two parallel posts in to the ground then dropping the rails between them. A huge granite boulder was also incorporated in to the fencing. 

The Kiandra gold rush was the shortest and coldest gold rush in Australia’s history.

Kiandra is at an elevation of 1400 metres.

The rush was sparked by the discovery of gold in a creek in 1859 and the township at one stage had fifteen hotels and thirty stores but by 1861 it was all but over and the population had dropped to 250.

A very easy one kilometre stroll east along the road brought us to the ruins of Boboyan Homestead. Boboyan was built in the 1890s and was one of the largest homesteads in the park. It was demolished in 1971 and all that is left of the complex is the huge chimney, some slab flooring and the long neglected orchard.